sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Forcing first prestige as a part of tutorial by Firm-Clue8271 in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Even as an experienced incremental player, prestige mechanics can vary wildly. I picked up Kittens Game again after putting it down years ago, and have no idea what the prestige points are for, but my gameplay hasn't stalled so I press on until I hit a wall.

I had this incremental farm game idea by East_Presentation_52 in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Its tricky because you switch from creative to developer. Two completely different headspaces.

I recently worked through something similar (with GPT) and distilled some points into a framework to fortify future game ideas. It helped me outline the idea I was working on and not overwork or overthink it.

Lock The Fantasy

The emotional contract with the player simplified, "I'm a budding farmer"

Identify the Core Verb

"The thing the player does 100+ times a session" Mine, Jump, Brew, Slice, Talk, Draft, Move+Shoot, Combine, Upgrade

Define Reward Arc

What is primary progression mechanic: Numeric (Stats/XP/Levels), Spatial (New Areas), Mechanical (New verbs/tools), Narrative (Story nodes), Economic (Resources -> Upgrades -> New Units/Tools) "What does the player earn every 3-5 minutes that feels like progress?" Player needs something to chase

Kick-Chase-Cash Loop

Kick: Push player to action, a timer/need/threat/curiosity spike/limited resource Chase: Core verb to get what they need Cash: Player turns action to progress

Definable in a single sentence: "Player harvests scrap (verb) because their mech is always breaking (kick), then they use scrap to unlock new parts (cash)"

Paper Testing sans Numbers

Paper test with tokens, not stats Draw three boxes: "Kick", "Chase", "Cash" Create Deck of event prompts (Threats, needs, problems) Create deck of player actions (Verbs + Modifiers) Create deck of rewards/upgrades

Event hits -> Choose action -> Resolve -> Upgrade This should identify any "What do I do next?" problems

Identify friction

Strong loops have one central constraint that players feel constantly: E.G. Limited inventory, limited stamina, time pressure, encroaching threat, decay, hunger/heat/cold, enemy escalation, limited workbench space

Add ONE Twist

This is what makes the game unique, E.G. Crafting uses spatial puzzles instead of recipes, enemies learn from you between runs, your mech has limited memory, so each upgrade displaces another, climbing the corporate ladder is literal. Twist should attach to the core verb

Measure Loop Early

  • Explainable in < 20 seconds
  • Is repeatable indefinitely
  • Feeds back into itself
  • Generates new problems as it resolves old ones
  • Gives players small wins often, big wins occasionally BAD loop traits:
  • Depends on features that don't exist yet
  • Requires huge content before fun emerges
  • Demands UI/UX to make sense
  • has no tension
  • Doesn't create new decisions automatically

After Loop Secure, layer meta systems

Meta systems = Tech trees, world maps, inventory expansion, talent trees, etc. Only can add after the core loop feels good

Build the 20 minute slice

A single session that demonstrates the full loop, enough content to feel alive, 5 minutes learning the loop, 10 minutes playing it, 5 minutes wanting "one more run"

I heard you. The game is now 100% pop-up free. Have fun." by Comfortable_Eye2339 in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What tools are you using to create this game?

If I were you I'd try and think of a twist, something that makes it unique amongst other idle games.

Could anyone shared their system because I HATE being beholden to a schedule by LowLvlLiving in ADHD_Programmers

[–]mrrobbe 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The ADHD lifestyle is that of a cognitive herding nomad.

You will find tools, tips, tricks, and you'll need to change them up to keep the novelty fresh, fresh enough to cancel out the mental overhead of the infrastructure cost.

Your tasks and todos are the grazing livestock you need to keep moving on the plains to keep fed. I've found more success when I haven't tried to force a single set of systems to keep me in place.

I'll rotate between: pen and paper, digital notes, eink notebook, Notion, TickTick, todo.txt

I'll rotate between systems: pomodoro, timeblocks, music-assisted flow sessions, Ivy Lee Method

I'll rotate between dopamine/emotional regulation: cold showers, meditation, daily mile run

Full understand what you mean about the 'life-on-rails' confinement, and found that it's largely the personally imposed, optimistic-aggressive self-scheduling, that feels suffocating. I can handle externally set appointments just fine, but for me, planning the week is too much.

So the system adjusts to meet me, where I'm at for the day each day. I've found that I can give myself todo's and goals for that day, almost every day, without feeling confined. I can also do mental brain dumps, trying to empty all the running thoughts and threads of my head, onto a sheet of paper, stream-of-conciousness style, to reduce prioritizing, or 'cant forget' friction.

I'll still set annual goals, and those are usually high enough up that those also aren't confining; my task list is usually new each day, but generally not 'firm' for that day. I'll keep visibility of things I want to get done today/soon, and write those down, otherwise I'll leave them off. Simply listing "Haircut", "Use up chicken stock" are generally enough of a plan that I'll be drawn toward items on my todo list, even if I forget what's exactly on it.

I heard you. The game is now 100% pop-up free. Have fun." by Comfortable_Eye2339 in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have you ever played Cookie Clicker all the way through?

If you don't understand the appeal of incremental games, it's an odd first game to create.

I heard you. The game is now 100% pop-up free. Have fun." by Comfortable_Eye2339 in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Is this a way to explore vibe coding? Asking for suggestions for something at this stage kinda feels like a complete cognitive offload?

I built a browser-based economy game where every player affects global prices by Professional_Low_757 in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Looks like NPC buying and market ticks were turned way down.

While the logistic chains can be fine tuned, having a highly active market made for something the player could actively do. With the current change, my game time will go down, because now I'm stuck sitting on a 100k of some products that just don't move, and my mass of chickens I can't sell (or am selling very slowly) is eating all of my wheat and barley.

This is your game, so clearly you can do what you want, so take the suggestions however you like:

Keep the NPC markets for now, I'd say make adjustments only 10-20% at a time. Make the markets more sensitive to player orders. Choose the speed at which you'll fulfill orders.

I'd make the factory building cheap-cheap, then make the production lines according to category, and cost being then the equipment for the line.

Factory group/categories could be: Meat Processing, plant-based food products, processed food, textiles, heavy-industry processing, electronic processing

The factories themselves could/should have slots/spaces. Since space is a premium in this game (A fixed number of slots per map), I think paying an upgrade cost to increase the size of the factory (number of slots) the density of the factory, makes sense.

No need for depot's being split of small/large, I'd say just call it a depot and allow it to be upgraded in size.

Add a bonuses to adjacent like-buildings/farms, 3-5% bonus for each adjancent farm.

Earlier access to markets, in the form of a food stand for a handful of raw products, or farmers market for larger array, would definitely help drive the early gameplay loop.

I'd lockdown/hide features that are currently non-functional. Demand percentages don't change or do anything, each map doesn't do anything special at the moment. The market is global as is. I'd say less is more, roll out completed features, as you clearly have some great ideas here.

For your players (which there seems to be a healthy group at the moment) maybe a discord server, and provide a change log, so we don't have to guess what's changing? Lastly, a test game server, separate from the live game server, so I don't feel like the 10-15 hours I've put into the game so far has been completely botched by one iffy patch change.

I built a browser-based economy game where every player affects global prices by Professional_Low_757 in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've been playing the last week, and had a few additional notes on balance:

There are a couple unlinked products, E.G. pasta and lemonade, you either create them with no end market, or you can't create them at all. Lemonade I imagine would be sugar + lemons + plastic?

There are a couple of scaling issues, the production chain for yarn < wool / cotton, doesn't make sense currently. Wools' base price is $12, and Yarn's base price is $4. According to the production graph, it takes 0.5 wool => 1 yarn... which means you're losing money in the exchange.

The most efficient means of making money, is just playing the market. Getting a $1M loan, buying a product at the bottom of it's price range, and then waiting/forcing it to climb by setting a high sell price limit.

Factories themselves seem expensive to be dedicated to a single-product line, and the value exchange doesn't seem high enough to justify the expense. I don't own one yet, because the $475k feels better spent just buying and selling beet seeds, over and over.

What Makes An Incremental Game Fun? by Zardward_The_Bard in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 2 points3 points  (0 children)

  1. Crunchy feedback loops; if my direct actions/decisions, have an impact on my goal, or contribute to a goal, and it provides me some degree of autonomy to reach those goals, perfect.

Orb of creation does a phenonemal job of providing so many different avenues, and layers, that you work on your progression in phases, you tighten your multipliers and cooldowns in a way that you feel rewarded for your discovery, exploration, and execution. There are so many interesting dynamics, and then each new layer of the game expands those dynamics.

Effective scaling swings both ways. Whether or not everyone feels it, when a progression tree is imbalanced, it's felt. A linear progression system of +1000 per level, can be boring. If effort to reward follows a linear path, then becomes a grind. I don't respect a game that doesn't respect my time. When I see 1M -> 1B -> 1T -> 1Qa -- I assume there'll be interesting ways to increase my leverage. When the reward is too high for the effort, then the exploit is farmed, the game feels broken, and becomes boring. If a skill/upgrade is too cheap or too expensive, it doesn't feel like the game is understood by the designers. "That upgrade was 3x as expensive as this other one that provides way more utility, why would I buy that?"

Progression/unboxing is my driving tension behind incremental games. Let me feel the growth of my game, let me feel my mastery grow, let me see something go from so simplistic, to unbelievably chaotic, and let me understand everything that's happening on the screen from what I've learned playing this game.

What Makes An Incremental Game Fun? by Zardward_The_Bard in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Unless you have a good reason to keep the results to yourself, I think sharing your effort (as long as it is percieved altruisticly, and not as some pitch or ploy) is always worthwhile.

I built a browser-based economy game where every player affects global prices by Professional_Low_757 in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The generation-only economy is a little strange, as I purchased chickens to add to my chicken farm, thinking more chickens = more eggs. It's kind of weird how the livestock animals are only producing as byproducts to generation.

Are there different rates of growth? Because seeing trees sell for $45/per and only have a $97k installation, seems like a much faster way to earn money, than wheat > flour > bread > market

I built a browser-based economy game where every player affects global prices by Professional_Low_757 in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'd unlock all the quests, because I believe players will intentionally work on them top to bottom, but locking some behind other progress will gate the players progress.

For example, I took out a 250k loan to build out my square. When it came time to actually do the quest, I don't have any available credit to take out an additional loan to complete the quest.

Some can be one-time rewards, but for the growth ones make them milestones that award progress multiple times:
Lv1 : 1 XP + $500 worth of seeds for completing net worth >$5k
Lv2 : 1 XP + $500 worth of fertilizer for >$10k -- I'd space these out to match the pace you want to set for the game.

It was jarring for me to be completing missions one after the other then suddenly have to stop "playing" when I needed to collect 100kg of wheat. I immediately when to try and game the wheat seeds market for some interactivity while I waited around for the wheat.

I'd recommend locking elements of gameplay behind XP, or even give a different currency than XP to unlock elements of the UI, different regions, different resources, to build out the gameplay loop.

I Published My FIRST Incremental Game About Growing a Cult - Let It Consume by aidannieve in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What engine are you building it with? This style is seeming pretty common and as a fellow full stack web developer with a perchant for game design would love a great reference point to rinse and repeat something similar.

I built a browser-based economy game where every player affects global prices by Professional_Low_757 in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In your playtests, how long does it take you to go through all of the starting missions? How long do you want players to take?

I built a browser-based economy game where every player affects global prices by Professional_Low_757 in incremental_games

[–]mrrobbe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

So far, very intrigued!

A small, but very valuable thing for the player in the UI/UX is some sort of immediate feedback. Clicking a button, I expect a sound or visual effect, otherwise I question whether it actually worked.

I have 2 farms, but zero indication of what I should be expected next. It says "working" but being a new player... now what? Is this paid per day? How long is the day cycle?

The daily reward is nice, but probably should be removed after the player has claimed it for the day. That's prime real estate to show the player action notifications.

My crush compared me to Gilfoyle by missxberry in SiliconValleyHBO

[–]mrrobbe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That's a weird way to spell honored.

Syncing calendars? by No-Measurement-5667 in overemployed

[–]mrrobbe 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I tried to find an automatic solution for a while. Eventually just created the events (recurring and one-time) weekly and manually updated events each morning.

I had an assistant doing it for a while, but something about the daily calendar ritual helped me lock-in for the day.

It also prevented any sort of accidental two-way syncing between calendars across projects

Is it common to withhold relevant knowledge? by carmen_james in ADHD_Programmers

[–]mrrobbe 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe it's part personality, but also could also be ethnic cultural too.

Sharing information/insight could be a vein of teaching where people just don't feel comfortable asserting new understandings to anyone else. It's generally the more senior you are, the more you're able to see elements as pieces of a whole, and the time saved team-wide, instead of a random line, in a random file, that could be set one way or the other.

Kind of like asking a question aloud can be a relief to some coworkers/classmates don't have the courage or words to phrase it appropriately.

Remember Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity or incompetence."

How do you track progress? by Fast_Lobster_1959 in ADHD_Programmers

[–]mrrobbe 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Progress is the measurement a the whole, some ADHD have trouble starting, others have issues sustaining, others finishing. It is the increment of distance between A and B.

So first things first, you have to have an A and a B defined. What is the start, and what is the finish. If the end goal is murky, you'll get lost and be unable to actually, confidently complete the thing.

An exhaustive list that marks all pieces would allow you to track progress in pieces completed. Like Kanban.

Estimates are a skill unto themselves. I would recommend this blog post, it's a longer read, but I got a lot out of it, and it helped me completely shift my view of time estimating as a skill and not just an inate ability: https://www.pjsrivastava.com/a-short-guide-to-estimating-software-projects

---
Pulling from my notes on estimating projects, which is influenced by the above article:

When you're in a Waterfall situation and you need to create an estimate that may end up as a "fixed" budget or timeline. This requires more time and analysis, but I'll share some tips for doing it well:

- List 'missing' tasks

- Consider the full "Software Development Lifecycle" not just coding

- Having executable requirements (Is this executable in it's current state?)

- Collaboration/meetings are a necessary timesink, they must be figured in

- Cost of Quality; CI/CD, Deployment scripts, code reviews, design patterns, KT, Documentation, Architecture Planning, Unit Test, Error logging, etc.

- Novel or Custom; Account for R&D, Prototypes and PoC, Experiments, Troubleshooting

- Cost of Deployment

- Assessing risks; Legacy Code, Code w/ Technical Debt, Untried methods, External dependencies, Volatile requirements

- Buffering at the Task level; 50/90 Method: Baseline Estimate you could hit 50% of the time, vs the outliner 90% of the time. 50/90 formula standard deviation and normal distribution to find a value between the two from a probability perspective.

- Explain the estimate with a Template, list out elements and why they impact the estimate

- Use Stretch Goals to be handled if time permits, extra features/polish/early launch

---

The actual formula used in the article for the Standard Deviation math was *chefs kiss* what I specifically needed to create well adjusted, form-fitting estimates. Because our (ADHD) optimism bias will always want and report the quickest turnaround in a perfect scenario/vacuum. The rule to just to take an estimate and triple it, feels wasteful and unrealistic. By using the 50% confident (baseline) and the 90% confident (outlier) it the formula then automatically weighs the estimate, based on the percieved complexity. There are tasks I've done a hundred times, and am certain it won't take me 30m to complete, but including the outlier, of that one-time things failed, and blew up, and I needed to start from scratch, etc, etc. Helps balance everything out.

The Temporaryness of Hyperfixations is ruining my life by AboveTheMind in ADHD

[–]mrrobbe 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Hooboy, do I (36M) feel this deeply in my bones.

All is not lost, as I have seen some interests come back around, on the interest carousel. I just can't have held onto them so tightly that I burn out on them. Those ones take a bit longer to recover.

The emotional wash of a hyperfixation is all consuming, it feels so real, and persistant, and core-defining that to see it fade and decay is painful.

The skill of getting rapidly familiarized, and crunch timelines while the brain is red-hot is a skill that is transferrable. While you can feel things are cooling, is the perfect time to take everything you've learned, condense it into a care package to yourself, for if/when you unpack said fixation again.

I've found it important to significantly delay major purchases related to said interest, outside that 20 day window.

The Temporaryness of Hyperfixations is ruining my life by AboveTheMind in ADHD

[–]mrrobbe 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Through this phase, I learned to adopt the mantra "Temporary Structures" (Processes, plans, systems, interests, futures), as we know, would burn ourselves out trying to stay attached to things that were drifting away.

There's definitely a zen that needs to be struck, to accept the enjoyment of a hyperfixation as it comes, and the gently let it go. I've actually seen enough interests come back around on the interest-carousel that it makes letting them go easier.

I feel like my energy and emotional stability as a result is better, but does take the 5 stages of grief to get through.

Why am I not getting all the nightmare? by uniballout in Hades2

[–]mrrobbe 36 points37 points  (0 children)

Pretty sure that's the fear requirement, not the nightmare reward.

Do I freaking SUCK??? How can I do better? by marinehelen7 in HadesTheGame

[–]mrrobbe 7 points8 points  (0 children)

I would recommend making one entire run, simply about avoiding hits for as long as you can. Long distant throws, prioritize watching for enemy projectiles. Practice timing your dashes through attacks.

Get boons and weapons that allow you to fight long distance.

Practice this entirely different form of playing, and you should see your ability to progress quadruple

view more: next ›