A lot of incremental games I see are in perpetual development. They are never truly finished, the developer always promises that another content update is around the corner. And those content updates get released, and the games eventually get really big. They grow to have prestige layers approaching the double digits, or months of content, or twenty-something interconnected systems, or whatever else it is that makes a game big.
Now, I want to like these games. Progress is at the core of incremental games, and appreciating the amount of progress you’ve made since you started is something I think long-term incrementals can and should excel best at. Unfortunately, I find that most long-term incrementals are not designed such that you can appreciate all the progress you’ve made. At most, I can only compare myself today to myself a few days ago. It feels like many games would be better served if they were split into smaller games. At some point you’re just adding content for its own sake.
I want to know and let other people know possible ways of solving this issue, although I’m ultimately not sure whether it’s even possible to solve.
I’ll try to help by citing what I believe to be a positive example:
Evolve Idle is a game about growing civilizations. It is a tedious game. A lot of the game is spent repeating the same content over and over again for minuscule boosts. The amount of time you have to wait between actions increases as you progress further in the game. And if you stick to the areas of the game where the intervals get shorter, they eventually get either bored or exhausted with how much you have to monitor the game.
But the game is also really expansive. Each little boost is a tiny bit more progress into allowing your civilizations to perform greater feats. Eventually your civilization gets to ascend to a higher plane of existence. I ended my playthrough there, but that is far from the end. The reason I ended it there was that I thought it was a fitting end. It was the best ending I could think of for a civilization, and much of the content after that was mostly just reaching endings I considered to be worse and then doing them under more difficult conditions. There was also the fact that I had been exposed to third-party automation scripts for the game and the progress I saw late-game people using these scripts ruined my sense of scale.
… that’s a long example. It would be a longer, but I’m sleepy.
I haven’t made an incremental game and I haven’t quite played out a single one for longer than a month, I could make things up and yet I’ll just share a perspective I already have on hand:
I have seen people enjoy even scratchy action games, who play a lot of action games because they like the language and find actions they can bring over in pretend from other action games. I have found incremental games the same with the exception that ‘time’ is in someway more nebulous than moving a character around, though the amount of times I actually feel like I am exercising skill in a incremental game honestly is far from 0 and probably pretty similar.. Repeating a simpler stage with a later one in mind, being attuned to ups and downs of E notation, reflexively tabbing out and back in, feeling shocked after you closed a game but still try to tab back, projecting to complete a set, deciding to just pile up a resource, deciding at what frequency to prestige, running around and keeping things in mind…
. Went through various thoughts about progress, - feeling like its the spatial component of a game that keeps you from fully leaving an earlier area, even if it may be a arbitrary way of recalling the memory. not sure many games deliberately try to reconjure a prior point in ‘the’ experience, can imagine devs may well think to do that but yea not sure how often it lands…
. Probably a real answer would be you just have to feel it out, giving an answer here would effect your feelings though, and yet oh well. am not sure what creates a particularly memorable moment and certainly wouldn’t say the conclusion… seem to have really strayed from that perspective, like, sure ‘whats behind that ??’ but ‘whats at the end?’ I don’t feel like many games actually ask that themself but am kindof blind, so anyway, hope this helps for now! my beautiful content…
Incremental games are kinda nihilistic to me. I find a neat new one and get the rush of making progress, then a few days later the emptiness of it and existence in general hits me and I stop
What are your thoughts on the antimatter dimensions reality update? It’s a game with months of content, but also added a bit of a narrative as you go through the celestials
I lost my save a couple years ago and never got the motivation to get very far in it again tbh
I’ve discussed this topic and levied criticisms at common issues I see in this genre in an article called What is Content?. Essentially, I think it’s better to have planned out the scope of the game in advance (as I’ve done for gamedev tree, advent incremental, and Kronos), so that the game feels like it has a proper end. It also sidesteps the issue of having new layers outright replace the earlier gameplay rather than extend it, as is common in games that keep asking themselves what to add next. Basically, planning makes better games.
I feel like overall opinion trends towards yours (I remember complaints about repeating the same content with little change for tiny boosts), but what people specifically consider too little a change, too tiny a boost varies. And if they have enough of other things they like in a game, they might put up with it, or deal with the problem by using automation scripts.
I can say I like when a prestige lets me do the content that took 3 days in 3 hours. I cannot really give a definitive answer on how I’d feel about taking 1 day to do what I did in 3. I did not finish Advent Incremental, but I can speak for what I have played so far. When you had to redo content, it didn’t take that long (because the content you were redoing did not take so long in the first place) and it gave you a pretty nice upgrade afterwards. I tend to be a fan of redoing your past progress with a twist added in order to receive a bonus. Idle Formulas did this really nicely in my opinion, especially since your first go-around might take at least a day, but when you try to redo your past progress under specific limitations for a bonus, you are also expected to take 30 minutes or less to complete it.
I feel like the answer to this question is more of an art than a precise science, and that my answer is not too enlightening or good, but for the sake of engagement on this small community and on the Fediverse in general… I’m posting.
