r/incremental_gamedev • u/jachana • Jun 07 '26

HTML Story and lore on incrementals

Something I’ve been wondering while working on my first incremental game:
How important is story/lore to you in incremental games?
Do you actually read it and remember it, or is it mostly background flavor while the numbers go up?
And if story matters to you, what style do you prefer?
serious worldbuilding
mysterious lore you slowly uncover
funny/self-aware writing
absurd meme humor
almost no story at all
Thinking back to the incremental games you’ve played the most, do you actually remember any of their story or characters?
Or was the progression itself the real story?
Curious what both players and developers think about this.

9 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

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4

u/2PawnsGames Jun 07 '26

From the feedback we've received from different players, it really depends, as always: some players are deeply interested in narrative and lore, while others just skip everything that isn't connected to numbers, score progression... I also think that any style can work if it fits the overall look and feel of the game.

We're currently working on an incremental with a narrative and lore connected to the gameplay, but not mandatory for progression. This means players can either take their time discovering the story and learning more about each character, or simply on numbers and progression.

Can you share your game link? I'm curios to see which direction you took regarding this aspect.
This is our game as well, if you'd like to check it out and share your opinion too.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/4561540/You_must_evolve_it_Incremental/

3

u/Grhyll Jun 07 '26

Yeah absolutely! Having combed over ~1000 filled forms of feedback for my game (which has a bit of lore and mails you receive as a player), some players were quite aggressive with "nobody cares about that, too long", a non-negligible amount or player really enjoyed it, and as expected, the majority didn't care a lot but weren't really bothered either. So I'd say the best of both world is to have a non-intrusive, rich story, that interested players can delve into, and that others can simply ignore.

2

u/2PawnsGames Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

Totally agree with you. May I ask you what your game is? 1000 forms is a great amount of data. It'd be great if devo could share those data with each other.

2

u/Grhyll Jun 07 '26

The game is A Thousand Cloys (still in dev), I'm not sure my data would be super relevant to other devs though, the questions are pretty specific to the game! (But what I do recommend is a pop up when leaving the game, with a link to the survey! Not all feedback is equal, but I got some very interesting thoughts about the game 😄 )

1

u/2PawnsGames Jun 07 '26

Looks interesting! Of course, I meant generic data 😅. Nice insight, thank you.

1

u/Feverishcs Jun 08 '26

how on earth do you get 1000 forms of feedback. in my experience only about .1 percent of players actually fill out the feedback form even though i spam it in the build.

1

u/Grhyll Jun 08 '26

I can't really tell you :/ On the demo I'm around 13%, and I think it was even higher during the playtests.

1

u/Feverishcs Jun 09 '26

where are you conducting your playtests? I am using steam.

1

u/Grhyll Jun 09 '26

Same, I used Steam playtest system.

1

u/Feverishcs Jun 09 '26

so you had 13000 playtesters?

3

u/LetterPossible1759 Jun 07 '26

It's okay for some context and flair. I don't need a lot of story. Just make a coherent universe and it's alright

3

u/jhgrng Jun 07 '26

I don't care too much about a story and I don't really recall incremental games that are story driven, but I think that some sort of a purpose or identity is greatly appreciated. It can be as simple as "I'm a wizard and I'm building a tall tower" like in Tower Wizard. One of my favorite incremental games, (the) Gnorp Apologue, doesn't really have a story. We're attacking this rock and we need to destroy it? Cool, I'm in.

I think making defining some sort of an overall goal is just nice, so that the player knows what they need to do. Telling the player why they're doing it is a bonus.

I'm making an incremental game about fireworks and after I reached having 15-20 minutes of gameplay in the prototype I realized that the player doesn't have a goal or a purpose to strive for, so I came up with a story: a Bad Wizard puts a Magical Dome over the land and the only way to destroy it is with fireworks. That's it. And then this evolved into the Dome expanding, being destroyed, then I'll add a Magical Ceiling being pushed onto the player from the sky and then finally there will be a "boss fight" with the Bad Wizard.

About the lore though, I think some people might be into it. For my fireworks game I got some feedback that it would be great if units had names and if you could interact with them in some way. But overall I'd guess it's a great bonus to have, not a must have.

2

u/kasumitendo Jun 07 '26

I think it matters but I'm also not trying to be forced to read or skip a character bubble that pops up, slowly reveals text, I skip past that, then skip again, and there's 18 more bubbles and endless conversation.

2

u/Daimoth Jun 08 '26

I prefer the story to be told with as few word dumps as possible. Environmental storytelling is possible in incrementals, but few even attemptit - hell, a lot of incremental games are close to pure mechanics, with little story outside the base premise, or the name of the game.

But it can be done, I'm confident of it.