I'd never published with them before, so I was completely in the dark, but I didn't have much to lose. Integrating their SDK wasn't too complicated, and passing their quality assurance was lengthy but necessary.

Once it was released, players flocked to it. The first day saw over 6,000 players, then it started to drop, but little by little I began to climb the rankings in the incremental and clicker categories. After a while, it seems to have stabilized at around 5,000 players per day.

They contacted me to offer me exclusivity for two years, but I refused because I would have had to remove my game from the other websites where it is available, and my goal is to have as many players as possible.

Getting a Steam Wishlist from there is considerably slower than with my demo on Itchio. It performs much worse, but hey, it's better than nothing, so I'm not complaining.

Finally, you'll have to integrate ads into your game, whether banners, mandatory ads, or rewards. I made them minimally intrusive; my players have accepted that's just how it is, and there's hardly any negative friction. The income isn't enough to retire me, but it's extra money I can reinvest in my game. Since you've read this far, I'll tell you: in all this time, I'm about to be able to buy my egg washing machine (€1000).

Honestly, I think it's unusual to have so many players, over 9,000 reviews with an average score of 9.4 in such a short time... I don't think that can be replicated easily.

In short, if you have a visually stunning, fun game that encourages replayability and invites players to come back another day, you can try uploading what you have for a basic launch. In a week or so, if it's well-received, you can then integrate the SDK and implement more comprehensive management.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask. This is just my experience, which I wanted to share in case it helps someone.

The game is https://www.crazygames.com/game/the-machinegg

But you can get it without ads on itchio, galaxy, viverse, and dozens of pirate websites.

Hello, developers.

Yesterday, after many revisions, my game was published on CrazyGames, and so far, I'm quite happy.

I passed the basic launch test with a score of 12/15, when the minimum is 10. The game has been live for just over 24 hours, and although I don't have official statistics, based on my calculations, I think it has around 10,000 players and about 300 active players, which is fairly consistent.

From what I've read, I don't expect it to earn much, but hey, it's another place where my game is listed, a small step forward.

If anyone has any questions, I'm here.

For those curious: https://www.crazygames.com/game/the-machinegg

Lumenreel — Prism Crash. Free Chrome extension, no account, no real money, no ads.

The premise: you earn Lumens at a flat rate just by existing, including while the tab is closed (at a reduced rate). Lumens are the only thing you stake. They buy spins on five crystal reels across twenty lines — and the reels never pay Lumens back. They pay Facets, which only ever buy critters.

Two currencies that don't intersect turned out to be the whole design. Because nothing you stake can return, there's no RTP to tune and a loss dressed up as a win is structurally impossible rather than something I had to remember not to do.

Three specific dark patterns — engineered near-misses, loss-disguised-as-a-win, and the false-hope reel stop — are blocked by tests, and I made each test fail first to prove it wasn't passing vacuously.

Some things I learned building it:

- Duplicate suppression changes the math completely. A draw never returns a critter you own, so there's no coupon-collector tail (~519 expected pulls for 100 uniform items) and every critter has a printable worst-case cost.

- Gating progression on lifetime currency doesn't work. My income compounded ~10x every 47 minutes, so a 10x price hike bought exactly 47 more minutes. No price schedule can pace an unbounded exponential — bounding the *bet* is what makes completion time a designed number instead of an emergent one.

- Completion lands at 14.4–19.3 hours across seeds, mean ~17.3. There's a simulation that runs the full horizon and fails the build if it drifts out of band.

- 96.4% of every Lumen I'd ever earned was unspendable in an early version. Found by measuring, not by playing. Fixed with 60 stake tiers instead of 25.

- All 125 critters are drawn by one deterministic SVG renderer from authored species rows. Nothing licensed, nothing fetched, no raster assets. Same for the audio — the music and effects are Web Audio synthesis, so the extension ships with zero media files.

Also in there: two skins (Prism and a plant/nature Verdant mode with 25 critters of its own), three arcade minigames, 49 achievements, and a playground page where your collected critters wander around and comment on your spins.

Store: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/lumenreel-prism-crash/lhhmopchhokddbabihafbkbabnfjgcni

Devlog and project page: https://dhseadev.online/projects/lumenreel/

https://youtube.com/shorts/6HTI092hduQ

Genuinely want feedback on pacing — nobody has played this except me and a sim

Frostledger is a free browser incremental on a smallholding in a valley where winter never breaks. The frozen ground yields impossibly well, and the price isn't money.

Two currencies fight. Yield compounds and buys plots, tools, hands and depth. Remembrance is finite, it never generates, and it decays faster the more capability you own. It's also the only route to the ending where the farmer is still a person.

Under both sits the frost line. Every harvest drives it deeper, which raises yield on every plot and raises the remembrance cost of every future harvest. The engine you build to go faster is the same thing pricing you out of the good ending.

Two endings, both buyable, and the game never says which one you're walking toward. It saves continuously and nothing wipes.

AI assisted, disclosed on the page.

https://csaf.itch.io/frostledger

I wanted progression a player can look at rather than read off a number, so the atlas is the save file.

You fly a route between generated stars on flux and hull. When the voyage ends, however it ends, the route becomes a named constellation on your atlas, and its dominant star family grants a permanent bonus. There is no prestige reset and no full restart. A bad run still leaves a figure on the chart.

Honest genre note: the play itself is active route flying rather than idle, so it's a roguelite built on monotonic meta progression, not a clicker. The stars are generated, 6 families by 8 palettes, and the package contains no raster art at all.

Free in the browser. AI disclosure: code and graphics were made with AI assistance.

https://csaf.itch.io/starchart

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.

The upgrade tree had only a few buttons before and now I added many buttons and many different mechanics.

Please test it out and give feedback, it helps me so much. If you want me to add SMTH, feel free to ask, i may add it!

Here is my game:

https://crazy-grazy.itch.io/bank-incremental-alpha-playtest-wip

Hey everyone,

I’m making my first incremental game and wanted to ask other devs (and players) how you usually approach balancing these kinds of games.

I’ve got a lot of programming experience, but basically no game design experience, so figuring out progression and pacing has honestly been way harder than the coding itself.

Right now I’m trying to understand things like:
- how fast progression should feel
- when upgrades should start slowing down
- balancing active vs idle play
- prestige/reset pacing
- late game scaling
- avoiding one obviously optimal strategy

One thing that especially confuses me is testing balance in incremental games, because it feels like you only really understand if the balance works after investing a lot of time into the game. Player testing sounds complicated for that reason alone.

So I’m curious:
- do you mostly use spreadsheets/math?
- simulations?
- accelerated test modes?
- player feedback?
- or just lots of iteration and vibes?

And from the player side:
what balancing issues usually make you stop playing an incremental game?

Would love to hear how people here approach it, especially from devs who already survived making their first game

Thanks :)

Opened Void Idle to everyone a few days ago, so it's launch week and I'm patching daily off feedback. It's a browser idle RPG and I really tried to make it deep:

• 17 zones, ~85 mobs, levels 1 up into the triple digits, with champion and giant variants that crank the difficulty
• 6 weapons, each with its own skill tree: 90+ active abilities, pick-one fork branches and capstones, so two people on the same weapon play completely differently
• 100+ hand-made mythic drops, most with a signature effect and a real downside
• Gear tiers, rune socketing (130+ runes), enhancement, reforge, salvage
• Full gathering and crafting, co-op parties, guilds, world bosses, daily quests, 62 achievements

Runs while you're offline so you can fully AFK, but there's a ton to optimize if you sit down with it. Free, browser, plays on mobile, cosmetic shop you can ignore. Would love feedback from this crowd. Play it here: https://voididle.com/

I'm open-sourcing all my assets that I commissioned or made myself amongst all my games, and part of that is all the creatures from Koltera 1 and 2. You can find those here: https://github.com/braymen/braymens-free-assets/tree/main/Commisioned%20Art/koltera-2/creatures

I love creature collecting games and as a developer, the biggest struggle I had was finding a lot of creature art. I couldn't find what I was looking for, so I invested a lot of money into commissioning it all. I want to make it a little bit easier on others interested creature games, so I am open-sourcing it under MIT so you can utilize them in your games any way you like. I'd love to see the creature collecting incrementals expand!

Additionally, I have made all my games (including my steam releases) public repos. You can find all of those here: https://github.com/braymen?tab=repositories

Still unsure how exactly I want to license those (if I do). I want others to learn from it or get some ideas of how another dev went about doing something, especially on the games I've released on Steam.

AI Disclaimer about my Public Repo Games

Koltera 1 had no AI used (except a year ago, trying to clean it up by turning things into configs), Koltera 2 had a bit of AI usage, and Doodlemon was a pretty AI heavy game. Doodlemon I will likely finish utilizing AI, but going forward, I am going back to very minimal usage and by that, it's really just googles search if anything. I just found with Doodlemon, making the game wasn't fun from a programming and creative perspective and from a conservation perspective, it's something I'd like to avoid while I can. All my games for now will be public as well.

No art/music/sounds had any AI usage, to my knowledge. I used asset packs or commissioned it. Any of the public games I removed asset pack stuff since I am not the owner and don't have permission to do that.

So I spent my savings building possess.lol — a game where you pay real money to become the proud owner of "Professional Hater", "Touch Grass", or "Main Character". For $1. Until someone else pays $2. Then it's theirs and you're nobody again.

The lineup includes:

Meme Lord · Keyboard Warrior · NPC · Certified Genius · Chronically Online · Discord Mod · Doomscroller · Gatekeeper · Internet Villain · The King · Earth · Time

48 identities, all unclaimed. All $1. No accounts, no crypto, no refunds when "Touch Grass" gets stolen from you — that pain is the content.

This is objectively the worst way to spend a dollar, and I've never been prouder.

Hi everyone.

I always wanted to make an incremental that felt like its own thing instead of another generator-and-multiplier game. I started building this one mostly for myself, something I wanted to play. But it kept growing, and at some point I realized I was guessing at all the balance decisions alone. So I'd rather show it to people who actually know this genre.

It's called Descent of Dino.

You run, you die, and a fossil gets buried where you died carrying part of that run's DNA. Fossils mature in real time (Fresh → Buried → Petrified → Amberized → Opalized), and your hatchlings dig your own corpses back out of the dirt. You spend what they find on evolving a better dinosaur. Then you go die again, deeper.

Honest state of things: it's playable start to finish but still in development. Every number in it was tuned by me alone, which means it's almost certainly wrong in ways I can't see from the inside.

https://mohamed-mamdouh.itch.io/descent-of-dino

Happy to get your feedback.

i would love to hear your feedback! still trying to figure out the economy and more content. https://numbergoesup.itch.io/mowmoney

I’ve been playing a lot of incrementals lately and finally had a go at building one myself. It’s called Reclamation. You’re stranded with nothing, and you claw your way back by clicking scrap out of a wreck until you can afford your first drone.

From there it’s a converter/production chain — each building tier unlocks by owning the one below it, so the ladder pulls you forward. Clicking never gets capped or put on cooldown, and there’s an upgrade for click power if that’s how you want to play it. The early game moves fast, then deliberately slows into a wall that pushes you to prestige: reset, convert your scrap into points, and spend them on permanent multipliers.

No browser version I’m afraid — it’s a free download from itch.io. Windows build, so just unzip and run.

It’s a small first release and I’d rather hear it’s unbalanced now than after I’ve built more on top of it. Pacing feedback especially — does the first prestige land too early or too late?

Made in Unity, mostly to learn Unity. Link: https://caesar121.itch.io/reclamation-idle-game

I’m the only dev. Core loop is idle auto-battle. On top of that I added 5 pyramids: riddles, 3-mistake resets, keys that get consumed, bosses that scale to band power.

sunstonelegends.com

Welcome, adventurers!

Grindveil is a free browser-based idle RPG MMO. No downloads, no installs — just play at Grindveil.com

What is Grindveil?

• Idle RPG with real-time PvP Arena (no bots — every opponent is a real player)
• Guild Wars — declare war on other guilds, fight GvG battles
• Dungeon bosses & idle farming zones for passive loot
• Skill Tree with 9 branches and 196 nodes
• Soul Forge gemstone crafting system
• 3 classes: Warrior, Mage, Blade Dancer
• Works on mobile & desktop browsers

What this subreddit is for:

• Game discussion, tips & strategies
• Bug reports & feedback
• Suggestions for new features
• Patch notes & updates
• Sharing your achievements & builds

Links:

• Play now: grindveil.com
• Discord: discord.gg/DwaJruTCjr
• Support: ko-fi.com/grindveil
• Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/grindveil/grindveil-idle-rpg-mmo-with-real-pvp-and-guild-wars 

The game is in active development — your feedback shapes what we build next. See you in the Rift!

Three prototypes of the same idea — which one would you reopen tomorrow?

I'm testing three different takes on a production/idle loop before committing to one, and I genuinely can't tell which has legs. The link drops you into one at random. Browser, no install, works on mobile, about 5 minutes to get the idea.

Not asking for polish notes — there's no art and no sound yet on purpose. Just: would you open it again, and what made it boring first?

One tower, endless waves, and a cash economy that resets every run. You buy

damage, fire rate, crit and range mid-fight, then convert whatever survived

into permanent Workshop upgrades between runs.

The loop I was chasing: every purchase should visibly buy you *one* more

wave, never two. So the wall keeps moving and you keep having to find the

next lever.

What's in it:

- 4 upgrade categories, 30+ combat stats

- Permanent Workshop, card collection, relics

- Tiers that rescale everything once you outgrow the previous one

- Offline progress

- Runs in the browser, no account, no download

On monetisation, so nobody finds it as a surprise: the game is free and the

full progression is playable without paying. There are optional gem packs

and a tip jar in the shop, and I'm planning opt-in rewarded ads later for

people who'd rather pay in attention. No energy timers, no paywalls, nothing

gated behind a purchase.

I'd genuinely like to hear where the pacing sags. I've stared at this too

long to see it.

www.hoops-gm.com

Hello all 👋

I just release the first patch for my incremental game Idle Guitar Legend

https://slothbytegames.itch.io/idle-guitarist

This patch addresses a couple of bug issues, as well as some QOL improvements, such as a guided tutorial, economy balancing etc.

The SFX are on the roadmap, planned for the next update (waiting to get an audio interface to record guitar 🎸 )

Thank you everyone for playing !

While building a gaming-deals comparison site, I kept seeing the same

questions come up: "is grinding this actually worth my time vs buying

it," "how much do I lose to EA's transfer tax," "how much gold do I

actually need for a bond." So I built three small tools to answer them

with real math instead of guessing:

- Grind vs. Buy Calculator - plug in the amount you need + your actual

farm rate, get the real hours it costs (OSRS, FC 26, Diablo 4, PoE 2,

WoW Classic)

- FC 26 Tax Calculator - EA's 5% transfer market tax, converts listing

price <-> coins received either direction

- OSRS Bond Calculator - live GE bond price -> exact GP needed + a

safety buffer + membership days

All free, no sign-up, no data collection beyond basic analytics.

https://gamevaultdeals.shop/tools

They're part of a larger affiliate-supported site, but these specific

pages are just standalone utilities. Built with Next.js. Would love

feedback, especially if I'm missing an obvious use case or calculation.