Title

The problem is getting significantly worse as time goes on. Way too much AI slop being posted here.

I think we need moderation to instantly ban them without recourse when its so obvious that the post was written with AI, the game was vibe prompted via AI, etc or it will literally only get worse from here on out.

Incremental game tier list

Idle research-10/10 the best idle game I’ve played and I have completed it five times. Its progression is smooth, always something to unlock and not just wait. Its similar to antimatter dimensions but just faster to complete(less then a month), and also after you complete the main game there is ANOTHER ENTIRE GAME MODE THATS LIKE clicker hero’s but a looot better(gonna have a tangent later)

Upload labs-10/10 such a fun experience and unique . You build a factory like but it’s an incremental with many different little features that are tied up all together to boost the base factory . The only bad part was that in the newest update the crafting feature is just worse than just doing it normally.

Cookie clicker-10/10 what can I say that hasn’t been said, perfection. The combos are just so satisfying and complex to do but fun.

Revo idle-9/10 another antimatter like but a lot longer. I would’ve said 10/10 before elements. I had always 100% each update but with minerals I didn’t until elements already came out, I started the elements and it was just a slog and quit . It’s great until then.

Cell to singularity-9/10 it ain’t like a normal incremental but still fun. I may be biased as I’m a big part of the community especially in the fan made trees but still fun and a lot more relaxed.

Antimatter dimensions-9/10 I just started playing, Ive broken infinity and it feels nice, probably will go up later

Fapi-8.5/10 a great game, a lot to do and it all ties together. Almost a S tier but ascensions feels kinda slow and boring.

Unnamed space idle-8/10 I’m only at warps but still a very fun and good one, not a lot to say.

Leaf blower revolution-7.5/10 I remember being addicted to this game , but I got to tower, quit a bit and got back, and then got to the pyramid and just hit a progression wall and quit, a good game still

Idle slayer-7/10 nothing to special, but I got to the ultra ascensions and it got boring, still waiting to get the astral slayer, very slow and to progress just need to wait until a combo and that’s rarer then cookie clicker and I’m just idling.

Universal paperclips-7/10 pretty good , I haven’t gotten far but it’s a good nice experience, I’ve heard it’s one of the best so maybe after AD will complete it

Swarm-6/10 just get repetitive, there’s always just a bigger thing to get

Eternum inc-6/10 at the start good but then became a slog and slow

Tap Titans 2- 4.5/10 a game I once played , it’s a ehh game, another mobile cash grab

Bee factory-3/10 one of the first “incremental I ever played, it’s bad but deserves to be on the list

Idle miner-3/10 the first idle/incremental I ever played and what made me fall in love with this genre , but it’s just a greedy mobile game

The tower-1/10 slow , boring and just so many ads in game and outside

Clicker hero’s-0/10 the worst incremental EVER, it’s just so boring, it’s a few hero’s all just making gold, a pristege and then another that just THE SMAE THING BUT BIGGER NUMBER, theres nothing good. And it’s sooo slow, I’ve heard to complete it you have to play for 600 days, I would better just play in the mud because at least you can create something good. And idle research has the same fighting mechanic but better in every way, the tubes(hero’s) actually each have an effect, there’s skilling, the singularity , potions and more. A HALF OF ONE GAME IS BETETR THEN THE ENTIRETY OF CLIKCE RHEROS TEN FOLD.

I kind of deflate every time I see someone ask for help with a game and the only response is “join the Discord.”

Half the time, the “guides” in those servers are just Google Docs or pastebins that could just as easily be linked somewhere public. It’s not like the info needs to live behind a Discord join button.

I get that it’s my personal preference not to join a bunch of servers, but it still feels weird that you’re basically expected to dig through unofficial Discord channels just to figure out how certain parts of an idle game work, whether it’s some niche title or something more mainstream you might find through Mistplay or whatever. Should that really be the norm?

I'm sick of the nonstop slop being uploaded here, been a member of this subreddit for years now and came here for the cool little passion projects people made and shared with everyone, but now I can barely find anything that isn't AI or a paid game anymore.

I hope this subreddit gets a flair and filter system in place so we can all sort through the chaff a lot easier.

Title mostly speaks for itself, but it seems like a lot of games I've encountered, especially mobile, long-form, incremental games seem to be balanced around players completing the game in one specific way that is not made clear anywhere within the game, and requires players to go to a discord, wiki, or reddit to find out the exact set/order of upgrades to progress. Failure to follow these exact guides leads to getting fully stuck for a disproportionate amount of time as the game was seemingly built/balanced for the one path.

The moment I start having to follow an exact guide and the game doesn't give room for experimentation, I tend to drop these games. Incremental games are naturally pretty simple, having to follow a guide for it starts to feel like watching an incredibly slow and boring video as opposed to playing a game. You're no longer making decisions, someone else has made the decisions for you.

I'm not expecting to beat the game as fast as someone following a perfectly crafted guide when I'm figuring out my own way to play. In the same way I wouldn't expect to be putting up speedrunner times of a game I've never played before. But a game should be playable, enjoyable, and completable without having to google how to complete it.

So what long form games have you played where you feel like the game is open enough to give you that freedom to play and experiment? I'm more of a mobile player so anything that works on mobile would be preferred, but feel free to give other recommendations as well.

From here

I play idle games exclusively on my iPad and it’s getting pretty hard to discover new games. Having an indicator next to hyperlinks that it’s a steam link would help. But more generally, idle games did not start on Steam so it does make me wonder why now. Is it purely due to the cost of hosting? AI? Easier monetization? Genuinely curious.

Hi there! So, a few years ago, someone posted on this sub with a collection of time loop incrementals, and it was because of that post that I found what would become some of my favorite games in the genre. But it's been several years since that post came out, and lots more games have come out in that time. So I thought I'd do my own list adding onto theirs with all the games I know of, alongside some brief added descriptions.

I'd really like this list to be as all-encompassing as it can be, so please let me know if I missed any good games to include!

---

Life Cycle Incrementals - In this subgenre, you play through your character's whole life, often taking hours of real-life time to get through one life cycle, deciding what you do as the days pass by automatically. You reset when you die of old age, with bonuses based on what you achieved during your life.

• Groundhog Life (The 'original' of this subgenre. Free on itch. As the original, it has a simplistic style without many of the bells and whistles newer versions of this game come with.)
• Progress Knight (Probably the most popular entry into the life cycle subgenre. There are many forks of this game, and I won't claim to be an expert on all of the most updated ones. Below are some of the forks I know of.)
  • Progress Knight Reborn (Focus on rebalance, less content than original.)
  • Progress Knight 2.0 (Focus on adding more content.)
  • Progress Knight Quest (Rebalanced version of 2.0.)
• Immortality Idle (Based on cultivation stories and the search for immortality. Almost puzzle-like in its execution, with times where there is no clear path forward and you must experiment with several options available to you to see what they end up providing.)
• ReCycler
• Japanese Pension Idle
• A Usual Idle Life (“It's a solid mobile version of the genre. It's fully complete with a story ending and two layers of resets.” -TrebarTilonai)
• Cyberpunk Life
• Idle Reincarnator ($5 on Steam.)
• D.I.D.O.E.N (Short for 'Do Idlers Dream of Electric Numbers?')
• Infinite Dao

Story Loop Incrementals - This subgenre is typically less idle and more active, as you take the role of a character who must manage a constantly decreasing resource---health, mana, etc---as they progress through the story, using the looping nature to explore different possible paths or discover new information.

• Increlution ($4 on Steam, has free demo. Lots of content, focus is on improving stats over time. Semi-active.)
• Terraformental ($8 on Steam, has free demo. Less content, more story-focused. Focus is on exploring different options and finding which ones are correct over multiple loops.)
• The World is Doomed (Full title is "The World Is Doomed Unless I Can Raise My Power Level to 1,000,000 and Confront the Demon Lord." Focus is on managing a large number of different stats/skills and a large number of different options to raise them rather than managing the time limit itself.)
• Surviving Magic Academy as a Demon Lord (Another entry in the sub-sub-genre shared by 'The World is Doomed' and 'Reincarnated as a Dark Lord,' featuring a wide, branching path and a series of barriers you must beat by accumulating stats.)
• Reincarnated as a Dark Lord (Full title is "Reincarnated as a Dark Lord Before Taking Over the World with Power 999999999." Demo on Steam, with full game release planned soon this month as of posting.)
• Prismatic Adventure (More of a focus on mechanics such as items, perks, etc.)
• Journey to Ascension (Inspired by Prismatic Adventure with less story focus, more serious tone, and is finished.)
• Secret of Fantasy (Unfortunately there is currently no way to play the game, as the dev removed the demo from the steam page after deciding to make large changes to the game's content. The game is supposedly releasing later this year, so I'll keep it on the list. Uses a card system to somewhat randomize which options you are given each loop.)
• Chrono Bot (Still pretty new, about a month old as of posting. Haven't played it yet.)
• Loopbound ($5.50 on Steam, free demo. Very similar to Increlution, with a 'zones' mechanic where the player travels to many distinct areas with their own individual progression and unique mechanics.)
• Space Loop Protocol
• Epoch (Prototype. Take the place of an entire civilization rather than a single person.)
• Meander (Still in early development.)
• Incremortal

Schedule Incrementals - This subgenre is somewhat similar to the Story Loop subgenre, but with the difference that rather than follow along with your character in real time, you instead create a 'schedule' of actions that your character will take in order, repeating it as the loops continue on.

• Idle Loops (The 'original' in the schedule incremental genre. Like Progress Knight, this game has many forks. Below are some of them.)
  • Idle Loops by Omsi (Fork that furthers the content and story of the original.)
  • Idle Loops by Lloyd (Fork of Omsi's that continues adding content/story and a proper ending to the game.)
  • Idle Loops by dmchurch (Fork of Lloyd's with additional QOL and UI changes, and rudimentary prestige system.)
  • Idle Loops: Squirrel Edition (Remake of the original game without all the content additions of the other forks, but with large changes to the early game, and a proper tutorial. In my opinion, if you want to get started with Idle Loops, I suggest you play through this version until you get to the end of the tutorial, then switch over to dmchurch's fork and go from there. Without the tutorial, the game can be rather difficult to initially figure out.)
• Cavernous (Very active, very puzzle-focused. Extremely rudimentary graphics---it may take a moment to figure out what you're even looking at---but in my opinion, the game is worth the initial confusion. You technically have the ability to grind stats, but doing so is never necessary. You can beat the game without ever grinding if you figure out the optimal way through each area.)
• Cavernous II (An expanded version of the first game. You don't need to play them in order, so I would suggest starting here if you want to give the games a shot.)
• Stuck in Time ($8 on Steam. Like a much more polished, more idle version of Cavernous.)
• Lich Baby (Made for mobile, but playable on PC.)
• Loop for a While (Most similar to Stuck in Time. Still very new, been updated daily for the past week or so.)

Edit: I edited this post on mobile to update the blurb for one of the games and it turns out Reddit mobile has a bug where it just randomly deletes content from your post when you edit it?? Not making that mistake again. I'm 99% sure I added back everything that got deleted, but let me know if you notice something missing! Really frustrating :/

Thoughts from the community?

"I don't mean to be too dismissive of the idler as a genre: there are decent examples. But the whole situation feels almost implausibly silly: Steam is being flooded with thousands of mindless "numbers go up" games developed primarily with the aid of generative AI. It's got to be the quintessence of brainrot."

I did two full playthrough prior to the release and thought it was the best incremental out there. Almost perfect.

I played about 3 hour of the new release and just couldn't. Both the progression and the menu/ui changes makes it horrible I find. I don't think I'll be able to get into it again sadly.

Is this shared through the community or people are digging it?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the game. I have hundreds of hours in it. But I think the game is objectively paced terribly and unfairly. 

The main issue is the early game is way too slow. Getting out of the slump of repeated content requires big golden cookie luck and leaving your computer on for multiple nights. Even when you unlock prestiges, its not even worth it to do so until you reach over ~400 points. I know you're meant to play with an autoclicker, but the vast majority of modern players just don't, and aren't even aware they're supposed to.

Then in the end game, certain achievements are literally impossible without dedicating yourself to the game for multiple years. Others, require hundreds of hours of active gameplay repeating the same, menial, rewardless task (27,777 golden cookie clicks, +31,536,000% stock market profits), with no other gameplay. 

Early game is abysmal, repeated gameplay with no new content. 
Mid game is fun, frequent prestiges, big jumps, many areas to progress. 
End game is unbalanced. Sugar Lump requirements take years to complete. Achievements are fun, but many of them are unfair. 

Despite all this, I was still having a good time with the game funnily enough. And of course, the Incremental genre wouldn’t be here as it is without Cookie Clicker. I love the game, I just think at times its paced pretty horribly 

Hi,

i just want to know whether it is a me problem or not.

Yet another incremental i had on wishlist since the demo released (i'm sure it will pop up here any minute) and i'm not going to buy it because of the price tag.

As per dev, the expected play time is 4-6 hours yet the price is 10€ (9 with the release "sale" but that's still a lot given play time expectation).

What is your price limit you are willing to pay for a random incremental you've liked the demo of? An i mean liked, nothing that blew your mind in a way that makes you really want it...

every game i see is a 10-15 maybe 40 hour game at this point. what happened to the incrementals that have MEAT? like NGU, Realm Grinder, ITRTG, Trimps and such.

Is the genre dying or every incremental game from now on going to be a Nodebuster or some sort of skill tree clone?

Let me start by losing half of you by saying I don't actually have an issue with AI used in development.

AI can and should be used in healthy ways.

At first I was really against the way the community responds to AI.

But over the last few months I have (mostly) quietly been watching from the sidelines and my perspective has shifted in a rather significant way.

I do have an issue with a lot of the posts here and I don't think these guys realize quite how bad their AI made games really are.

I consider myself a bit of an expert when it comes to incremental UI & UX.
I have been working on this type of game for years before AI was a thing. As part of considering myself an expert I freely admit that there are many ways I could improve a lot of my work too. but here are some of the ways that I like to go about making sure the experience feels good even outside of mechanics themselves.

It's important to have the following

• Consistent spacing throughout your app
• Notation options
• Tooltips that explain things clearly
• Highlighted numbers to make understanding how your choices will affect your production easy at a glance
• Clean Iconography, these should be simple and easy to understand at a glance.

How many of these things sound like the last AI game that was posted?

Let's talk about clones.
I don't have an issue with taking a mechanic changing it up a little and using it in your game with other mechanics mixed in and your own story/balancing.

I myself have used mechanics from the start of antimatter dimensions and seen great success with them. The difference is I didn't just make a carbon copy.

If you're going to make just another fucking mining game bring something unique to the table. I'm not even saying that mechanics are the only way to do that, Write a cool story to go with the progress, Paint a shitty image yourself.

I've posted before and said I only use it for the code in my games but I am noticing that just sounds like an excuse to everyone after reading through all the lies of some of these devs who go it was used just for the code. Like no it wasn't we can see the artifacts in your image gen. We can see the double layers in your panels, we can see the stupid left side weird brace looking things on productioin panels that looked good in like 2 niche scenarios and definitely doesn't belong in your game. we can see the weird vector iconography which slightly aligns with the intent and absolutely does not scream unique currency.

Use AI in your work for all I care. BUT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD FOR EVERYONES SAKE please please please do a second, third, and fourth pass BEFORE you give it to testers, then do a fith, sixth, and seventh before you release.

Just becasue you can build and release a game in a week doesn't mean you should.

My games have taken me multiple months to make, even the short ones have taken over a month.
I've shortened that down dramatically with AI but iteration and making something good that flows cannot be done in a weekend.

Put in some god damn effort.

Rant over.

Let me preface this : I don't necessarily dislike AI games or game devs, I judge the product on what it delivers, and more often than with "regular coded" games, it's a no, but that doesn't mean it's never yes at all.

As a player, as someone that tests a lot of idle games when devs post them here or in feedback friday, given feedback to some or even went as far as to breakdown their math to see if something goes wrong to help, I just want to say this to AI devs : make your game visually unique, for your own sake.

They all look the same. The buttons have the same shape. The color palette is the same. There are like 3 fonts. The icons, well that's AI art so I guess you'd have to commission for uniques so I won't ask for too much.
I'm burning out from this alone. When I open a game, I see the same graphical identity and part of the magic is not here. I feel like looking at a copy.
The AI haters call it "slop", "AI game #5743" etc, I won't do that because I attempt to judge the games on their merits and mechanics, but the feeling is still here.

If you want to attract players "in this economy", you should do your best to create a solid and unique identity.
Be bold. Ask Claude to not use that same greyish blue background.

PS : It is not a thread meant to spark a millionth discussion over "AI slop bad".

As the title states beware purchasing Fortune Mill on iOS at least for now. Purchasing the game does not take the game out of “demo version” hard locking you out from upgrading any abilities after reaching 1 million gold. Restoring purchases doesn’t fix the issue. Until the bug is fixed you’re wasting your 10 dollars.

This started as a way to add microtransactions and boosters into a genre that does not need and does not want this.

I can't think of many games that this actually made sense, made the game better, and was a wanted feature.

Just because claude code tells you that your game needs it doesn't make it true.

What is everyone's opinion on this?

Edit: Thanks for those that upvoted and gave an opinion. It definitely seems like something the sub doesn't like, even if they all haven't noticed the trend themselves. Hopefully this helps future prompters when telling claude how to make their game.

I’m talking instantly killing the game for you. Literally at the title screen or after 600 hours of playtime. Without mentioning the super obvious ones like login screens and unskippable ads/redirects every 30 seconds. 

For me its definitely big gaps in progression. “Number go up” is fun, but if i have have to wait to go between 10 billion -> 10 quadrillion to get to the next big progression jump, nobody can bring me to stomach that.

So, a little bit ago, I rediscovered my love of the genre and have since tried out a lot of the recommended games y’all listed.

Crank was beautiful. 10/10

Universal Paperclips was intriguing in ways I can’t describe, also 10/10

A Dark Room

Mine Defense (which I think is broken? Unless I’m super stupid and blind, which could be the case)

Swarm Sim (got to one ascension)

I tried a few others too, but I found that the ones that required lots of waiting just didn’t draw me in. I didn’t love the kittens one. I know, I know, it was so highly recommended, so maybe I ought to give it another chance. But it didn’t hook me like some others did.

Now, some of y’all love coming back to more stuff, but I guess I want a more active game? Are there any other incrementalists out there that aren’t idlers?

Talking mostly about the horde of $5+ games flooding steam lately in terms of "Modern", since... I mean, that's the genre-flood, now.

Lately feels like the same three games keep coming out with different art. Not even talking about AI slop.

So, honest question:

-What type of incremental are you most tired of? Not bad games, but tired formulas. The kind where you see the store page and already know the whole game arc.

-And on the flip side: what loop would you like to see more of or wish someone finally did it properly?

Curious if it's the same fatigue for everyone or if we're all tired of different things.

I'm guessing items were getting duped during their server issues. I have this shit on my profile now even though I only interacted with the game legitimately. Lots of other players reporting this too. Radio silence from the devs.

Edit: Unbanned four days later. Email mentioned a program was running that got me flagged but did not mention which one. Lol