Just a head's up, IncrementalSocialBot cross posts the ocassional popular post from the subreddit - as a temporary measure while this community is still growing. Tobias isn't actually on Lemmy (or mbin, which is what this community is hosted on)
I'd tried checkbackmod a long time ago but didn't really get into it, but I've started a new playthrough based on your recommendation, and am already level 13!
I'm also continuing to play USI even though I'm past all content unlocks, because it's just that fun. I stopped playing civ idle for now, but bought and started playing incremental factory :)
Oh, we're responding to the reddit reposts now? Anyways, here are the games I'm playing:
Cavernous 2: https://nucaranlaeg.github.io/incremental/CavernousII/. It's a game where you're stuck in a cave and in a time loop and you have to manage multiple clones of yourself at the same time. I'd say it appeals more to the pure puzzle (whatever that means) audience than to the incremental audience, but it does have idle elements and I like it so I'm posting it here. I'll probably post my full thoughts on the game in its own thread.
Synergism: https://synergism.cc. Abstract incremental, I'm at the stage (early Singularity) where the pacing is to check on it for a few minutes once or twice a day. I'm just playing this because of inertia.
Gooboo: https://tendsty.github.io/gooboo/. I'm not even sure if I'm playing this. The game allows you to idle for weeks on end without you getting FOMO, so that's what I've been doing. I've heard a lot of people play this more actively (read: daily checkups) though.
Not sure how I missed this release. This looks so cool! Right up my alley. Love the look of the node based editor and anything with a command palette is amazing.
yeah. i like games that make you engage with the mechanics and find "satisfying combos" like that. i wish more incremental games did that - rather than a single "number go up", you have a meaningful choice of stats to increase.
one idea i've had in the vein of autobattlers: what if future runs made you play against your strongest previous builds?
so if you find an overpowered combo, you'll have to be able to find its weakness as well.
i'm not sure what you mean about an incremental autobattler needing to be deterministic; plenty of incremental games have heavy amounts of RNG in them.
Well I was thinking with this proposed system of having runs just loop the last round they got to, it wouldn't be fun to do another run with the same strategy just in the hopes it gets better luck.
This question makes me think about the games by Proton Studio Inc. I've enjoyed several of their games, including their 2 incremental games, Time Clickers and Time Warpers. They are both 3d games but with a fairly simple voxel aesthetic, and are fun to play actively/in the foreground, but provide mechanics to allow you to progress while idling.
In my opinion, the idling while still rendering all this 3d stuff feels awfully wasteful, but I do really enjoy the time I spent actively playing. And I think that's what it ultimately comes down to - 3d can definitely be used to build engaging mechanics that are really fun, but if you go that route I'd actively discourage implementing idle mechanics (the genre has enough examples showing that you don't need them, anyways!) or at least make it a separate mode where all the 3d stuff isn't consuming resources.
Edit: it's the factor that determines whether I'll play it.
Low overheads, please. If the game is graphics heavy then I want to be able to disable everything possible beacuse I'm running eleventy games at any one time, so the more resources one game wants, the more games I have to close to be able to play that single game. And since I play on a laptop with inadequate cooling, they'd better all be light.
I've played games that would, while running full screen, also show the current time and included an alarm you could use in case you got a little too buried in it.
I found them both effective.
When it comes to manipulation in media, games with subscriptions or MTX are more manipulative than games without simply because the owners want more of your money. It's the difference between, "Here is our game, how much money will you give us over x time? What if we tweaked this gameplay, and made this look nicer, and used FOMO while selling this cosmetic item, and made this piece of kit a today-only 'bargain'?" versus "Here is my game, like it or don't but it's already made." The latter feels like a more authentic piece of media than the former, which feels entirely extractive.
Hello, I'm one of those young people mentioned in the post and I'm partially responsible for our current topic.
My take is that the distinction between "fun" and "motivational manipulation" is blurry in a lot of forms of entertainment, and this blurriness is significantly more apparent in incremental games compared to other forms of media. As much as I don't like to admit it, I think that most modern games (especially abstract ones such as The Prestige Tree) mostly consist of "motivational manipulation".
That being said, I still think there is still fun to be had in this genre. My personal belief is that the fun in incremental games comes from the organic (or at least not tightly forced) discovery of the intricacies of the mechanical systems these games present. The problem is that very few games manage to handle this discovery well. I've also found interacting with the communities surrounding these games to be an enjoyable experience.
As to the notice, I think it's an okay idea but I don't have any strong preference on any one condition (there are a lot of factors to take into account). My primary doubt is whether the notice will work well since people may be reluctant to seek help and could easily switch to an equally manipulative entertainment outlet that doesn't contain a similar notice.
I think it's interesting that within the community, games kinda get treated as if the more abstract they are, the more "pure" they are, like a game is less incremental if it puts effort into anything apart from the gameplay itself. Narrative, graphics, and sound design are almost treated as negatives.
I was going to lead into saying that the "pure" games are probably more likely to fall into manipulation rather than genuine fun, but as I was writing it I thought about how loot boxes, which are obviously manipulative, use flashy effects to make them feel more rewarding. So I don't think it's the presence of those things that makes a game more genuine fun either. Honestly I just have a hard time finding where the line is, beyond "I know it when I see it".
As far as the notice goes, I'm not going to kid myself and pretend it'll solve video games addiction for anyone that plays the game. I'd be happy if it just increased awareness tbh.
I hope y'all don't mind the more serious/critical topic of this post. I plan on keeping most of them positive, but I think this is an important topic to discuss within the genre.
Incremental Games
Hot