cardboardempress

cardboardempress Mod , 1 day ago

All games browser playable unless stated otherwise.

FairGame - a multiplayer incremental. Looks simple but isn't (unless you start late). New rounds start every few days, if you miss the beginning just hang about for a bit, or ask in chat for tactics/strategies.

PedroPascalsTrianglesofPrestige - a game written for the April Fool's game jam last year. Don't let the timer trick you, this game should be completable within 5-6 years.

Louigi Verona's Bliss - I quite like his games and his website has more listed.

PPToP2 written for this year's April Fool's jam.

Emoji Recycling Centre - also made for this year's April Fool's game jam. It's slow, meditative, thoughtful and one of the best games I've played in a very long time.

Fundamental - I spent ages on the first world trying to do everything in one go. Madness. Someone took me by the hand and gently slapped me around the head and now I'm cranking through it.

Anti-Idle:The Game - Flash standalone, downloadable from the dev's Google drive. This game is the reason I created a Kongregate account back in ... 2011, it appears! 14 years of playing it and still not bored (although I have specific things I do now, such as defeating the Legendary monster in FCG because I do l like a CCG)

Cividlization 3 is out as early access/testing. Get in early!

cardboardempress , 3 days ago

I saw Neil Young live once, back at the end of the 80s. He was ... very good.

cardboardempress Mod , 11 days ago

PPToP2 is a cracker, isn't it? I'm currently doing the final square (not sure if I have to clear the final block after it). I love asterisk_man's games, they're always an adventure in thinking outside the box.

cardboardempress OP , 14 days ago (edited 14 days ago)

Embeds do not work in titles. Filed away to recreate this exact thing again and again until I remember.

(I've since been told I should be creating a new LINK post, not a text post. Forgive this lowly creature its mistakes)

cardboardempress Mod , 14 days ago

Proper multi-player support. Where MP is a core part of the game and it's very difficult to play without - I'm not talking a market where players sell resources/goods. This can mean that it's possible that large groups come together to close other players out of the game, but developers have to design around that, and quite possibly design the game to ensure it can't happen.

Game design needs more creativity and exploration, I feel like there's been very little progress at all in the last 25 years. Graphics and music are better, but the core game loop? Same, same, same.

cardboardempress Mod , 13 days ago

I know, and paying for a server on which to host the game adds another level of difficulty, but a girl can dream.

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

Been playing through the April Fools games this week - and finally getting somewhere with Fundamental!

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

It's really cool your anti-depressants are working. It can be a slog to find the one that does it for you, but I'm glad you're there, or thereabouts.

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

Not part of the jam, but Demonin released https://demonin.com/games/dodecaGoldReckoner/

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

Another week of not_greatness healthwise, I feel like I have narcolepsy at time. Thankfully, incrementals are always there, ticking over in the background!

This week I have been mostly playing:

FairGame - a multiplayer incremental. Race to the end!

This game with a turtle - RPG incremental, in early development

Into the Deep - surprisingly it's an incremental! Early dev stage, but still fleshed out enough for days of play.

Fundamental - as usual I wonder if it's meant to be this slow or if I'm doing it wrong, and then I remember that in the early stages it's entirely linear and I can't possibly be.

TPT - the original, and my 835th playthrough

Download RAM Idle - very much the AD paradigm but is different

CheckBackMod - at the end of current content for ages now, just cruising my way toward 20k levels now.

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

There's something new in this new version unlocked at level 20,000. It's going to take me a while.

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

Meta-incrementing.

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

Oh wow, this is way more complex than I was expecting. I'm only at a few eternity resets so far!

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

This week I'm still playing FairGame - a multiplayer incremental that has rounds, am working slowly toward a prestige in Fundamental, started playing another TMT mod that is a fixer-upper, fe000000, and, as ever, Pedro Pascal's Triangle of Prestige - I get to click two buttons tomorrow!

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

99% ME/CFS crash this week, 1% brilliant comedy night. Can't complain.

Just saw that MrRedShark's Shark Game Incremental game has had an "update" - wondering if he's added any content or if it's just Russian language support. Edit: Appears to be a different game.

Added Demonin's DodecaPark to my rotation list this week - gotta catch 'em all.

Am having a solid stab at Fundamental (finally) - I think what I was meant to do all those times was wait (and wait and wait) to buy the upgrade that feels a week out of reach and spend a fortnight working toward it before resetting/discharging. I'm at the very, very start of the game - literally 100 energy for this prestige - and it feels insanely slow. Slower even than ... oooh, that incremental where you very slowly upgraded limbs then bones then single nerves to be healthier or sommat. Very odd game. Did it have an end? Who knows.

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

Incremental Factory - early days yet. Fair Game - probably until either the server or I die. Anti Idle: The Game - a standalone Flash downloadable from the developer's Google Drive. fe000000 - very much in the Antimatter Dimensions group. CheckBackMod Pedro Pascal's Triangles of Prestige - developed as a joke game for the April Fool's incremental game jam last year.

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

Are you doing better or worse than me?

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

[sad face emoji]

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

Did you play Transport Defender on Kong? USI is giving me the very same vibes.

cardboardempress Mod , 1 month ago

After a couple of days with Incremental Factory, how are you finding it?

cardboardempress Mod , 2 months ago

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.

cardboardempress Mod , 2 months ago

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.

cardboardempress Mod , 2 months ago

Hello, my name's Grapes and I'm a FairGame player of over 2 years, current run.

It's an unusual multiplayer incremental in that it doesn't have a market, which is generally the multiplayer feature in incremental games, and we've had a lot of markets. FairGame can be described as a race, or series of races in a round, which itself is part of a season; players climb ladders to reach the top and promote on to the next ladder until we reach the final ladder of the round, and promote off it to win. (Players receive points for how "well" they've done in each round; these points accrue over the course of a season but have no effect on gameplay across rounds aside from increasing the number of ladders in rounds.) Part of gameplay is the ability to "shoot" a player from the top of a ladder before they've promoted onto the next, requiring them to start that ladder over again. Shooting is done by gathering grapes from the base of each ladder, grapes produce vinegar which is both defensive and offensive. The game has a number of superficially simple mechanics that, together, ensure that each ladder is unique, and each round is different. Other players' actions can, and will, affect how you must tailor your own strategies for optimal, or sometimes merely adequate, play.

This isn't an advertisement, despite the link. If you've managed not to hear about the game, the link allows you to look at the game and see the mechanics I'm talking about.

Other multiplayer incrementals I've played have been resource gathering with crafting, and selling of either raw resource or crafted products, with the "NPC market" and a further, lesser-used, player market. I've played one game only, one about the tulip mania a few years back, that was an entirely player-generated market working with scarce resources, which was an unusual take on the market concept which is frequently overflowing with resources and highly unbalanced.

My thoughts from playing games of this nature is that building a community is key, it establishes a core of players that waxes and wanes but means that when new players enter the game there's somebody around to walk them through the early game, explain features and strategies, and communities will be the reason players return to your game when the initial wonder at your worldbuilding has worn off. A moderation team is fundamental part of your community; if you don't have them it'll turn into dross in no time so choose carefully (I say as a moderator of communities for decades).

Other thought on multiplayer incrementals is: please, no more markets. Think creatively about how your players can interact - conflict, support, shared goals. And get feedback from your playerbase, they'll let you know what isn't working.

cardboardempress Mod , 3 months ago

Really enjoying Dodecadragons and how it handles prestiges. Earlier resources become automated, and while there's still some grinding it's not forever and you know that there's going to be a milestone that takes the pain away. Each resource builds, and you know what your target is for the next prestige. I like it.

Louigi Verona's Machinery, I liked the way different prestige mechanics still mean the game is still more or less the same time between resets with more progress, and adding new mechanics.

CheckBackMod - spending prestige currency for more gainz, carefully! It's entirely possible to go backwards because RNJesus isn't on your side!

cardboardempress Mod , 3 months ago

My first incremental "game" would have been Progress Quest, probably. I really liked the idea of numbers going up, and there were a few early clickers about in 2009, 2010 - and then I found Anti Idle - which I still play today. Have played everything on the Ultimate List of Incremental Games, and since then the market's been flooded with low-effort reskins and I lost interest in keeping up and shoot for more satisfying games rather than a broad spectrum.

My favourite game for years was Civ IV, which I see now I played in a sort of incremental-ish fashion - for those who know it, I played using cultural victory only, no space, city flipping through culture, no wars. My victory objective was to win through supreme culture and incrementally take all my opponents' cities that way. It was always interesting trying to place the big culture-generators at the periphery of my empire for best effect. This would have been late-90s? I've still never won the game this way, but lots of incrementals have no end :D