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[Felissan]

Orteil (you know, the Cookie Clicker dev) has just released a simplistic scripting language that, as its name suggests, is used for creating incremental games - or idle games/clicker games, if that's how you call them.

As someone who likes a good incremental, it's pretty neat to see a new version of IGM that isn't as glitchy and has a ton more flexibility than the old beta that was made a couple years ago, and I was wondering what you guys would think of it.

Here's the manual for those who are interested, and an example of what one of these games can look like.

[Damiac]

I had assumed there already was an idle game maker, that was itself an idle game, which started as a corrupted flash game on Kongregate but came to life and ruined internet flash gaming sites forever.

Sorry... I'm a little annoyed about these idle and clicker games crowding out... everything else.

Out of curiosity, what's the draw of these games after the first few?  I played adventure capitalist, got sucked in, kept playing it, and every time my wife asked me what I was playing I said "The stupidest game ever".  Eventually the addiction wore off, and I've not gotten sucked into another one since.  It just seems like they're all the same game.

Also, sorry to offend any fans of these games.  Quite honestly, one stupid waste of time is no better or worse than any other stupid waste of time, and believe you me, I am a fan of stupid wastes of time... just apparently not this kind.

[Felissan]

The draw of an idle game really changes from game to game. Most of them, like AdCap, pretty much lack any depth in their gameplay and mainly work because of their addictive nature - which, along with their relative ease of making and their length which is a consequence of the genre, is the reason they're all over the place on most gaming sites' frontpages.

99% of an incremental game's gameplay is an optimization puzzle; it can range between a run-of-the-mill idler's "There's this upgrade that costs $5e43, which should take about half an hour to reach at this point in the game, giving a +150% boost to production. I'll skip the other upgrades, as they're not worth the cost", to something much more complex that can come from entirely new features being introduced, like "the Lineage feature turned the Undead Bloodline into a ridiculously strong upgrade that's the key to progress at this stage, but it comes at the cost of not having the great mana boost from the Druid Bloodline, and it requires me to build up about a quintillion faction coins each run, but they aren't a resource I've made a focus of my previous builds - lemme go back to the drawing board for a sec..."

Of course, games which feature the second kind of gameplay features are much less common, as most devs settle with the "quick and easy source of ad revenue" option - if you want good examples of quality incremental, I'd recommend something like Trimps, Kittens Game or Realm Grinder (which is incidentally the one I took my example out of)

[Reelya]

Kongregate are the masters of that genre basically. There are a bunch of gamasutra articles and dev videos about how the more addictive ones work.

One trick is to have either/or upgrades at several points so that you e.g. can get 6 combos for how the mechanics work. One such game has a good/evil choice 1/3rd of the way through and three "elements" to choose from for powerups 2/3rds of the way through. Which due to the way the game is drawn out could be only 1/4 of the total play time for one "playthrough". So you layer it on with new stuff but make it clear that by choosing one thing there's content that they're missing out on for the other paths.

Then when a player has exhausted every "achievement" on one arc, they hit the "prestige" button and start the game again a little faster, and each time through you can choose different choices. Now, some people might pick the same path more than once (most idle games don't offer optional paths), so having 6 "arcs" with different stuff ensures that you have fresh content for at least 6 playthroughs of the entire game. And you can make sure that to "max" each route takes e.g. at least 6 months of real time, on fully sped up mode, so you can make a fairly compelling idle game that people won't see all the content for say ... at least three years worth of playing.

[Urist McScoopbeard]

clickers are like dating sims, sure they technically meet the definition of video game, but they're both lazy, exploitative genres that deserve to be wiped from the earth in a sea of holy promethium.

[Folly]

I can either post here or bump the existing idle thread...guess I'll post here.

Apparently Staples are the hot new thing in idles.

[Egan_BW]

I like Paperclips, Spaceplan, and of course Candybox. I guess those all sorta break the pure skinner box box, though. That's why I like them.
Numbers going up is nice, but I like it when making my numbers go up gives me something other than more buttons to make numbers go up faster. Cookies was fun for awhile, but I eventually noticed that I wasn't really doing anything interesting anymore. I haven't played Adventure Capitalist, and I don't plan to because it looks disgusting. Whose idea was it to dress their exploitative game in a theme about exploitative corporations?...

[qwertyuiopas]

The more interesting games periodically introduce new mechanics or completely rebalance old ones, rather than just repeating the old mechanics with ever more powerful buildings and upgrades. Very recently, Succubox, though it's relatively short, plus the older Mine Defense, Kittens Game, and Sandcastle Builder (Classic Layout, less confusing at first, but lacking the customizability that starts to become convenient a few weeks in).

The thing is, most of these games are best enjoyed as a separate browser window off to the side, especially on a second monitor, while you do something else. Also, many of the better ones quickly move past clicking for resources as a meaningful mechanic, and instead into some form of managing resource flows and optimizing purchase sequences for ROI. Also, discovering new mechanics as you progress is one of the key reasons driving playtime. At least for the more popular free browser-based ones, where they are competing with the entire rest of the internet for player attention, rather than filling dead time as a phone app on the daily commute.

[Folly]

Also, many of the better ones quickly move past clicking for resources as a meaningful mechanic, and instead into some form of managing resource flows and optimizing purchase sequences for ROI.

It could certainly be argued that 'Clickers' and 'Idles' are two separate categories of gameplay, despite the frequency of finding them juxtaposed. A clicker game could exist without idle components, and vice versa.

[Egan_BW]

Get a calculator. Enter in "+1" and start hitting enter a bunch of times. Bam, instant clicker game. ;P

[qwertyuiopas]

Also, many of the better ones quickly move past clicking for resources as a meaningful mechanic, and instead into some form of managing resource flows and optimizing purchase sequences for ROI.

It could certainly be argued that 'Clickers' and 'Idles' are two separate categories of gameplay, despite the frequency of finding them juxtaposed. A clicker game could exist without idle components, and vice versa.

The reddit community that seems to focus on them is called incremental_games, which seems like a decent generalization of both.

[forsaken1111]

Ptw and to find this later

[sambojin]

Not necessarily a new take on it, but an interesting one, is "Assembly Line" on mobile (Android, anyway).  Kind of Factorio, kind of an incremental. Not a clicker, but a "puzzle incremental"? With no wrong solutions as long as it's profitable?

Anyway, I'm not sure if this could make that, and I kinda dislike the genre, but this was a better thread to mention it in than Pocket Games, because feeding the beast that is incrementals is an evil deed.

[Sirus]

PTW and hopefully mess with later.

[Gatleos]

I'm totally uninterested in clicker games on their own, but that paperclip game has an interesting conceit. It seems to be based on Nick Bostrom's paperclip maximizer thought experiment, put into interactive form. That's a really creative use of the genre!