Hey y'all, I was wondering if there was any website (or program) that kind of acts like a plug-and-chug for coding. I want to make a silly little incremental game for some friends (a bit more advanced than classic cookie clicker, ideally I'd have three types of resources) but have zero coding experience and often go through huge motivation swings so I know full well I won't be able to finish the project if I start learning code and everything from scratch, even with all of the tutorials. Are there any websites or programs to help make it simple by chance? I've seen TheModdingTree and it looks a bit daunting, so I was hoping for something a little simpler.

Edit: Forgot to include this earlier but nothing that uses AI for anything whatsoever.

Hi, I’m new to game development. I’ve started working on a clicker game because I had a good—or at least fresh—idea, though for the time being, I’m using *Cookie Clicker* as my inspiration. Could you share some fundamental rules for developing this type of game? I want to know how to avoid messing up optimization and balance, and how to keep my code from turning into spaghetti (I’m using C# with Godot). I’m also curious about your take on having lots of hidden items and mechanics with non-obvious paths to discover. Does that make for engaging exploration, or is it just frustrating and, ultimately, a bit unfair?

Hi everyone – I’m currently working on my first idle game, and I’m amazed how hard balancing is. It seems to be my nemesis :-)

Right now I’m using my own simulator script that tries to simulate the playtime of an active and a casual player. Unfortunately, it takes quite a while to run, and with every new piece of content it gets harder to keep the simulation up to date.

How steep can a cost curve get? How long is it okay to wait for the next upgrade, and so on?

How do you approach this during development? Do you have benchmarks or rules of thumb, or do you just go by feel?

Our idle game runs as an Electron app on Steam. On the Steam Deck, the Windows build runs under Proton, and there `navigator.getGamepads()` returns nothing, not even the Deck's built-in controls. Native Linux and real Windows work fine. Apparently this started with Electron 27.

Right now players can work around it by mapping the Deck buttons to keyboard shortcuts in Steam Input, like A for Enter, B for Escape and the D-pad for the arrow keys. But everyone has to set that up themselves.

We're thinking about shipping a keyboard mapping as the official default configuration. Has anyone done that with an Electron app under Proton? Or did you go through steamworks.js and the Steam Input API instead? Is there a Chromium flag we've missed?

We are close to finalizing our constants for balancing the game. This has proven to be the hardest part of development for us and we are still torn on what the game length should be, and if we should target different playing styles. For example, an active clicker player can finish the game in around 5-8 hours, an idler buying upgrades often a little longer, a complete idler will take maybe 5 times as long. After the credits roll (soft finish for casual players), you can continue as there is more to do, new things unlock, lots to collect.

We are trying to make our game accessible to different styles, but am wondering if this is a bad approach.

Do we continue with the soft finish, and then slow the game down for the more hardcore players that wants to invest 200+ hours to complete everything?

How did you approach balancing for your games?

I notice in mainly Roguelites that Tarot cards tend to have a big use.

The big ones I can think of are:

The Binding of Isaac

Hades II

Cult of the Lamb

Balatro

Dungeons & Degenerate Gamblers  

That brings me to my question, how do you think this would work as a mechanic in an Incremental/idle game?

On a conceptual level, I really enjoy Tarot cards and Tarot readings but feel it's more snake oil like your Star Sign or personality thing (NTJB???).

I am not really a game developer (but I am trying to learn Godot) so I can't really put any of this into practice.

Ideally Tarot Readings would happen before every rebirth and those give temporary buffs to that current prestige. Or perhaps they'd be better off being drawn during the prestige that offer something more significant. Like maybe if you drew The Fool then for the rest of that prestige your gold multipler goes from -100% to a positive 200% ticked randomly every 60 ticks or so.

I'm not really a game designer but the idea of Tarots being in on of these games has always interested me.

From my experience, UI often gets overlooked for incremental games, but it's a very important part for the player. What do you think?

Something I see in games, is fake gambling. And I'm not talking about loot crates or real gambling. Nothing with MTX. I'm talking about having gambling mini-games in the game with currencies you get normally.

How do you view mechanics like this? Does it add value or just distract players from the real goals of the game?

I've leaned more towards, it ruins the balance a bit, but also it just distracts players. It's almost a low-effort way to add "content", but at the same time it's something some amount of players enjoy. I should state, some games are built around gambling to a degree, but this is more geared towards games that are not, but just added it in for fun on the side. Also, even though it's fake and not tied to any real money, there's a moral issue of is this a gateway to something worse?

Just curious about other devs thoughts. I tried adding it to my own game awhile ago, but I honestly took it out because of the things above and now don't consider it for my games.

This thread is meant for discussing the things you got done this week and/or the things you are going to try and work on for the next one.

There is no specific format, but let everyone know all the cool features you built (or struggled with) and bugs you squashed.

NO Links are allowed. This is NOT a marketing thread. You are welcome to reference the name of your game, but we want to keep the spirit of this thread more about accountability, reflection, and game development.

Have a great week building!

Hey everyone,

In another topic, someone just asked me about this and I've been wondering - how do you actually pick a price point for your game?

With the incremental/management game I'm working on (Coup de Grass), I'm at the point where the demo is out, I have all the content for the full game already planned out, and I have a tentative release date that I plan to stick to (March 2027). So sooner or later I'll need to actually settle on a specific price, but I'm still not sure what it's gonna be.

From my research, majority of the popular incremental games are priced around $5-8. There are some cheaper and some more expensive ones, but I'd say that those are outliers.

But here's the thing - most of them are also very short, so a ~$5 price point makes sense. The game I'm working on is a few times longer (heck, my demo already has more content than some full releases). Maybe it was a design mistake and I should have just stuck to a short game myself too, but I guess I got carried away and it's too late to change it at this point.

If I wanted to put more focus on the amount and variety of content, something like $15 would be more appropriate. But of course that's too much, given the expectations around the genre almost no one would buy it at that price. So I currently plan to stick to $10 (with some small release discount of course), but I'm worried that even that feels like too much given the current pricing trends. Maybe releasing at at an even lower price like $7-8 could lead to more sales in total and thus more revenue? (Assuming the game even sells at all, but that's a separate topic, lol.)

So anyway, what do you think about it? Have you already settled on a price target for your upcoming game? Or maybe you've already released a game - then are you happy with the price you picked or would have changed that in a hindsight?

Is forcing a choice bad design? Why or why not? When is it acceptable, when not?

Sorry if I'm posting in the wrong place.

I’ve started developing an incremental/clicker game and have been using Cookie Clicker as inspiration, mainly for achievements and balancing, which I consider one of the hardest parts.

Even though I’m using different formulas and have plenty of ideas for future systems, the more I develop the game, the more it feels like: Meh.. It's just another Cookie Clicker clone with a different skin.

I’ve tried to give it personality through funny and original descriptions, unique upgrades, and other ideas of my own, but that thought keeps nagging at me. The game would also feature an entire comedic lore I’m developing with a friend, which has been the funniest part of it all.

My question is: Would people actually want to play something that, at least initially, looks like cookie clicker with a different skin?

(AI Disclosure: I used AI just to translate some parts of this text as my english is not the best)

With how things have been changed I wanted to make this post to get an idea on what users like and don't like so far.

Braym3n and I have been doing our best to make this place better, more navigable with less spam.

Really though, Braym3n made all the rules and changes with discussion between mods.

Another thing I'd like to ask is what would you all think on seasonal or holiday related mega threads? I shared some assets last week from itch but I could take that further for holidays and the like.

Other than that I hope you all have liked these changes. If not, please let me know what you don't like. Thank you!

AI disclosure: I did not use AI for this post or in the artwork

Hello fellow incremental developers ...

In your experience, how far do you go in explaining all multipliers in action?

I recently changed mine, instead of a simple "You earned X while idle" to "Look how we calculated what you earned while idle" (attached screenshorts of before and after).

Now I feel like I am showing too much, potentially getting players confused. ORRR maybe incremental gamers are a bit nerdy and like it!

What is your opinion and how to you implement in your games? I can think of

- Keep it simple

- Unlock the more detailed screen as a reward (actually i thought about while writing this post)

- Show the numbers, we are all "accountants" (are we?)

Appreciate any feedback.

This thread is meant for discussing the things you got done this week and/or the things you are going to try and work on for the next one.

There is no specific format, but let everyone know all the cool features you built (or struggled with) and bugs you squashed.

NO Links are allowed. This is NOT a marketing thread. You are welcome to reference the name of your game, but we want to keep the spirit of this thread more about accountability, reflection, and game development.

Have a great week building!

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of browser-based idle games, specifically incremental MMORPG autobattlers. Most of them are inspired by classics like Ragnarok Online, Pokétibia, Tibia, MU, etc.

​I'm currently studying game development and noticed a clear pattern across all of them: they seem to follow the exact same template. For example, practically all the Ragnarok idle games are identical, using the same graphics, items, monsters, etc.

​My question is: is there an open-source engine, template, or codebase available that people use as a base to build these kinds of games? I tried searching but couldn't find anything.

​Sources/Examples: www.idlerank.com / www.topidle.com

I'm developing an incremental pinball game in my spare time and I'd like to know if you guys some decent take on incremental pinball games yourselves.

Hi.

I've been playing Click and Conquer and I don't get it. I feel like I'm missing something.

The gameplay is boring at first, all you can do is blindly drop bombs. Then when you get area-of-damage and tile reveals it gets interesting because you can optimize your ammo, but very soon after that it becomes much more time-worthy to just drop random bombs on the map and cash in. So gameplay is repetitive and uninteresting for the vast majority of the game. And it does not change at any point, you just get bigger maps and enemies with more health points, but that doesn't make you play differently at all.

You get prestige points left and right, and have to prestige pretty much before any new map. This removes all the anticipation of working for the next prestige point, since after mid-game you almost get more prestige upgrades than normal upgrades. (And why put a confirmation window for my chosen prestige upgrades if I can't undo my selection? I can only click yes or click no and... open the confirmation window again)

The upgrades, both normal and prestige, are for most part the same as previous upgrades with different numbers, which contributes to the game feeling repetitive, as they don't unlock new mechanics nor do they change the gameplay in the slightest.

And right at the end there's an anti-war message that tries to make you feel guilty for having played the game? I mean, I agree with the sentiment, but this game does not earn the right to do that *at all*. You're constantly rewarded and incentivized, with zero irony or gray areas (except *maybe* for a couple of upgrade names, which you're likely to miss), to kill as much as possible, and then you're scolded for having killed so many?

It's like they finished the game and said "Welp, we made a game about indiscriminately killing people by the hundreds, maybe we should end with a Message!" and called it a day. Come on. Either make a game about mindlessly killing people or put more than 30 seconds into making a point against it, but this is nothing.

It is polished, it looks and sounds good, but that's all I can say for it.

/rant over

And yet it feels like I'm crazy, because people seem to love it in the reviews, and it is pretty popular. People praise because it's short and is easy to complete all achievements, is that all it takes nowadays? Did I miss something or play it incorrectly?

Just like the title says.. and Here is what i did

First, I needed a seed generator with base production, base cost, and their growth rates. For this part I used cookie clicker's cursor as my seed generator. I got the reference values from the cookie clicker wiki ( https://cookieclicker.wiki.gg/wiki/Buildings )

Second, I set me progression targets. basically, when do i want each new generator to unlock and how big should the production jump be. Also added production milestones for reaching certain amounts of a generator similar to how cookie clicker has at certain owned counts.

Setting all of this up can feel a little tedious but trust me it becomes useful once you start actually calculating things

Third, time to test. I fed those inputs into my module and ran the simulation. Of course the first result wasn't close enough to cookie clicker lol but! i noticed the generated base production was roughly double what i was looking for so I halved my production targets in the milestone table and ran it again then the resulting base production got pretty close to cookie clicker

The next problem was base cost. This one wasn't as simple because my module derives a lot of the cost from the target unlock time so I started tweaking the unlock targets like if a generator needed a higher base cost, i pushed its target unlock higher vise versa. After around 10 rounds of tweaking the target time, i got surprisingly close to the numbers i was trying to get

I am not saying it was easy peasy but it was definitely doable. also seeing the lower tier generators start returning numbers close to what i expected was kinda satisfying. If i had approached this by manually guessing raw costs and production values, i think it would've taken much longer assuming i got there at all

so if anyone here is working on designing generator for an incremental game, it might be interesting to try approaching it from the opposite direction. Instead of asking what should this generator cost, start by asking when should the player reach this generator

Also.. there is a disclaimer which is that this test doesn't include every cookie clicker mechanic things like synergy and fortune and other modifiers are not part of this calc yet. Testing those is my next goal.

If anyone wants to look at the results or play around with them: https://letsbalance.app/

I also included analysis tables for these 10 generators showing how their production contribution %, purchase share %, and average payback time change throughout the simulation

Thanks for reading!

I will manually post free assets from itch.io or other reliable websites with commercial use whenever I find good ones.

Today's assets are:

https://retrocodedev.itch.io/all-in-one-pixel-game-assets-bundle

This one is a farming related pack but that still works directly toward incremental and idle games too. They can be used commercially or for personal use and once again they're free :)

Happy incremental game development!

Edit: :| fixed the last sentence

In any incremental game, there are segments where a player wants to sit back and wait for the numbers to rise a bit until hitting the next prestige or buying an upgrade.

I've always liked games that give you something to play around with in the meantime that give little or no benefit - so in my own cycling themed prototype I've added a system where the player can play around with generating hills and descents.

Do you guys find this kind of mechanic fun, and do you have any examples of incrementals where this sort of fidget-tool is done right?

Pinball Builder: Unlimited Combo Incremental

We’re excited to share a fresh game concept we’ve been working on! It’s an incremental/idle game core built on dynamic pinball mechanics, with one massive twist: you design and build the entire pinball table yourself.

Instead of playing a pre-set layout, you launch your ball at the start of each run and watch it bounce through custom structures you've placed. Every hit generates cash, allowing you to create chaotic, infinite-loop combos that scale your earnings into astronomical numbers.

Key Features:

• Custom Table Building: Strategically place bumpers, ramps, and triggers to create high-efficiency bouncing loops.
• Deep Upgrade Systems: Level up individual placeable elements to maximize their yield, and unlock game-wide passive upgrades to boost your overall progression.
• Satisfying Chain Reactions: Tweak physics and positioning to turn a single launch into an endless money-making machine.

We'd love your feedback! What do you think of this mechanic? Would you prefer a purely hands-off, automated physics run once the ball is launched, or active control with flippers during the chaos? Let us know what features you'd like to see!

Last week, I wanted to discuss the different ways we design games (That thread for reference: https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_gamedev/comments/1whqh86/what_does_your_design_process_look_like_when/).

This week, I wanted to see how everyone goes about organizing and tackling the programming side of things.

For me, I am much more of a free baller. I don't tend to have a list of any kind. I have in the past used Trello and Github issues to track what needs to be done and what is in progress. But as a solo, I found it more of a time killer managing that (And I know this is me not thinking about the indirect benefits). I also personally tend to change up a lot of the design as I playtest and work through the different mechanics. The game I am working is already pretty different than when I was in just the design stage because I found things that just weren't as fun or cool as they actually played out. This would mean shuffling the board up a lot. My second game I did use a todo list. It was dead simple and I would just label the mechanics and honestly it was less for me to remember what to do and more a "you're almost done" progress bar. This didn't feel too bad honestly, but not as satisfying as moving cards between columns.

I don't think my strategy is a great one honestly. I would like to find something like Trello (or just use Trello) and be better about organizing myself. I can be a stubborn programmer always trying to optimize my time, but it is one of those things that I think would be helpful if I utilize it correctly. I have noticed too when I am in the programming stage, the design stage kind of turns off a lot. I'm thinking breaking up tasks like this would help keep that side on more, so I am not wasting time coding things that just end up not being fun, even if technically it was fun to create.

So, what is your way of tackling programming tasks? What is your system of actually creating and shipping a game? Getting to the finish line can be tricky without a clear goal or set list of things you need done.