Unlocking better gear/powerups/abilities is the basis of games. Is this supposed to be a generic gaming sub?
I think every game can be viewed from a incremental lens, but you would have to somehow focus that aspect for it to be relevant in conversation about incrementals… and even then people may not play it if the other part isn’t interesting, ie there is a wide range of interests that can decide to like incrementals while avoiding other aspects of games but still connect with others over the incremental aspect. in essence someone who loves incremental games may not include just one but many interrelated layers of powerups and abilities… it is indeed a pretty popular genera though, i think there is a thread of questionably excluding ‘partially’ incremental games, which is probably just the result of increased effort needed to involve a game in the historic word ‘incremental’ that wasn’t already made with it in mind. though yes that history is pale in the shadow of just like people in desperate wanting to be recommended games with numbers going up etc, so you can see how a genera was indefatigably defined by upset if a game is not ‘easy’, etc. and it’s not necessarily relevant now… yea hope that helps
I’ve always considered this an interesting discussion, sop I’ve written out a very thorough answer here: https://www.thepaperpilot.org/garden/guide-to-incrementals/defining-the-genre/
Fun read, and a pretty long and in-depth reply to the question! I remember the subreddit having discussions over defining the genre, so it makes sense this question would pop up on the Fediverse too. I have been mostly taking it as “I know it when I see it,” which is a shockingly lax approach for me because I am usually the kind of person who wants to sort everything into neat, clearly-definable boxes.
I checked out the rest of your website too and I love it. I’m too much of a scaredy-cat to put a website up myself, but the stuff you have about the small web reminded me of some other interesting reads I came across around a year ago, prompted by some posts I now cannot remember on the Fediverse. I went back to the site with those reads and found even more interesting stuff to read, so thanks I guess?
EDIT: it’s one you have contained in your Digital Gardens list lol
Glad the website could get you started on a whole rabbit hole of interesting reads 🫡
It’s weird seeing such disparaging opinions, especially when the community sidebar even defines it.
Incremental games can be any “genre”, or feature any mechanic, the bottom line is, there should be some “reset” feature that makes your next run easier.
I don’t think it can be simpler than that.
A lot of people seem to describing “clickers” that’s a very common mechanic for incrementals.
Sidebar is vague and covers 80% of games today. Just pointing out the community description should be more descriptive for what it’s about, which seems to be more apt to clicker style games
Nah, clickers is a defined genre now, just like incremental, incremental have reset features. The sidebar is fine, people have weird definitions sometimes.
Go to steam and look at the game differences with the tags, go to other websites that host incremental games, same thing.
Clickers and incremental are two distinctly different genres, with lots of overlaps.
Clickers are Number Go Up games, while incremental must have some reset feature to make future runs easier. Without the reset, it’s just a clicker.
I can imagine a Numbers Go Up game that instead of clicking to increase the numbers you purchase upgrades that do the equivalent of clicking for you, so it isn’t really much of a clicker or mouse-breaker… or does Clicker mean any numbers go up game, regardless of how important specifically clicking to make numbers go up is?
