I would like to think that we all have a switch in our brain that likes to see things improve. Incremental games are like a scratching tool made specifically for that itch, where the focus is almost purely on numbers getting bigger with tactical decisions. The word ‘prestige’ is more widely spread now.. mainline games call it New Game+, but with incrementals its the mechanic of restarting, but having to do this a dozen or more times to reach the end.

(The) Gnorp Apologue is a very simplistic game where you control gnorps trying to break a rock. As you progress, you get more options to create more wealth. Get enough wealth, get a talent point, which unlocks more options. The joy of this game is that the source of wealth changes as the game progresses, so that an early obvious choice becomes rather useless later on. Your strategy changes multiple times, and there are multiple options to get all the way through. Personally, I went fire arrows, guns, rockets, and then grenades (for weak points). There’s a wonderful feedback mechanic where the screen just gets filled with more stuff. Yeah, I like more stuff! Game is about $10, enough to reach the end of it all by hours 8 or so. There’s replay options with time-trials, or different builds. It also plays decent on the Steam Deck.

To The Core has you piloting a ship meant to mine various planets and destroy their cores. Each core you destroy causes a planet prestige where it gives 3x the resource but has 8x the health. This is NOT an idle game, with a rather substantial amount of tactical decisions required. I will say that the first hour is a right slog, where progress is very limited. You’re given minor tools, little information, and progress is very incremental without feedback on progress. Once you move to the 2nd stage (of 5), you get a better appreciation for targeted activities to reach specific goals. e.g. I want more health, I need more coal, I will farm the coal. As you progress on this path, more options present themselves – like having rockets, or poison, or electrical orbs. You eventually reach a point where you don’t even use your ship, just let the doodads do all the mining for you. The largest difference here compared to (The) Gnorp Apologue, is that the progress tree is hidden until you hit certain milestones. This honestly sucks, because some of those milestones are useless, but gate amazing things. Had I known that farms were a thing, darn tooting I would have beelined for it! The game has a decent concept, but the execution is a bit wonky. Also, it does not play well on the Steam Deck due to mouse/keyboard commands and needing active play.

You may be sensing a general theme in gaming of late, where smaller dev teams are focusing on ideas rather than graphic fidelity. I’ve got a post on that coming up, but in the widest space possible I think it fairly obvious that people would much rather play a great game with bad graphics than a bad game with great graphics.

Anyhoot, incrementals that have an end, great mechanics, and a solid loop, and have figured out how to scale are worth my $$$. Many more out there to try!