cardboardempress

cardboardempress, 9 days ago

Hiya,

This is the second time you've posted within our community with spam. We welcome people adding to what we have here, but we do ask they keep it on topic.

This post is removed.

cardboardempress, 12 days ago

Hiya,

This is a space for incremental games. I feel this post could be better served in a more news space, or if you were trying to start a conversation about weather, climate change, or to organise aid for folk affected there are much better places to post.

Therefore, this post is removed from incremental.social.

cardboardempress, 25 days ago

I mean, yes, we're seeing a general rapacity balloon out of control, but hey, electric vehicles will make everything better.

cardboardempress, 25 days ago

Seems like the next logical step though

cardboardempress, 1 month 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, 1 month 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, 2 months ago

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

cardboardempress, 3 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, 3 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, 3 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, 4 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, 4 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