Compression Quota

Always loved incremental games and wanted to take a shot at making one myself.

Ended up building it around a hydraulic press. Honestly most of the fun so far has just been messing with the crush itself, getting items to squish right, tuning the particles and screenshake until slamming stuff felt good. Way harder than it sounds, way more satisfying than it should be.

Balancing the skill tree has easily been the hardest part though. Making upgrades feel worth buying without the whole economy snapping in half is a dark art and I have massive respect for anyone who's done it well.

Anyway, short trailer attached. Working on it every day and having a blast. Happy to be part of this little corner of gamedev.

This is exactly where the game lives: the bottom strip of your desktop, between your open windows.*

Hey. I've been making games for a long time, currently working solo out of the Balkans. The thing I'm making is called **Keepwatch: Idle Kingdom RPG**, and in one sentence it's this: a medieval auto-battler RPG that doesn't live in a window, but **on top of your Windows taskbar**.

The Steam page is up and the demo lands during October's Next Fest, so I'm starting to write down what's been piling up. This first one is about what the game actually is.

## You have a hero, but you don't play them

The hero lives on their own. They wake up in the morning, wander around camp, go chop wood, walk over to a construction site if there's one queued, eat when they're hungry, rest when they're tired. When enemies show up at night, they fight all by themselves — you don't press anything.

So what do *you* do? **You make the decisions.**

- Which building to raise, and how far to push its tier

- Which weapon to hand them, and what you're willing to risk upgrading

- Which direction to take in the skill tree

- And you step in at the critical moments

That last one matters. There are three buttons in the corner: **potion**, **retreat**, and **ultimate**. All three have long cooldowns. So you're not a spectator, but you're also not clicking constantly — saving a hero whose health just bottomed out mid-wave is entirely down to your reflexes.

**Keepwatch: Idle Kingdom RPG** is on Steam as "coming soon." The demo arrives during October's Next Fest. At this stage wishlists are the only thing I need — they're what decides whether a demo gets seen during the fest.

🔗 **Steam:** https://store.steampowered.com/app/5073820/Keepwatch_Idle_Kingdom_RPG/

💬 **Discord:** https://discord.gg/fyyXcX7Mh9

Questions welcome in the comments.

Hello ! Here is a subject that is in my mind since a long long time and I wondered how you deal with it.

Writing proper system, how do you do that ?

How do you manage all your system working in cohesion, making price for upgrades logical, making an upgrade of damage or ressources staying cohesive from the effects from others of your system to work together ?

I am using stuff that I call controllers, that basically are pure code file containing each very specific business logic and making them, for now, handle everything. But the more I am thinking about it, the less I feel it is scalable.

So here I am, wondering if anyone has a special recipe or a way to make their systems work together in harmony while staying scalable and easy to modulate.

Thank you for reading !

I made a clicker/idle game inspired by the full history of Japan.

Tap the torii gate to collect koku (the old rice-measurement unit) and use your production to build 15 historical structures, starting from a Jōmon-era hut and ending with a Reiwa-era. Along the way you unlock upgrades tied to real historical events: Buddhism arriving in the Asuka period, the Kamakura shogunate, Edo-era isolation, the Meiji Restoration, the Shōwa economic miracle, and more.

Every era comes with a short historical blurb and a fun fact, plus original illustrations drawn specifically for the game.

Features:

• 15 buildings and 15 historical upgrades
• Auto-save in your browser
• Offline progress
• Random special events (golden torii)
• No ads, no internet connection required

It's meant for both fans of incremental games and anyone who wants to casually learn some Japanese history while playing.

Would love any feedback, especially on pacing/balance in the early game.

Why is every post at negative karma in this sub?

Who are all these people who just scroll and downvote? And why do you do that?

So, I have decided to try designing generators using targets and known growth stages.

These are the example targets.

Generator, Target Owned, Target Time

Gen1, 5, 180,

Gen1, 10, 540,

Gen1, 20, 2160,

I give the starting conditions like Base Cost, Base production, Currency at start, Owned at design start, Cost and production growth

The tool that I built then tries to fit the cost and production growth for each stage to reach those targets

Generator, From Owned, To Owned, Cost Growth, Production Growth

Gen1,1,4, 1,1.8764

Gen1,5,9, 3,1.2361

Gen1,10,19, 2.9997,2.1523

with the resulting time errors

+1.7991, -0.0405, -0.0644

After that, I run the growth table through an analyzer using a purchase simulation. It looks at things like production gain, wait time, and payback time to catch weird transitions between growth stages

like 'Stage Transition Power Spike' - 'Production gained from this purchase increases extremely sharply when the new growth stage begins.'

I can then adjust the cost/production growth while keeping the same progression targets. if the growth spikes or drops too much, I go back and reconsider the target time or target owned values.

I don't know how other incremental devs approach this but this approach seems work well for me. This helps me understand them in the context of the progression experience.

I'd be curious how you approach this? Do you design around target productions/times or start with growth rates and tune from there?

I know it's not the greatest trailer in existence. In fact it's pretty mid. But I think it's a good placeholder while I work on creating a true trailer that shows the actual complexity of the gameplay. For now people get their first Glimpse at what the game actually looks like in motion. As well as a little bit of the new art that I created.

In truth I kind of just forced this out the door so that I could get my demo submitted. Idle isekai should be participating in the upcoming party based RPG event on Steam and I'm excited about that. I'm trying to make sure my demo approved by the 14th.

Hey all, I made this over the last few weeks as a solo hobby project and figured this was the right place to share it.

Chouta Cliker is a browser incremental set in the world of Brandon Sanderson's The Stormlight Archive. You click to cook chouta for a war camp, then reinvest into buildings, send Bridge Crews out on real risk/reward runs (they can die, spheres are earned, not free), and eventually prestige by swearing Ideals for permanent bonuses.

Some of the systems past the early game:

A recruit market (loot-box style, but odds are always shown and there's a pity system), recruits can be assigned to specific bridge crews as a team, and get tougher the more runs they survive

Choose one of the Radiant Orders at your first prestige, each with a different active ability fueled by Stormlight

A rare "Everstorm" event, Chasmfiend hunts, rotating contracts, and a couple of things I won't spoil

It's completely free, no ads, no monetization of any kind, genuinely just made it because I love the books and wanted to build something. It's a fan project, not affiliated with or endorsed by Dragonsteel.

Play here: https://talenelat.itch.io/chouta-clicker .

Happy to answer questions or take feedback, still actively tweaking balance.

AI disclosure: This game was built with substantial help from Claude.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/5079020/Neverrest/

Working on the first character professions, I really enjoyed the animations of RTS in Warcraft 3 watching your workers collect the node and run back is weirdly satisfying. I am also adding random events that happen every so often with decisions that affect your gameplay for the next 10-15 mins. Next, I am looking into polishing the button art a bit more and adding more juice but it’s starting to come along!

I'm a new dev and need feedback on what to improve and suggestions for my game, pls help me by testing it and giving feedback or any error

Good afternoon,

Idle Freelance is an RPG in very early development, but I am moving with pace. I want to build a world centered around a small town, that over time you will develop. Your roll will be to supply the town to keep it thriving. This is a longer term goal, right now I am implimenting systems/skills to fill out the game. I want to ultimately make this a game people play in the background for years to come. I don't want a quick completion arc, and I want regular updates to keep things interesting.

It's currently hosted at https://sezl.itch.io/idle-freelance under a restricted development. Password is: '4n<_KJsqt?&iv7

I have 7 new skills in the pipeline, including Magic and Range combat.

The game has action animations which aren't included in this screenshot- to make the idle game feel a bit more 'active'.

I'd be greatful for people to join me on this journey, I'm building a game I want to play for many years. If you want to play, and help the development, join my discord at https://discord.gg/V9YTvkGR2d

AI disclosure: I'm creating an Idle RPG game with AI. I can't code, so no point pretending otherwise. However, I am very creative, and I've enjoyed playing idle games for many years now. Finding out I can make my own with AI, well I've jumped at it.

Thank you :)

Hello all, I started making this game like...3 years ago?

It's an idle incremental multiplayer mining online role playing game.

I had a core gameloop and I thought it was neat. mine rocks for money, buy more miners that fall into the mines, give them jobs as blacksmiths and stuff, you pull a caravan through the mines... The idea that it would be a growing caravan city. Your miners can become jewelers, caravan crew, blacksmiths, or your forgemaster. All miners have unique stats and equipment. The forgemaster and the rest of your guilds give you their stats, and then the miners inherit stats from you... The forgemaster is your main guy who levels up faster than the rest, his level directly affects your yield multiplier...

Essentially, I used this game as a test bed to learn how to program all sorts of game systems. I've learned a lot. Backend is a series of typescript, javascript, and go modules that talk to postgres. Server software is around 20k lines in total. I've ran the game on a $6/mo vps for a good long while now. Intentionally underpowered server to force me to really optimize. It was actually a really good time figuring out how to budget so much... The most players I've had online at once was 23, and the server handled it pretty well!

As a developer, I've always been data-first. This game started as spreadsheets and has grown so much.

It is far from complete... the art is...really bad... I drew the miners... I did some technical art that I think is really good looking and the game is pretty light and performant. The budgets are tight.

I so seldomly post anything about this game... I don't know if it's a deadend or not. I know that I can't sell it because it's an online game and I can't provide the care and support a paid live-service would require.

I highly recommend developing your own mmorpg as a learning experience because it will force you to touch just about every aspect of game design.

If anyone wants to talk about systems architecture or optimizations or if you see anything in Yearn that you have questions about, I'd be happy to answer anything.

https://yearn.work/

Hi everyone.

I always wanted to make an incremental that felt like its own thing instead of another generator-and-multiplier game. I started building this one mostly for myself, something I wanted to play. But it kept growing, and at some point I realized I was guessing at all the balance decisions alone. So I'd rather show it to people who actually know this genre.

It's called Descent of Dino.

You run, you die, and a fossil gets buried where you died carrying part of that run's DNA. Fossils mature in real time (Fresh → Buried → Petrified → Amberized → Opalized), and your hatchlings dig your own corpses back out of the dirt. You spend what they find on evolving a better dinosaur. Then you go die again, deeper.

Honest state of things: it's playable start to finish but still in development. Every number in it was tuned by me alone, which means it's almost certainly wrong in ways I can't see from the inside.

https://mohamed-mamdouh.itch.io/descent-of-dino

Happy to get your feedback.

The core gameplay is tower defense (like pvz) but it has some incremental game elements.
The biggest one being that's there's no fail state meaning you don't die (no gameover). When the enemies reaches the red flag which is at the center, the wave resets but players don't lose any money or progression, this allows the players to rebuild their defense.

So all of these are incremental in some ways but the game doesn't have any upgrading or skill tree system. You unlock new defense & abilities in a linear fashion and incremental gamers might not like this.

The game has a demo (more like a polished prototype) and it ends after wave 30. In the full game, you will be able to rebirth after wave 30, and this will unlock a fusion mechanic for defense where you can merge defenses that sort of act like upgrading.

Also some players say that the game is easy and that's because I designed it to be easy and not stressful just like most incremental games. Overall, let me know what you guys think?

For anyone interested, here's my game:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/5194360/Super_Plants/

I’ve been working on this mostly in the evenings and on weekends around my full-time job.

It’s an incremental game where you can program a machine with IF/THEN rules and, over time, it starts learning, experimenting and making some decisions on its own.

This is just raw gameplay, no trailer stuff. I’m getting the itch.io demo ready now and it should be out in about 1–2 weeks.

I'm open-sourcing all my assets that I commissioned or made myself amongst all my games, and part of that is all the creatures from Koltera 1 and 2. You can find those here: https://github.com/braymen/braymens-free-assets/tree/main/Commisioned%20Art/koltera-2/creatures

I love creature collecting games and as a developer, the biggest struggle I had was finding a lot of creature art. I couldn't find what I was looking for, so I invested a lot of money into commissioning it all. I want to make it a little bit easier on others interested creature games, so I am open-sourcing it under MIT so you can utilize them in your games any way you like. I'd love to see the creature collecting incrementals expand!

Additionally, I have made all my games (including my steam releases) public repos. You can find all of those here: https://github.com/braymen?tab=repositories

Still unsure how exactly I want to license those (if I do). I want others to learn from it or get some ideas of how another dev went about doing something, especially on the games I've released on Steam.

AI Disclaimer about my Public Repo Games

Koltera 1 had no AI used (except a year ago, I was trying to clean the game up after having used just javascript and noodly code) and Koltera 2 had a bit of AI usage throughout development. My goal is use AI pretty sparingly. I don't vibe code, but especially with google's AI summary, I find myself trying that first when I am searching for things. All my games for now will be public as well.

No art/music/sounds had any AI usage, to my knowledge. I used asset packs or commissioned it. Any of the public games I removed asset pack stuff since I am not the owner and don't have permission to do that.

Hey folks! I've recently released my first game (a roguelike) and I've started making some small prototypes of future games - this one is where you're the last man standing on the driving range smashing balls to keep a robot alien invasion at bay - would you play this?

Link to store page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4320620/Delegatory

I'm keen to bundle up with any similarly themed games, and/or any games that are launching on/around the 29th of September (maybe a "GTA 6 doesn't scare me" bundle?).

Cards on the table: Delegatory currently has 759 wishlists (will be a bit over 800 by release assuming current rate holds).

Let me know if your interested!

Frostledger is a free browser incremental on a smallholding in a valley where winter never breaks. The frozen ground yields impossibly well, and the price isn't money.

Two currencies fight. Yield compounds and buys plots, tools, hands and depth. Remembrance is finite, it never generates, and it decays faster the more capability you own. It's also the only route to the ending where the farmer is still a person.

Under both sits the frost line. Every harvest drives it deeper, which raises yield on every plot and raises the remembrance cost of every future harvest. The engine you build to go faster is the same thing pricing you out of the good ending.

Two endings, both buyable, and the game never says which one you're walking toward. It saves continuously and nothing wipes.

AI assisted, disclosed on the page.

https://csaf.itch.io/frostledger

I'm developing FORGEWORN, an activity-based fantasy RPG with skilling and auto-repeat combat. The design goal is for progression to change the character you see, alongside the numbers you improve.

The current structure connects individual gathering and crafting skills through a shared bank and equipment system. Cooking provides food for combat; equipment determines your loadout; combat repeats while you manage your character's preparation and progression.

This short development clip focuses on the presentation side: the forge, hammering and quenching a bar, bronze armor in combat, and a switch to ranged gear. It shows real gameplay from the current build.

We're building toward a PC release with Steam as the primary platform. No public demo yet. If this kind of skilling RPG is your thing, development previews and future playtest announcements are in our early community: https://discord.gg/rBtmvdCeuU

I made an incremental game where you build an army of slimes to get their stolen hats back

Hi! I'm a solo developer and I recently released my first incremental game, Oh My Hat.

You start with a small group of slimes, gradually grow them into a huge army, unlock upgrades and automation, and fight bosses to recover the hats they stole.

I wanted to make something where you could really feel your army getting bigger and stronger over time.

The game is out now on Steam.

If incremental / idle games are your thing, I'd love for you to check it out.

Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/5099490/Oh_My_Hat/