Incremental game facts for kids
Incremental games, also known as clicker games or idle games, are a type of video game. In these games, you often start by doing simple actions, like clicking on the screen many times. This clicking helps you earn in-game money or resources. You can then use this money to buy upgrades. These upgrades help you earn even more money, often much faster.
Sometimes, the game even starts to play itself. This means you don't need to click anymore! The game keeps going and earning money even when you're not actively playing. That's why they are called "idle games."
Contents
How These Games Work
Playing Without Constant Clicking
In an incremental game, you usually begin by clicking a button or an object. Each click gives you some game currency. You can then spend this currency to buy new items or special abilities. These purchases help you earn currency faster. Some upgrades even let you earn money automatically, without needing to click at all.
Many games show your income sources as buildings, like factories or farms. These buildings make your currency production go up. However, better buildings usually cost a lot more. This means upgrading to the next level can take a while.
This type of game is relaxing because you don't have to play all the time. There's no way to lose, and you always feel like you're growing and getting stronger. This makes them great for playing on your phone or with friends. These games often use very large numbers to show how much money you're making.
Getting Stronger Quickly
A big part of the fun in incremental games is how fast your power and rewards grow. They often use huge numbers, like 1 followed by many zeros. Sometimes they use short ways to write these numbers, like "1M" for a million or "1T" for a trillion.
The main idea is often a loop: you open the game, spend all your money on upgrades, and then close the game for a few hours. When you come back, you'll have earned more money. This is similar to "energy" systems in some social games. But in idle games, this earning happens naturally.
Many Goals and Achievements
These games often have lots of goals and achievements for you to unlock. These give you exciting moments throughout the game. They help keep the game interesting and stop you from getting bored. When you reach a goal, you might get more power or rewards. This helps you decide what to upgrade next.
Starting Over for Big Bonuses
Some advanced incremental games have a "New Game Plus" system. This means you can reset your game progress. When you do this, you gain a special new currency, sometimes called "prestige." This new currency gives you permanent bonuses that stay even after you reset. These bonuses help you go much further in the game next time.
This system lets you replay the game with more power. It can create endless ways to play and different strategies. You can choose to "prestige" when you feel like your progress is slowing down. This gives you a fresh burst of fast progress, which feels very rewarding. Some games even have many layers of prestiging, adding new content and special currencies.
Games That End and Games That Don't
Incremental games can be different in whether they have a clear ending. Games like Cookie Clicker let you play forever. But others, like Candy Box! or Universal Paperclips, have endings you can reach after you make enough progress.
How Games Make Money
Game makers often earn money from incremental games in a few ways. They might sell special boosts, like instant money or a "time-warp" that gives you future earnings right away. They might also sell permanent upgrades that last even after you prestige. Some games have a "gacha" system, where you can get random special items or characters.
Another way they make money is by showing you ads. If you watch an ad, you might get small rewards. These could be a quick burst of cash, double your earnings while you were away, or a small amount of special currency.
Game History
Many people think the very first idle game was Progress Quest from 2002. It was a funny game that made fun of how some online role-playing games worked.
Later, a website called Kongregate became a popular place for these games. One early game there was Kongregate Chat (2007). In this game, you just chatted while the game played itself. Another early visual idle game was Ayumilove's HackerStory v1 (2008). It made fun of players who used bots to play games like Maple Story.
Some games even made fun of idle games themselves. Anti-Idle (2009) mixed active and idle gameplay. It was very complex and helped make the genre popular. Cow Clicker (2010) was a Facebook game that got a lot of attention. Its creator said it was a joke about how simple some social games were.
AdVenture Capitalist (2015) was another successful game that made fun of capitalism. It was one of the first to add ways for players to spend money in the game. It also introduced "offline earning," which means you earn money even when the game isn't open. Older browser games only ran when you had them open.
Some idle games, like A Dark Room (2013) and Candy Box! (2013), had endings instead of going on forever.
Incremental games became very popular in 2013 after Cookie Clicker was a big hit. Make It Rain (2014) was one of the first big mobile idle game successes. By 2015, many idle games like Clicker Heroes (2014) were appearing on game platforms like Steam.
Other popular idle games include Sandcastle Builder (2013), Sharky Clicker (2014), and Kittens Game (2014). Over time, more ways to make money and new game features have been added to these games.
How Idle Games Influence Others
The ideas from idle games have influenced many other types of games. For example:
- Social and Strategy Games: Games like Hay Day and Game of War use ideas where you wait for things to build or grow over time.
- Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs): Some Chinese MMORPGs let players skip early parts of the game using an "AFK mode" that plays for them.
- Launch Games: These games use the "New Game Plus" idea, where you reset and start over to get stronger.
Even shooting games, RPGs, and puzzle games are starting to add small idle game parts or offline progress. This mixes different game types together.
Auto Clickers
An auto clicker is a computer program or tool that automatically clicks (or taps) for you. Many idle games involve clicking to earn money when you are actively playing. Players sometimes use an auto clicker to do this clicking for them. This helps them get resources much faster.
See also
In Spanish: Videojuego incremental para niños
