Incremental game

An incremental game (also known as an idle game, clicker game, or tap game) is a subgenre of video game focused on minimal player interaction, where repetitive, simple actions—such as clicking a button—generate in-game currency. This currency is spent on upgrades that automate or accelerate progress (a process known as idling), leading to exponential growth in resource accumulation over time.

Progress Quest (2002), considered the first idle/incremental game

Such games frequently feature rapidly escalating costs and rewards, with numerical values often expressed in scientific notation, shorthand formats (e.g., "1T" for trillion), or even special naming schemes for extremely large numbers. Common mechanics include prestige systems, where players voluntarily reset progress in exchange for permanent bonuses, and monetization strategies involving microtransactions (such as instant currency boosts) or advertisements granting minor in-game rewards. Popular titles like Cookie Clicker and AdVenture Capitalist helped define and popularize the genre, combining open-ended gameplay with occasional closed endings, as exemplified by Candy Box!.^[1]

Originating in the early 2000s with satirical titles like Progress Quest and Cow Clicker, the genre evolved to incorporate idle mechanics such as offline progression and layered prestige systems. Critics note its appeal as a low-pressure, distraction-friendly experience, often likened to "glorified spreadsheets" with thematic depth. Despite debates over their status as "non-games," incremental games have influenced mainstream genres by introducing auto-play modes and progression loops. Auto clicker software is commonly used to automate manual tasks, reflecting the genre's emphasis on efficiency.^[2]

Mechanics

Progress without interaction, or very limited interaction (Idling)

In an incremental game, players perform simple actions – usually clicking a button or object – which rewards the player with currency. The player may spend the currency to purchase items or abilities that allow the player to earn the currency faster or automatically, without needing to perform the initial action.^[3][4] A common theme is offering the player sources of income displayed as buildings such as factories or farms. These sources increase the currency production rate, but higher tier sources usually have an exponentially higher cost, so upgrading between tiers takes usually about the same time or even increasingly longer.

This mechanism offers a low-pressure experience (one does not have to be constantly playing), no loss condition, and constant growth and feedback, which is ideal for social or mobile play patterns, and often result in a very high player retention.^[5] It often relies on exponential growth (or perhaps high-degree polynomial growth), which is countered by diminishing returns.

Rapid growth

Incremental games typically feature rapidly escalating costs and rewards, fostering a steady sense of progression intended to sustain player engagement. They often enable the accumulation of a vast amount of in-game currency, with values commonly represented using scientific notation (e.g., 1×10³⁴), shorthand suffixes (1M for million, 1T for trillion), or special naming schemes for extremely large numbers (e.g., "duoquadragintillion"). In some cases, the magnitude of these values necessitates specialized data types or numerical libraries for accurate storage and display.^[5]

The resulting gameplay loop often consists of periodically returning to the game to allocate accumulated currency toward upgrades, automation features, or progression milestones. This loop shares similarities with the "energy currency" mechanic in social games, in which a player regains energy over time while inactive. However, in incremental games, this behavior emerges organically from the design of progression systems, whereas in social games it serves as an artificial limitation on playtime.^[5]

This structure may be more appealing to core gamers who view social games critically. It reflects familiar real-world patterns (e.g., "I'm out of cash; I need to come back when I have more.") and provides players with greater autonomy in deciding when and how to engage with the game.^[5]

Many goals and achievements

This mechanic aims to keep players engaged by spreading small rewards throughout the gameplay. They can also provide a more tangible sense of direction for players to optimize towards, giving their choices more meaning.^[5]

Prestige

Some incremental games incorporate a mechanic that allows players to reset their progress in exchange for advantages in subsequent playthroughs. This concept is similar to the "New Game Plus" feature found in other video game genres, but in incremental games the reset—often referred to as "prestige"—typically grants permanent rewards or bonuses that persist across all future runs. These rewards create an additional gameplay loop: when progression slows, players can strategically reset to accelerate future advancement. Deciding the optimal timing and method for a reset becomes part of the game's strategic depth. After a prestige reset, previously time-consuming stages can be cleared much faster, giving players a renewed sense of progress and empowerment. Clicker Heroes by Playsaurus is considered an early pioneer of prestige mechanics in mobile gaming.^[2]

Some games feature multiple layers of prestige systems, unlocking entirely new content, meta-currencies, or gameplay modes. For example, Realm Grinder by Divine Games (2015) introduced layered progression systems such as "abdicating," "reincarnating," and "ascending".^{[citation needed]}

Open-ended or closed gameplay loops

Incremental games vary as to whether they have a victory condition: games like Cookie Clicker allow the players to play indefinitely, while games like Candy Box! or Universal Paperclips feature endings that can be reached after a certain amount of progress is made.^{[citation needed]}

Microtransaction and Monetization

Main articles: Microtransaction and Monetization

Pioneered by AdVenture Capitalist, developers may sell premium boost such as instant currency infusion (usually a percentage of current rate of income) or sometimes wrapped as a "time-warp" (instantly gain x-hours of future income), permanent boost multiplier that persist after each prestiging, instant prestige (claiming prestige without starting over), protection against negative events, gacha system (random draws of a character or a permanent bonus), and event currencies.^[5]

On the other side, they may also deliver advertisements for players to receive minor rewards, such as short burst of cash, doubling offline earnings, small amount of premium currency, brief powerful boost/medium-length small boost, extra prestige points upon prestiging, relief of a negative status, etc.^[5]

History

Candy Box!, a predecessor of Cookie Clicker

According to Anthony Pecorella in his GDC summit talks,^[5] the creation of the idle game genre was attributed to Progress Quest (2002) by Eric Fredriksen, a parody of character-stat progression and automated combat systems in MMORPGs. He argued that the gaming website Kongregate was an early hub for the genre, as some people preferred to use the integrated chat rather than actively play. The first idle game on Kongregate was aptly titled Kongregate Chat (July 24, 2007, by John Cooney),^[6] where the game ran by itself while players conversed in the chat window. One of the first visual idle games (“rudimentary RPGs”, according to Pecorella) was Ayumilove's HackerStory v1 (2008, by Ayumilove),^{[citation needed]} a parody of bot grinding in MapleStory, a popular Korean MMORPG at the time.

The early pioneers of idle games also saw some games parodying the genre, such as Anti-Idle (2009, by tukkun)^[5] which has elements of both active and idle games. The game was extremely complicated, content-rich, and constantly updated, and it helped popularize the genre.^{[citation needed]} An idle game in Facebook platform, called Cow Clicker (2010, by Ian Bogost), which according to the author is, "a satire and playable theory of social games circa that era, ... Facebook games distilled to their essence.", was the first to receive mainstream media attention.^[7] Another parody of idle games (and parody of capitalism) called AdVenture Capitalist (2015, by Cody Vigue / Hyper Hippo Games) also saw success as a browser game and was subsequently made available in many platforms. It was one of the first games to implement monetization, as well as offline earning which calculates the progress of a player during the time they are offline, unlike previous browser-based idle games which only run when open in a browser window.

Some idle games did not follow the infinite ending and instead opted for a puzzle-like and exploration-based structure. Examples include A Dark Room (2013, by Doublespeak Games) and Candy Box! (2013, by aniwey).^{[citation needed]}

Incremental games gained popularity in 2013 after the success of Cookie Clicker,^[3] although earlier games such as Cow Clicker and Candy Box! were based on the same principles. Make It Rain (2014, by Space Inch) was the first major mobile idle game success, although the idle elements in the game were heavily limited, requiring check-ins to progress.^[5] In 2015, the gaming press observed such games proliferating on the Steam distribution platform with titles such as Clicker Heroes (2014, by Playsaurus).^[8]

Other idle games that have become classic includes Sandcastle Builder (2013, by Eternal Density)^[9] which was based on the xkcd comic 1190: Time, Shark Game (2014, by Cirr),^[10] Crank (by FaeDine),^[11] Mr.Mine (2013, by Playsaurus),^[12] and Kittens Game (2014, by Bloodrizer)^[13]

During the evolution of the genre, monetization (through ads or other venues), premium contents, and other game mechanics are slowly being added in.

Reception

Nathan Grayson of Kotaku attributed the popularity of idle games to their ability to provide low-effort, unchallenging distractions that integrate easily into a person's daily routine, while adopting themes and aesthetics of more complex video games to appeal to a "core gamer" audience. He also observed that the genre supports a wide variety of mechanics and settings, including fantasy, sci-fi, and even erotica, offering enough perceived depth to maintain player engagement.^[14]

IGN's Justin Davis describes the genre as designed for a perpetual sense of escalation: costly upgrades and items become available rapidly, only to be rendered trivial and replaced by more expensive options. This pacing creates a paradoxical experience where players feel both powerful and weak simultaneously, as they chase exponential growth.^[15]

Julien "Orteil" Thiennot, creator of games such as Cookie Clicker, has described his own works as "non-games".^[16] In early 2014, Orteil released an early version of Idle Game Maker, a browser-based tool that enables the creation of customized idle games without programming knowledge.^[17]

Commenting on the parodic nature of idle games, Pecorella commented that "this is sorta a genre that almost doesn't want to exist; it's a joke, but despite itself, keeps being really successful",^[5] and on popular idle-games in general, "a lot of these are just glorified spreadsheet with some really neat mechanics in it."^[5]

Influence

The idle games genre has in many ways influenced other genres. Pecorella (2015) identified several genres that includes idle elements in their mechanics:^[5]

• Real-time social and strategy games: Hay Day, Mafia Wars, Game of War
• Chinese MMORPGs (skipping the early games through "AFK mode" and going straight to end-game): Mythborne using auto-path mode, Wartune, among others
• Launch games (tight-loop prestige/newgame+ mechanic, not the idling one per se): Curl Up and Fly, among others.

Shooting games, RPGs, and other genres also starts to introduce short prestige loop or mini idle games within, while some introduces offline progress to entice players to return, allowing for genre blends, from idle rhythm games to RPGs, to puzzle and dating sims.^[18]

Auto clicker

An example of auto clicker software

An auto clicker is automation software or a macro that is generally used to automate the clicking (or tapping) process in idle games. A number of idle games employ clicking as a method to gain currency while active (to complement the idle element), and players may sometimes employ an auto clicker to automate this part, thus getting resources/currency much faster. Pecorella, in his 2016 GDC summit talk, argued that auto clickers are considered necessary by any "serious" idle game players, and that it's not cheating, but rather an exploration of an error in design.^[19]