Incremental Games

About

Incremental Games, also known as Idle Games, are browser and mobile games in which the player accumulates in-game resources by clicking or over time by letting the game run in the background.

History

In April 2013, French indie game developer Aniwey released the ASCII art browser game Candy Box,^[1] in which the player slowly accumulates candies over time that can be used to purchase items. On June 10th, Doublespeak Games released the incremental browser game A Dark Room,^[2] in which the player starts the game in a dark room before collecting enough items and resources to explore the outside world.

On August 10th, the game Cookie Clicker was released, featuring a giant cookie that the player must click to create cookies used to buy upgrades that assist in cookie production. The original version was created by game designer Julien Thiennot in August 2013, who came up with the idea for the game while playing Aniwey’s Candy Box.

On September 14th, the /r/incrementalgames^[3] subreddit was launched, where members discuss various incremental browser and mobile games. Within the first five months, the subreddit received more than 5,000 subscribers. On November 2nd, a similar subreddit /r/idleclickinggames^[4] was launched. On October 25th, the Breaking Bad-themed browser game> was created, featuring a meth cooking and distribution simulation (shown below, left). Clicking Bad^[6] On January 31st, 2014, the idle game CivClicker was released, in which the player hires workers to acquire resources in a similar vein to the strategy game series Civilization^[7] (shown below, right). On February 12th, The Daily Dot^[5] published an article about the rise of Cookie Clicker and other incremental games.