Key takeaways
- Incremental games are built on the steady accumulation of resources; clicker games stress active tapping, idle games stress automation and progress with little input.
- Costs usually climb exponentially, which is why idle games use scientific notation and suffixes such as 1T for trillion.
- Prestige systems let players reset progress in exchange for permanent bonuses, turning a slowdown into a fresh start.
- Wikipedia traces the idle genre to Progress Quest in 2002; Cookie Clicker made incremental games popular in 2013.
- Anthony Pecorella called many popular idle games 'glorified spreadsheets with some really neat mechanics', and Cookie Clicker's creator has described his own works as 'non-games'.
Idle games look like they play themselves, and in a sense they do. You earn a resource, spend it on something that earns more, step away, and come back to bigger numbers. Wikipedia files them under incremental games, a subgenre characterised by the incremental accumulation of in-game resources and gradual, often exponential progression. This guide explains how they work, why their numbers explode and where the genre came from.
Clicker, idle and incremental
Wikipedia separates two styles:
| Style | What drives progress |
|---|---|
| Clicker games | Active input, such as repeatedly tapping to generate resources |
| Idle games | Automation, with progress that continues with minimal interaction |
Many incremental games combine both. Players typically start with a simple action, such as clicking a button, to earn currency. That currency buys upgrades, items or abilities that increase income, often by automating it, so the need to interact falls away. A common theme is buying income-generating assets, often shown as buildings like factories or farms.
Why the numbers get so big
Costs in incremental games climb steeply. Higher-tier assets, Wikipedia notes, usually have an exponentially higher cost, so each tier tends to take a similar or longer time to reach. Values grow so large that games show them in scientific notation, with shorthand such as "1T" for trillion, or with special names for enormous numbers.
A worked example. Imagine an upgrade whose first purchase costs 100 coins, with each further purchase costing 15% more than the one before. The 10th purchase costs 100 × 1.15⁹ ≈ 352 coins. The 50th costs 100 × 1.15⁴⁹ ≈ 94,000. The 100th costs about 100 million. Income has to grow just as fast to keep up, which is exactly the loop the genre is built on: each upgrade makes the next one affordable, a little later than the last.
Prestige: starting over on purpose
When growth slows, many incremental games offer a prestige reset. Wikipedia describes it as voluntarily resetting progress in exchange for permanent bonuses that persist across future runs, similar to a "New Game Plus". After a reset, stages that took a long time can be cleared much faster, which restores the feeling of progress. Deciding when to reset becomes a strategy of its own. Some games stack several layers of prestige, each unlocking new content or currencies.
Where idle games came from
Wikipedia, drawing on talks by Anthony Pecorella at the Game Developers Conference, traces the genre's milestones:
- 2002: Progress Quest, by Eric Fredriksen, a parody of stat progression and automated combat in MMORPGs, credited with creating the idle genre.
- Kongregate, the gaming website, became an early hub, with Kongregate Chat as its first idle game.
- Cow Clicker, a satire of Facebook games, was the first idle game to receive mainstream media attention.
- AdVenture Capitalist was one of the first to add monetisation and offline earnings, tracking progress while the game is closed.
- 2013: Cookie Clicker made incremental games popular.
- Make It Rain became the first major mobile idle success, and in 2015 the gaming press noticed such games spreading on Steam, with titles such as Clicker Heroes.
Not every idle game is endless. Wikipedia notes that Cookie Clicker can be played indefinitely, while Candy Box! and Universal Paperclips have endings.
Why people play, and the criticism
Wikipedia records several views. Kotaku's Nathan Grayson attributed the genre's popularity to low-effort distractions that fit easily into daily routines. IGN's Justin Davis described it as built for a perpetual sense of escalation, in which players feel powerful and weak at the same time. Pecorella himself called many popular idle games "glorified spreadsheets with some really neat mechanics", and Cookie Clicker's creator has described his own works as "non-games".
Money is part of the design too. Wikipedia lists common premium offers, such as instant currency boosts and "time-warps" that grant hours of future income, and ads that reward players with small boosts. It is worth knowing how a game you play is monetised.
Idle ideas in other genres
The genre's ideas have spread. Wikipedia notes that strategy, social and role-playing games have borrowed offline progression, auto-play modes and short prestige loops. The label also turns up in tower defense, a strategy subgenre in which, Wikipedia's tower defense article explains, players defend their territory by placing defensive structures on or along the enemy's path of attack. Hero TD Idle Tower Defense, one of our action and arcade games, calls itself an idle tower defense game on Google Play and says its appeal is "seeing small decisions add up as waves become a bigger challenge"; our app page describes the emphasis as planning upgrades between battles rather than constant tapping; its guide explains it, and the upgrade guide shows how to spend.
Good to know
Frequently asked questions
What is an idle game?
What is the difference between a clicker game and an idle game?
What does prestige mean in an idle game?
What was the first idle game?
Sources
- Incremental game (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
- Tower defense (opens in a new tab)Wikipedia — accessed
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