Saving Incremental Games

An April fool's game I made for 2026, with commentary on recent trends in the incremental games community (namely nodebuster-likes and vibe coded games).

You can play it here!

Original Design Notes

Stereotypical nodebuster-like, but the enemies are logos of nodebuster-likes and the narrative is that you’re stopping them from taking over the community

You play as a rectangle in the center of the screen, and controller/tap inputs control the direction it moves (but its the rest of the screen that moves, not the square)

Include a vibe coding mechanic where every run a new upgrade is “generated” with a stereotypically grandiose name. It should be an actual positive effect on the user, albeit “uninteresting” stat boosts and no new gameplay/mechanics/effects

Narrative progresses with you “freeing” devs from the genre. They may act uneasy or uncertain about what to do instead, and explore asking the protagonist how they monetize their games instead (or advertise etc.)

Dialogue happens in babble buds cutscenes

A mechanic is introduced where some enemies put a shield around others, thus requiring you to defeat them first

Bosses use that mechanic in interesting ways, like spawning enemies that then protect the boss

The final boss is a very large skill tree-esque boss where you need to move around to find the unprotected nodes until you eventually get to the one in the center

This ends chapter 1, with a scene about recognizing devs’ autonomy, and recognizing that trends come and go but devs will innovate to iterate on the trend or spark new ones. That pisses off the vibe coding machine which then escapes and starts chapter 2

Chapter 2 should include dialogue between stages about generative AI being antithetical to innovation, and relying on tired or even hallucinated cliches as to what incremental games “ought” to be

Chapter 2 introduces a new mechanic to replace the shielding one: spawning new (deteriorated) clones on death?

Chapter 2 boss?

Base gameplay should be kinda warriors like

• Mob spawners on a map
• Enemies move towards player at center of square to deal damage
• You defeat big baddies to stop spawners
• Win each stage by defeating baddie guarding a dev

What mechanics should be in the skill tree that thematically represent what makes incremental games and particularly human talent good?

• A skill tree branch about idle games that are always on top and have pomodoro timers, etc
• A skill tree branch about demos / early access / 0.9 / 0.99 with flavor text about increasingly long intervals
• The following three upgrade branches, which vertically spiral like a barbershop pole:
  • Repetitive mechanics I (attacks have a 10% chance to inflict fire damage) -> fire deals DOT damage -> fire spreads on contact -> fire slows down enemies
  • Repetitive mechanics II (attacks have a 10% chance to inflict poison damage) -> poison spreads on contact -> poison slows down enemies -> poison deals DOT damage
  • Repetitive mechanics III (attacks have a 10% chance to inflict cold damage) -> cold slows down enemies -> cold deals DOT damage -> cold spreads on contact
• Unlock new challenges for previous levels, like time trials or no damage?

Should there be a chapter 3? Capitalism? (probably overscoping)