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Hey wanna see some cool experimental clicker / idle / incremental games? Last month for the final project in my 'economics for game designers' class at @nyugamecenter.bsky.social, students made some *incredible* incremental games, so I wanted to do a thread showing off their work! 1/ 👇📈👇📈👇

(Quick background: The prompt was to make 'recognizably an incremental game', but otherwise open ended. It's a systems design class, so that's the focus. These were all solo projects, made in about five weeks. They're all relatively short-form, generally playable in a single sitting) 2/

First off, check out Karma Clicker by @cmi.bsky.social, which nails the 'innocuous premise that quickly goes off the rails' thematic feel of the genre. Also makes clever use of a couple of different intersecting currencies over the arc of the experience. Check it out! 3/ cxmi.itch.io/karma-clicker

Derin Ogut's 'Incremental Island Adventure' is a fun mix of traditional mechanics with some new twists borrowed from other genres, it's a prototype mixing town building mechanics and tile placement with an incremental game: 4/ derin-ogut.itch.io/incremental-...

"you are a writer" by @thewriterwins.bsky.social is a "typing incremental". The typing-as-clicking mechanical premise here works really well, and it's put in service of a great narrative about creative writing, with multiple possible endings! 5/ thewriterwins.itch.io/you-are-a-wr...

I happened to have designer Sam Tian in both my classes this year. As a bit, he kept making variations of the same game at every opportunity he could: a fish-based incremental game. Like the best jokes, it got funnier each time it was repeated. The latest iteration: 6/ samtian.itch.io/a-fish-clicker

You know that moment in a deckbuilder when you have to choose between 3 cards? Olin Gao made a game that's *just* that, over and over, for the whole game. Some fantastic design minimalism. It eventually gets out of control, but its amazing how well the idea works: 7/ radetzky.itch.io/three-card-w...

One of the most formally experimental is @caelangm.bsky.social's 'Finite Infinite Card Game', an incremental game where you're playing a trick taking game with an upgradeable deck, against an opponent who's rolling different kinds of dice. 8/ caelan.itch.io/finite-infin...

There's a lot of cool ideas in @yoyozm.bsky.social's "Pray", which traces a connection between meditative prayer and the repetitive actions of a clicker, while drawing some grand religious ethical questions to their logical conclusions (so, it all goes off the rails, naturally). 9/ ziou.itch.io/pray

In "Queen Bee" Seungmi was playing with some derivative clicker ideas, where what you produce produces things. So you can't make honey directly, instead you lay eggs, which hatch bees. (Also, think this is the bluesky thread limit? More games after the 'continue') 10/ igsp.itch.io/queen-bee-cl...

Jerry Chen's "No More Hell" is an incremental game made in Twine! Harkening back to the text-based origins of the genre a la Candy Box and A Dark Room, but in form it's like a modern clicker, with generators and resetting in a story about the arc of history. 11/ jpercent.itch.io/no-more-hell

zezhen's "doom miner" is an incremental take on the recent Doom games' setting, where you're on mars mining demonic power from hell. The mechanical twist here is that eventually the demons start fighting back, creating a drag on your production you need to combat. 12/ case-log.itch.io/doom-drilling

One of the most ambitious games is Yuecheng's 'Rune Defender', a sort of autobattler tactical RPG. That'd be enough, but each hero also has a customizable rune system that changes how they autobattle. Reminds me strongly of the best Kongregate games of yore. 13/ phoeniverse.itch.io/rune-defender

And lastly, a lovely prototype by Maggie Wang with a great thematic premise: a train incremental where the 'number going up' is the speed of the train. A perfect one to end on, the track goes ever on. Choo choo! 14/ maggiezihe.itch.io/train-increm...

Love these. After 3 years on "Cells," I never thought I'd play another idle clicker but it's fun to see the themes and imagination setting free the numbers.

I haven't gotten through all of these yet, but some of them show great promise! I got caught up with the typing one for some time. I shunned AI at some point, and I think that was a mistake lol