Where does waiting belong in incrementals?

At their core, incremental games are defined by waiting. You wait, you click, and repeat.

Isn’t that silly? Why do we enjoy thumb-twiddling so much? I ask myself these questions every time I play incrementals. I don’t like how often the gameplay reduces down to waiting around for the numbers to tick up. This discomfort is, in fact, central to my passion for incrementals.

A quick skim of my game prototypes folder shows at least five distinct incrementals with different mechanics for speeding up time. Yet, all those prototypes feel like they miss a core element of fun. Increasingly, I am sensing that incremental games are inherently coupled with waiting around in anticipation.

At the same time, I believe passionately that we, as players and designers of games, can do better than that. Throwing prototypes at the problem clearly isn’t working, so today I want to take a step back. In this post, I will elaborate on where waiting belongs in incrementals, and why it might be so integral to the genre.

What is a game?

To locate something, I need to know the potential places it could be. After an evening of bingeing Raph Koster’s blog, I will use the following perspective on what a game consists of:

  1. Player input. This is what distinguishes a game from, say, a screen saver1.
  2. An uncertain system. What matters is uncertainty for the player. There are many varied reasons for uncertainty, including lack of knowledge, lack of skill, presence of other players, and so on.
  3. A goal to pursue. This could be provided by the game (launch a rocket), self-determined (make pretty factories), or a combination of both (beat the game in world record time).
  4. Feedback. As a player, I need some way of evaluating my actions in the context of achieving my goals.

Where is waiting in incremental games?

Is it in player input? Of course. Waiting would be considered one of the two primary player actions (the other being, you know, clicking things to buy stuff). I would even say that waiting is the primary action, and the player actions only serve to delimit waiting.

Is it in the uncertainty of the system? But, of course. Human brains are inherently bad at projecting non-linear curves forward in time, boom, subjective uncertainty! Guessing when we will be able to afford an upgrade, or which one of multiple options gives the best benefit in the following few minutes is a core part of the problem that incrementals present.

Is it in the goal that we pursue? But of course! We want shiny toys (building tiers, upgrades, achievements), and we want them now. The game pushes back by placing time between us and the shiny toys. Thus, without waiting around, there is no goal. Without a goal, there is no game.

Is it in the feedback that we get? But of courseeee!!! 2 If you keep buying cursors in Cookie Clicker and never recruit a Grandma, you will be waiting longer and longer between purchases. That is how the game gives you negative feedback on your suboptimal inputs. On the other hand, if you find yourself unlocking shiny toys at a decent pace, that is the game providing you positive feedback.

Oh.

Oh indeed. I am only realizing thanks to writing this post 3, but waiting defines incrementals in all fundamental aspects. D’oh! It is so obvious in hindsight. Ah, but you see, I am not giving up. Understanding the problem better only improves my chances of coming up with a solution in the future.

I have a few ideas on attacking this problem. Alas, they are not ready for the spotlight yet.

I suppose we will have to wait some more ;)

  1. Caveat: I can set myself the goal of guessing the next color, and my internal thoughts become the player input. Humans can turn pretty much anything we observe into a game; that is our power.↩︎

  2. This is a reference to Quinn’s phenomenal review of the Mothership TTRPG that I have watched at least five times already. I am delighted that I was able to make this reference.↩︎

  3. Writing is thinking, this is why I write, yada yada.↩︎