. Last tended to <ahref='https://code.incremental.social/thepaperpilot/pages/commit/411de1d59fe75b3e56de49dd5209b0b0b9a8616c'title='Tue Jun 18 09:30:26 2024 -0500'><timeclass='dt-updated'datetime='Tue Jun 18 09:30:26 2024 -0500'>2024-06-18</time></a>
.</span></p><hr><p>Video games are placed into genres for a variety of reasons. They can give a mental shorthand to set the player's expectations up, they can help a game market itself by its similarities to other, already popular games, and honestly, people just love categorization for its own sake. For this guide, it's important to define the genre so it is clear what games it's even talking about.</p><p>This poses a problem. "Incremental" is a <em>horribly</em> vague way to define games. <em>Most</em> games have numbers going up in some form or another. We need a more specific definition - similar to how "strategy" can't just mean any game with <em>any</em> amount of strategy because that would be <em>most</em> games. What specifically differentiates incremental games from the rest?</p><p>"Incremental" implies it's a genre defined by a game mechanic, but all those game mechanics it could imply exist in many other games. Having a skill tree or upgrades doesn't make you incremental, and if a reset mechanic is all it takes then every roguelite would be an incremental as well. So clearly there's more to it than that - what makes an incremental an incremental?</p><p>I'd like to go over a couple of popular suggestions I've seen on defining the genre here. I have my personal preferences and will state them here, but I don't think there's a truly perfect answer here.</p><blockquote><p>Disclaimer: I mostly play incremental games on my computer, and my definitions will be heavily biased towards the games I'm familiar with.</p></blockquote><h2id="incrementals-vs-idlers-vs-clickers"tabindex="-1">Incrementals vs Idlers vs Clickers <aclass="header-anchor"href="#incrementals-vs-idlers-vs-clickers"aria-label="Permalink to "Incrementals vs Idlers vs Clickers""></a></h2><p>Oftentimes people refer to this genre as idle games and/or clicker games. You'll even find a trend of oxymoronic game titles that contain both terms. "Incremental games" is the umbrella term both those terms fall under. However, I'd like to argue that not only is it better to just use the term "incremental games", but calling them "idle games" or "clicker games" is <em>wrong</em>. Almost universally, these terms are used interchangeably to refer to the <em>same kind of game</em>, where you start the game click spamming and eventually automate the process. Frankly, that kind of game deserves neither title, and the genre of incremental games has trended away from ever requiring click spamming, as it's a bad mechanic, anyways.</p><p>While these games do span a spectrum of how active it requires you to be, and sorting games by that metric can be useful for those looking for a particular experience, the borders of when an incremental game counts as an "idler" is too blurry for the term to be useful. "Incremental games" may not be a great descriptive term for the genre (hence this many thousands of words long page on defining what the genre even is), but it's strictly better than calling them "idler" or "clicker" games. This guide will always use the term "incremental games" unless quoting someone else, as it is the term you typically see on all modern games in the genre.</p><p><spanid="665cea25-b1e5-40bc-8c82-2296982ce1d1"><h2>Incrementals as Parodies</h2></span></p><p>Let's start with one of the most <em>interesting</em> definitions of incremental games. Incremental games appear to be distilled versions of games or genres, "revealing" the naked game design at the core of these games or genres not unlike how parodies comment upon their source material.</p><p>To understand what that means, think of how a casino uses skinner boxes to emotionally manipulate its customers to keep playing, but "dressing" up the skinner box with tons of stimuli to hide that ultimately the goal is to condition you into coming back compulsively. The idea that incremental g
