HTML5 has been hailed as the future of gaming in web browsers for years. Back in 2011, however, HTML5 was running into headwinds due to issues with performance and compatibility. There was general optimism about the technology, but few were willing to adopt it for their own games. Things became more urgent recently, though, with the deprecation of NPAPI plugins (i.e. Unity, Java, Silverlight, etc.) and an ominous cloud hanging over the long-term viability of Flash. So where are we now? For context on the following data, Kongregate.com has had 500-1500 games uploaded every month for nearly a decade, with over 100,000 games to date. We’ve often been known as a “Flash” platform because Flash dominated other technologies, but we’ve actually been an open, technology-agnostic web platform since 2007, also supporting Java and Shockwave early on. We were the first platform to officially support Unity, long before it was ubiquitous, starting in 2011, and we also built native support for HTML5 in 2013. All of this puts us in a unique position to have a

This three-part series is intended to break apart my MIGS 2016 slides into what are hopefully detailed but accessible angles on the math and mechanics behind idle and incremental games. The sections draw heavily from a collection of spreadsheet models I built and have opened up for you to play around with. In Part I we looked at some of the standard math behind rapid-growth idle games, primarily at the relationships between exponential and polynomial growth and some methods of checking and adjusting the balance of the various generators over time. In Part II we explored different options for growth outside of the Cookie Clicker exponential model, as well as other options for interactions of generators. Now, in the final part, we will look at prestige loops, including analyzing the design behind real-world examples and how to vary them to keep things interesting for the player. The ability to reset your game with a multiplier to progress, often called a “prestige,” is one of the crucial mechanics behind most modern idle games, originally popularized (and conceived?) by Orteil’s Cookie

A few weeks ago, in Part I of this three-part series, we looked at some of the standard math behind rapid-growth idle games, primarily at the relationships between exponential and polynomial growth and some methods of checking and adjusting the balance of the various generators over time. In Part II we’re going to explore a different option for growth outside of the Cookie Clicker model that the vast majority of idle games use these days. In the "standard" model, there is a primary $\color{ForestGreen}{currency}$ and a bunch of generators ($\color{Cerulean}{Gen 1}$, $\color{BurntOrange}{Gen 2}$, etc.) that produce that $\color{ForestGreen}{currency}$. In AdVenture Capitalist these are the investments generating cash. In Clicker Heroes these are the heroes generating damage, which is then converted into gold. But who says that generators have to produce primary $\color{ForestGreen}{currency}$? What happens if generators generate other generators, like this? You have a single generator producing the $\color{ForestGreen}{currency}$ and then a cascading chain of generators producing the previous tier. So $\color{Cerulean}{Gen 1}

I’ve given a few talks in the past about the appeal and general mechanics of idle games, but what if you actually wanted to make one? Theory and patterns are nice, but there’s some complicated math running behind it. And how on earth do you balance a game that has insanely large numbers? This article is Part I of what will be a three-part series detailing topics covered in my most-recent talk. Part I discusses core ideas of growth, cost, prestige, and generator balancing. Part II will look into alternate growth methods (especially derivative-based). Part III will look at prestige cycles and balance. The models for all of the charts produced in these articles are available as spreadsheets. Please feel free to duplicate, peruse, experiment, extend, etc.! Let’s start by specifying some terminology to make talking about this easier. Primary Currency: This is the main number that is being incremented, generally the goal of the game. Usually it’s some form of money. Generator: The items in the game that produce primary currency. The rate of production,

Idle Games form an intriguing genre that defies typical game design wisdom in many ways while still being incredibly successful. Now, as a genre that is three years old, idle games are starting to demonstrate more and more sophistication and depth of mechanics, bigger budgets and licensed IP, all the while being led by innovative indie developers. My talk at this year's GDC, "Idle Chatter," gives an overview of old mechanics, new mechanics, and how idle mechanics might work even in other games. Additionally, the full video of my 2015 GDC talk, Idle Games: The Mechanics and Monetization of Self-Playing Games, has been made available by GDC. This post is not going to be a full explanation and transcript, but it will explain some of the highlights. The Magic of Exponential Growth While progress without interaction is what the genre is named after, the secret that makes it all work is exponential (or perhaps high-degree polynomial) growth. Al Bartlett famously said, "The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function."