Bry

It was supposed to be a miniblog entry, but it ended up being too long for that. So it's my first blog post in more than a year, and the first one written without summer temperatures outside; it was -5°C (23°F) when I wrote it.

Moving on to today's topic, I really like incremental games, but until now, I had only played them on my phone. Generally speaking, it's because I never saw them as something worth booting up my computer for. However, I recently played four different titles that proved me I was wrong.

Deep Space Cache by Monu (2024)

It was… alright. I think one of the most enjoyable things about incremental games is watching how everything gradually becomes crazier. Unfortunately here, when the whole thing took me around 2 hours to finish, the insane stuff was like… the last 5 minutes? So basically nothing really interesting happens for the most of the time.

The upgrades felt plain, too plain for me. 5% more damage, 10% more asteroids, more bullets... and not much else. That said, if you're looking for something simple and don't mind the lack of depth, I think this game can be a decent experience, with one disclaimer. Deep Space Cache has a much too long run-up; it takes several minutes to get past the initial phase of flying around on an empty screen.

So based on that, even though the game costs less than a dollar, I can recommend it only to people who really enjoy the genre and can overlook these flaws. But I must admit that I really liked the background music.

Digseum by Rat Monthly (2024)

Another title that I can only describe as just alright... as best. The beginning was very promising, then the game quickly falls flat. The prestige system, and therefore the whole gameplay loop, is, in my opinion, too repetitive. Even though the upgrades that we get with it were interesting enough to hook me to some degree, the whole experience quickly became a sunk cost fallacy of okay, I will continue playing it because it's a short one rather than okay, I will continue playing it because I enjoy it and I want to know what will happen next. At some point I basically stopped reading what these upgrades even do, because it didn't matter at the end.

One of the first upgrades that I was looking for, was to get ability to destroy more tiles with each click, because it quickly started to feel like a chore. When I finally got that upgrade, it just became a mindless clicker, which ended up being boring for me.

As one review on Steam said: (…) it belongs on itch.io for free, no offense. And for me, that's the best summary of this title. If you like incremental games and want something short and simple to pass two or three hours, then maybe it's worth a look. But honestly, I think I should have bought something else… or just looked for a free title on itch.io after all.

Nodebuster by Goblobin (2024)

Now there's finally something I can really recommend (unless you have epilepsy, then not). Graphically, it's the simplest of the four titles I'm reviewing here; you just destroy red squares (and later other shapes in different colors too) and that's it.

I really tried to find a logical arguments for why I enjoyed this game that much, but in the end, I was unable to. Its simple gameplay concept completely drew me in… which made me unable to leave it even when I really needed to go to the toilet :v

It's just a plain gameplay loop: destroy squares, buy upgrades, destroy more squares, buy more upgrades. Yet somehow it gave me that just one more upgrade syndrome. When I finished Deep Space Cache and Digseum, my reaction was alright, let's get back to The Crew. However, when I finished Nodebuster, I still wanted to play it more. Surprisingly, I think it's a good thing this game is short (2-3 hours), because it didn't overstay its welcome.

Shelldiver by Gagonfe (2025)

When Steam recommended it to me, I wasn't sure if it looked interesting to me. Then I saw a (Polish) gameplay on YouTube, and after a few minutes of it, I bought the game and beat it in one session. The gameplay loop of collecting jellyfish and floating debris is addicting, especially thanks to a small exploration element. The upgrade tree is very well made, where every single one does something significant, and some of them are quite creative. Even if, like in the previously mentioned Digseum, at some point you can just stop caring what they're doing, but in this case it was only the last few minutes of the gameplay, thanks to the total annihilation of everything around (which was very satisfying to watch).

Yes, annihilation. Shelldiver captures really well the everything gradually becomes more insane part of incremental games that I mentioned at the beginning.

Same as with Nodebuster, I still wanted more after finishing, but again, because the game is short (took me 3,5 hours to finish) and therefore really packed with gameplay, you're constantly doing something. For me, there wasn't even a single boring part.

I will (probably) update this post in the future by adding more reviews of incremental games that I liked or disliked (hopefully more of the ones I liked).

What I want to play next: A Game About Feeding A Black Hole, Chop Chains, Incredicer, (the) Gnorp Apologue, Tower Wizard.

Btw, SteamDB reminded me why the Polish Steam prices are rip-off (Shelldiver in this case, but it applies to all games mentioned in this post):

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