Hello, I’m Alesheeko and I’ve been working on a belly inflation idle game off and on for around a year. The goal is to get the inflatee‘s belly to be as big as the multiverse! (I hope I put this in the right category.)
So basically, you have 5 producers: Air or pump produces points every second like in cookie clicker. Water recharges then produces points rapidly for X amount of turns or “gulps.” Food gives you a large amount of points but is slower. Magic makes a random amount of points between X% and Y% of your goal. Science produces a small amount of points but it always improves itself every turn.
You have a goal (top right corner) you must reach to earn D-bloons. D-bloons let you upgrade your producers and doing so not only makes them stronger but also unlocks general upgrades (left).
Right now I’m focusing on the gameplay rather than the appearance so please excuse the crude dev art. Things are subject to change.
I would like to encourage various strategies and synergies between producers through upgrades.
Do people like a lot of upgrades or is it tedious design? I’m struggling with my D-bloon system. Should I add another way to get D-bloons, any ideas on that? Would adding a way to “un-upgrade” producers help? Should I swap D-bloons to buy upgrades instead of producers? Fans of idle games, I would like your feedback before I continue on. Thank you.
Just kinda spitballing while I eat dinner (as someone who plays a lot of idle games), even though most of this post probably wont be THAT relevant to this specific game:
Upgrades and upgrade synergy is the key to a good clicker/idler, it makes all the upgrades chip in at least a little, where a lot of really bad/cheap idle games have all the upgrades completely disconnected from each other and the player just upgrades whatever’s next on the list, slowly grinding their way up for no mechanical gain until eventually the tools/buildings/whatever just run out and you’ve “beaten” it.
I’m talking about stuff like “if you build 50 pump factories and 25 helium tanks, you unlock an upgrade that makes it so that pump factories gain 10% of helium tank production and vice versa”.
It’s shocking how many idle games both big and small don’t understand this and just make the buildings just a big ladder to climb forever because the devs don’t play idle games.
As for the three “builds” of your game, I almost feel like they’d be a… fork partway through a prestige, like the first few buildings are more generic stuff but then after a bit of progression (not TOO much, it’s a kink game), you unlock the ability to pick a “path”, choosing between pump/liquid/food and that’s what you get the rest of the run, and each building changes icons and names to suit your chosen path, like a fast food burger joint on the food path would instead be a party store (knockoff Party City or something) that sells balloons and helium tanks on the pump path.
If you don’t like the path you chose, there’s a rebirth mechanic (tbh all idle games need a rebirth mechanic) and rebirthing is when you can switch paths if you want.
Also I kinda feel like a traditional currency would be a bit less confusing, and have D-bloons be the prestige currency instead, as the name sounds a bit too “special” for what you use it for.
Anyway, uh, sorry if this post is a mess, my birria ramen derailed my train of thought multiple times.
100% accurate. The core gamplay loop in an idle clicker is “Click the thing” and “Update the number make bigger to a bigger number”, but engagement is miles apart between a game that offers a stream of obvious choices where the player knows exactly what to do next and one where there are enough options and interdependencies that the math of optimal play is nebulous. It’s a huge part of the difference between something like Groundhog Life and the dozen+ nonsense unoptimized abandoned vibe projects that show up under IDLE tags on itch every week.
Why not, I don’t know, have the producers be interactive once unlocked? Maybe like make it possible to have some that require clicking and some that become automated?
For instance, the different sources that some of the inflation materials come from: with air, there’s obviously the difference between a hand pump and an air tank with a twist knob - you could upgrade through different hand pumps overtime with upgrades before getting to the air tank, and even after you can upgrade the air tank.
Similar with water as well: you can either have some upgrades for gulping the water (or other liquids) down before using upgrades to make it easier, until you can just have a setup where there’s a way for a hose to bypass the need for the throat at all. Or change where the hose goes.
And then there were the extra ones you suggested - magic and science. I’m going to be honest, unless you’re going the Fairly Oddparents/Grounded route on what those two things look like (magical backup and “Raw Science”, respectively), you should probably put more thought into what those are other than “vague thing that relates to genre”.
You could also do what Cookie Clicker does and have a Prestige class setup, where the player pops and can restart. Maybe by tying it to influence gained for being so notable the bigger you get? If you’re tying it to magic/science methods, maybe have some kind of unlock that allows your character to gain access to either science labs or magic based groups (I don’t know, a witch’s covenant or something) depending on your run and influence. I don’t know, I’m just wondering if you should add things similar to a visual novel, sort of like Sort the Court or, tied more closely to our inflation/weight gain community, the Goblin Queen game.
I am intending to have producers be more interactive as they level up, adding more functionality and even changing icons the higher the level.
Now that I think about it, while I did have a path for magic and science, I do feel they are a little niche to be full blown producers. (science maybe but how often do we see science themed expansion) Perhaps converting them to upgrades referencing various methods may be better for them.
I may have an idea for the magic and science producers; while not producers, you could take a page out of an old flashgame’s handbook and take some inspiration from Mastermind, World Conqueror. In the game, you can unlock/purchase various types of meansto upgrades, sort of like a tech tree. Admittedly, the game is not an idle clicker, but it does have elements of such that might be good for drawing inspiration from.
