There are WG-centric clickers. There are WG-centric incrementals.
I don’t know of any WG-centric Idle games. The kind where you (mechanically) build an engine for maximizing returns, then walk away for hours to let it do its thing. Kitten Game, Trimps, Etc.
Supporting the idea, we’ve got the appeal of ‘Number Go Up’, which I think is probably closely aligned in the reward center of the human mind with the themes of this website. Working against the idea, we’re talking about including disengagement cycles and waiting in our fetish material, and I don’t see a lot of overlap between WG and Victorian Courtship Drama.
I’ve been worrying over the viability fo this genre for a bit. Even programmed a rudimentary game that explores it, only adding weight to the love interests when Real Time meal hours pass. But I’m still unsure…
What do you think? Could a game in the WG Appreciation Space, that is satisfying as a Weight Gain game, run on mechanics that require the player to walk away and take a multi-hour break regularly?
If you are building your game around human psychology rather than making something you enjoy, you should probably work for EA.
FWIW, I really dislike idle games; I can forgive some grind in a more narratively-rewarding game but pure skinner-box design feels more exploitative than anything else.
Honestly, I don’t think a WG Idle game would work. Half of the enjoyment of seeing number go up is the reaction and description, or images even. Getting up and walking away just to have a number ticker up seems like it could be any game, not specifically for a WG thing.
I made an idle game a while ago. I’m honestly not proud of it…
If you want to pull inspiration from it ,the name is feast and fortune, you should be able to find it under my name on the forums and itchio.
The problem I found is that the numbers being “big” and being realistic is not compatible. Like , a burger costing 5 quadrillion dollars is not realistic, but at the same time , if you want to keep it realistic , you have to cap everything down so much that it won’t be fun.
I’m with you on not just spinning up Skinner Box based rethreads of existing mechanics. So many idle and incremental games are just ‘purchase tiered generators, each subsequent purchase costs 1.7 times the last one’ with a thin thematic coat of paint on them… and without exception, those all suck.
But I do enjoy the small number of Idle games that offer considered bespoke experiences. Where fail states are swapped out for progress delays, but player skill is still the core decider on how fast and far a player can proceed.
(I think I’d rather live in my car and eat out of grocery store dumpsters than work for EA. Those jerks killed my favorite studios, over and over. They’re more a venture capital firm than a game studio.)
I’ve actually had a similar thought that tying weight gain to real time could make for a realistic feeling game.
You could have some low effort dailies that don’t take much time to complete (e.g. working, making food, feeding, going on a date, etc.) and random events that trigger. Over time, the weight would compound at a rate matching real life.
Think tomodachi life but with weight gain elements. Of course, this would require a bunch of events and dialogue to not feel repetitive (and perhaps some good dynamic weight modeling).
I’ve seen only 1 idle wg game that works, I forgot it’s name but it was a gain jam entry where you were running a sushi place and feeding and stuffing the girls using it (The clicking coming from catching fish) but it never got off the initial concept, so I know it can be a good idea, it just needs proper execution around the mechanics. Most WG Idle games fail since it focuses around one girl instead of multiple(Or multiple people/men if you swing that way) so I would take notes from Changer’s Spiral Clicker for a potential wg idle game rather than most of the examples the community has to offer, as long as you can handle the scope that is.
Try looking up “Crush Crush” and “Blush Blush” from Sad Panda Studios. If you can take those concepts and add a more dynamic design element, you might have something.
Those games don’t have weight gain, but the relationship based incremental might be what you’re looking for, with your own fetishistic twist. Though you also might want to just look at old playthroughs of those games as well, as they’ve become rather disappointing and samey.
I don’t think that’s a real dealbreaker if the design specifically focuses on the ability to change how the person gains and lets you gain in different (potentially multi-fetish?) ways, though I will agree that idlers aren’t the best at handling scope, since if your actions per day are limited, the player will eventually self-limit.
As a genre, I have always felt like games reliant on RL time elapse was a product of the mobile game industry and browser games developing the concept of ‘dailies’ for ‘player retention’ and drip-feeding freemium content rather than being a legit player-first design.