Summary

• Genre: Incremental / Idle
• Objective: Touch Grass (it’s one of the tasks)
• Main Gimmick: This game pokes fun at the incremental genre and real life in general. It’s also built to be memorable (especially in making fun of mobile ads).
• Short (30-60 minute) Demo
• Controls: Mouse-only (left click to click buttons)
• Made in 10 days (~90 hours) for Inbound Shovel Jam 2025 with the theme “Just Get Started!”. The game fits this theme because you must repeatedly start each task

Details

• Keep clicking to begin each task: Unmute the music, Click the button, Balance the beam, Power the station, Watch the annoying ad, and Touch grass
• Currencies include: Music, Copper, Silver, Energy, Diamonds, and Grass
• Start by tediously working every task, but eventually automate everything and then touch grass!
• The game autosaves once every second

Game Screens

The early game

The end game

The annoying ad (mid-animation)

Development Workflow

2025-07-11 to 2025-07-12:

• Brainstorming

2025-07-13:

• Upgrade tables, Menus

2025-07-14:

• Main menu, Settings, Credits, Main game page

2025-07-15:

• Task station template (includes button icon, progress bar, upgrade buttons, and text)
• Music task station, General code functionality

2025-07-16:

• Autosaving, Currency displays, Settings menu in main game, Music station, Copper station
• Currency art
• Keeping track of real-life time
• UI improvements

2025-07-17:

• Silver station, Energy station

2025-07-18:

• Music and energy station UI improvements
• Energy shop, Automation bars
• Diamond station (for ads)
• Annoying ad

2025-07-19:

• Completed all task stations
• Ads, Diamond shop, Energy shop, Demo end screen
• Playtesting
• Failsafe - ERASE FILE button must be clicked 10 times before working
• Audio, Credits
• The game demo is complete except for polishing

2025-07-20:

• Bug fixes
• UI improvements
• Exported to browser format
• Cover image, Screenshots, itch.io page

Currency Function and Symbolism

Music:

• Symbolizes morale and motivation
• It’s initially tedious to grind for that morale, but after awhile, you have to put in less effort to sustain it
• You can only upgrade the rate at which you gain this currency by so much, so despite the amount of every other currency you collect, you can only do so much to increase the rate at which you complete the game and touch grass

Copper:

• Your generic idle game currency
• Copper isn’t worth much in most games, so you’ll have to grind hard to earn a respectable amount of it
• Gain copper by clicking the button once every few seconds (you aren’t allowed to click faster)
• You won’t need more than a few hundred copper in total across the entire demo

Silver:

• Earn this by balancing the beam (really, you just click a button whenever you want to fill the progress bar to the max)
• Ironically, you get a lot more silver than copper. After your first few hundred silver, you’ll notice a “hyperinflation” effect, which occurs because of the linearly increasing price vs exponentially increasing rewards per upgrade
• The hyperinflation stops when you have to buy future upgrades using other currencies.
• The amount of time you keep earning the silver can be increased using music, which allows for a smooth, linear increase.

Energy:

• This is the lifeblood of automation. The holy grail of idle games.
• You initially have to grind it out for energy, but you can almost immediately spend energy to automate any of the tasks you have access to
• You can either go all out in automating one or two tasks, or you can automate all the tasks at a low efficiency. Your choice! That’s how energy (as in electricity) works in real life when you only have so much energy to spare
• The price of each upgrade only depends on the total number of upgrades you bought, doubling each time. So you’ll have to pick wisely what you automate, or be extremely patient and automate everything

Diamonds:

• Annoying ads. I had to make fun of those annoying mobile ads somehow.
• You can never upgrade this station, but you can buy access to Forced Ads using energy
• Also, it costs energy to watch ads unless it’s a forced ad. The diamonds can be spent on bonuses to your music, copper, silver, and energy earnings

Annoying Ads: I managed to implement the following traits in the annoying ad:

• The characteris carrying a sword
• The character is repeatedly dragged to stab the enemy
• The character gets dangerously close to another enemy in a way that makes the player think “This isn’t quite right. Let me fix it.”
• The ad misrepresents the actual product. In this case, the actual product is a previous game I posted. It’s fun, but not as fun as the ad implies. That’s the punch line.
• The annoying ad (mid-animation) is shown above

Grass:

• This station is the end goal, so unlocking it means you get 1 grass per second
• Clicking on the icon takes you to the demo end screen.

Personal Goals

My main goals in making this game were as follows:

1. Make my first Incremental game
2. Get widespread exposure to a larger audience via a large game jam (1000+ participants will make for some serious market coverage)
3. Rate the other games in the Inbound Shovel 2025 Game Jam
4. See how popular incremental games are compared to other games

Possible Future Additions

• More currencies (Hearts, XP, Gold, Grass, Platinum, Skill Points, Spells, etc.)
• More task stations that correspond to each new currency

Keeping the specific features open to change, some ideas I have include:

• Heal the Hero: Regenerate all your health (Hearts) every once in awhile. If you die, you must play a revive ad OR wait for the next opportunity to heal.
• Defeat the Enemies: Earn XP by killing the enemies.
• Touch Grass: While this task exists in the demo, I’ll probably make this an idle station where you get substantial bonuses to your automation. The amount of grass you have will grow linearly, but the added idle bonus for each currency will increase based on the logarithm of the amount of grass. The moment you try to buy upgrades, buy new items, or be active in general is the moment all your grass is “blown away”.
• Manage the Miners: Earns gold based on worker morale.
• Skill Points: The prestige mechanic, where you can spend skill points on small but permanent bonuses (like +10% to copper progress bar speed or +1% to music earned per second).
• Pay to Win: Earn in-game dollars and spend them like you would real money in a mobile game for permanent bonuses, like greatly reducing ad watch time. However, the ability to earn money will likely be limited, like in real life. Or I could make this a trading port for currency-to-currency conversions. Not sure yet.
• Spells: Temporary boosts or effects which can be applied immediately or over a few seconds or so. For example, one spell could be “Destroy a Station”, which would bypass a station in exchange for something, like not having to wait awhile to unlock an expensive station each time you prestige. Another spell could be “Rage Mode”, where you increase the game’s speed and all progress bars are at their max, with significant boosts to the amount of each currency per second.
• I’ll keep my other plans a surprise so I can surprise you dev log readers with at least something.

I am not sure how long it will take me to complete the full version of this game. 1 year? 4 years? Who knows? For now, just enjoy the demo :)

Credits

Game by:

• blablastickman

Music by Kevin Macleod (incompetech.com):

• “Mesmerizing Galaxy “
• “Rising Tide” - Remixed by blablastickman
• Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
• http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Sound Effects:

• energy by Leszek_Szary – https://freesound.org/s/146733/ – License: CC0
• Hit 02.wav by michael_kur95 – https://freesound.org/s/254532/ – License: Attribution 3.0
• Click.wav by budek – https://freesound.org/s/513481/ – License: CC0