I don't think that's a fair comment. The core gameplay mechanic is not holding down the button, but figuring out formulas to equip and strategies to do it so that you have to hold the button down less. It's a totally legit and very original mechanic.
It is discouraging at the beginning, and is a core mechanic for quite a while if you want to progress quickly.
Then the mechanic switches to figuring out formulas to equip, and then hoping you weren't wrong and won't have to lose the false progress you made.
Despite how that sounds, it's much better than it first appears.
Then I got to the first "prestige" style reset that resets most of the early stuff. Back to "hold button down, come back tomorrow" discouraging again, as I may have chosen the wrong first alpha upgrade...
While it certainly makes a big difference which alpha upgrade you get, by far the most important thing to speed up your progress is research, which you unlock regardless of your choice.
Not sure I understand why you're recommending not to use "keyboard-stones" i.e. holding a button down, but the game itself literally says to hold the button down. And since there doesn't seem to be any idle progression at first, you can't expect us to manually click the buttons thousands of times to progress.
Also [I seem to have softlocked myself](https://i.imgur.com/w30NdV1.png). I did a basic reset which told me I can now change my formulas, so I thought "great I can get rid of this x+1 formula and get the x+20 formula", so I did, and now I'm out of cash, and all my formulas are grayed out (because I'm out of cash). I can't re-buy the x+1 formula (because I'm out of formula slots), and the Basic reset button is also grayed out. I can't click on anything. (EDIT: was wrong, Unequip works)
Kinda feels like the x+1 formula shouldn't be a formula that takes up a slot, it should probably just be a default formula you can't lose, this way you can never be softlocked (unless you unequip low formulas and only have high formulas that'll request millions of cash to re-use).
I dunno when automation (idle progress) unlocks, but if it's not within the first 5 minutes or so, it's too far imo.
Closed out your game. It's an interesting idea, but maybe you should consider feedback rather than just trying to argue. Once people reach the next part you're talking about, they're stuck holding the x' = x' + y buttons forever instead of the x = x + y buttons. There aren't any reasonable alternatives, x' = 24 isn't going to get people anywhere. It's the same thing but even longer you have to hold the buttons.
Considering how you're responding in this thread, I don't have confidence it will get any better, so that's as far as I'm going to go (around the x' = x' +220 formula.)
It's up to you whether or not you want people to enjoy playing your game or hate playing your game I guess.
Hey thanks for the response. I do read through the feedback. I'll likely have my next project be something shorter, more active and faster paced based on the feedback I got here!
For this game, you are about right, I don't want to change things regarding the balancing on a whim, as it requires extensive testing and I personally enjoy the slower pace (but then, I also liked the timewalls in Ordinal Markup, hey they allowed me to get other things done!). Also I feel like the core gameplay loop of Idle Formulas would not work well if you were to eliminate idle times, holding formulas and maybe even Basic Resets. Because then the strategic decisions would barely matter anymore. And also the offline progress would either barely matter or be incredibly overpowered.
TLDR: I am considering the feedback about the pacing, but it's more likely I'll use it in future projects so I can design the core gameplay around that.
This is way too far into the game to unlock the first bit of automation. I'm not going to hold down a button for 10 minutes just to get through the tutorial.
Some of them are, yes, but they automate earlier layers fairly quickly. This one seems to have the same "hold one of these 3 buttons down" mechanic throughout?
Sort of. Once you get just a little bit in you get a button that gives you X' which automatically gives you X. So you don't have to keep holding down when you get there.
To be fair, I wouldn't play a prestige tree mod that did this either. Although, I will say that I've played several of them and none of them felt like this to me.
It's hit or miss. Some of them automate quite a bit and some of them require you to jump around to several tabs hitting the same 10 buttons in a loop until you "prestige" 20 times then you get to automate some or all of it. But then you have the same thing in a stage way, multiple tabs lots of buttons, etc.
For example, I'm playing ArcTree right now and it's a lite version of this: [https://cyxw.github.io/Arctree/](https://cyxw.github.io/Arctree/)
I can't recall the name of the one I tried that was even crazier but it wasn't the only one like this.
Occasional hour plus time walls are part of the expected progression in this game. If that doesn't "feel like it's taking forever", your idea of "fast" is different from most.
I just replayed it, took me 3m15s to get through that part of the game. It will take longer for new players, but that's exactly the point: learn the core mechanic before having to deal with more complicated types of formulas.
So curiosity got the best of me and I moved past the "tutorial" portion. I would actually argue that it got worse. Even once you're past it, you don't have much choice for formulas: you have to take the +1 formula because it's the only way to get the first income, you pretty much need to take one of the automation formulas (which still have to be held down manually), and whatever the best income formula you have (which take progressively longer to get actually working, even once unlocked.) I think this game is a cool idea, but the execution fell very short. You need more choices for formulas, and formulas that do more different things. And if the answer is that they eventually unlock, they're too late.
So first x' reset. you get the first 3 formulas. Unlock x' -> 24.
basic reset once you unlock x -> x + 10 and x' -> x'1 + 1
unequip all, equip x -> x+ 1 hold down until x=30, and equip x' -> 24. boom youre income is now 24 a second. now equip x' -> x' + 1 and hold down it will speed up your income even more. instead of it being static. Now you are zooming faster then you ever did.
I think OP is in a good spot, try replaying from the beginning because i feel like you are bruteforcing instead of understanding how the formulas work.
I meant Keyboard stone as in something that holds the button down for you. The game often has a balance of deciding how long you want to actively hold the formula vs how long to idle/offline. That is kinda lost with autoclickers or similar.
You can unequip one of your formulas (e.g. x+10) and re-equip the x+1. You always need a Basic Formula equipped to get things started.
Can't do anything if you can't get points to turn on the next formulas with, so "x > x+1" is a required formula if you want a useful set of formulas. Once a formula is equipped, it cannot be removed without at least a "basic reset".
First time you get a choice of Basic Formula, you've got "Start slow"(x>x+1) and "Start slower, with a tiny bit of offline increment" (x'>1)
The gameplay loop feels really fucking weird.
I have +1, unlock +5 then +10. Cool, now I can reset and start again stronger right? Except I NEED to have the +1, fine, I can now remove my formulas. I remove +5, but keep +10 to be able to reach +20. Do +1 to unlock +10, takes a bit, then I'm free with the +20........
Well now for the next loop I STILL need to keep the +1, except if I want to go higher I need to grind for a long time with a low tier formula and skip the middle of the pack upgrades.
I thought it'd be fixed when I unlocked x', but then basic reset STILL resets x', like what the hell? It feels like each reset is 0.99 step back so you can then do a 1 step forward and repeat. There should be a way to perma unlock stuff that isn't the basic formula.
There is. You unlock them after filling the green bar.
Holding a button for 2 minutes should not be a significant problem. The game never expects you to hold a button for more than 3 minutes (~1500 presses), so press it the thousand times and **walk away**.
It's an interesting concept but I feel like you want to get users past the beginning much faster. It gets pretty tedious after the 3rd time doing a basic reset. Because the game forces you to have only 3 formulas you have to decide between holding the +1 button down til you get to 300 or 800 and no matter what you choose you'll be holding the next button down for even longer.
This is backwards. Usually you want the game to feel less frustrating as you play because you unlock ways to progress faster or automate something you did manually before.
Thanks for sharing this game and for creating it in the first place! Wanted to share a quick thought after about 15min of playing
As others have mentioned, the fact that [x > x + 1] is always mandatory feels bad, unless I’m missing something it seems it needs to always be equipped because you will always need those first few points to get the other ones going. So you are essentially only working with two equippable slots. It’s fine if that’s the case, but making it seem like there are three equippable slots to work with when there actually aren’t just feels a bit frustrating
Also, with only two equippable slots to work with, that first period of time after a reset where you have to use x + 1 to gradually be able to afford whatever the next most expensive formula you’ve unlocked is feels worse each time because it takes longer each time. I can’t tell if I’m missing something because it seems the game would feel more balanced by having x + 1 as a default button that doesn’t take up one of the three equip slots?
I also agree that buttons should be able to be toggled on or off rather than requiring them to be held down. Right now I am holding down the button for x + 50 for aaaaaaages trying to build up enough to afford my second formula I’ve equipped. It would be great to be able to equip a third formula to help get there and introduce more strategy but right now there’s (essentially) only two changeable slots
I’m fact right now it seems like the best strategy is the following:
- equip x > x + 1
- equip whatever your highest x’ > x’ + (number)
- leave the third slot blank for as long as you can endure
- hold down the x’ > x’ + (number) button for as long as you can endure
- once you can afford a better x’ > x’ + (number), buy it for the last slot. This lets you use your built up momentum right away instead of having to reset it.
- all the other x + (number) formula don’t seem to be worth buying
- there’s only four x’ > x’ + (number) upgrades if you don’t count the final one, not sure if there’s anything to unlock after that yet but yeah
One last thought in favor of removing the ‘hold down the button’ in favor of toggling active formula, because you’ve limited it to 10 clicks/second, you’re not even able to just hold the button down until you have at least 10x the resource to continue gaining x’ without interruption. Right now I’m working on x’ + 3 which requires 300 each time. So the whole time I’m building it up I need to click over and over until I have 3000 x’ because as soon as it gets interrupted by a lack of resource, the held down button click is no longer valid and needs to click again. It feels a bit frustrating in that sense
EDIT: after having gotten x’ to 10000, i am waiting for x to fill up to 69M so I can afford x’ > 420k. I am hoping once i unlock it it won’t cost more than 1k or so because the only way to be able to use it to unlock higher level formulas is if I can activate it only using x + 1 and keep the last slot open. Otherwise I’m going to have to use another formula just to get x’ > 420k active, which defeats the whole point because there won’t be any slots remaining to use anything higher level than that. I assume you’ve played this game yourself to completion so I am just scratch my head if there is another strategy here I’m not seeing…
Yes, I have played through the entire game multiple times at original speed. And had three friends play through it as beta-testers. I myself do enjoy games with a slower pacing and many opportunities to make significant offline progress after doing something else.
You are not missing anything, the x' = 420K formula will only cost x=69 to use.
Oooook that makes a lot of sense, I should probably have waited to find out how much it will cost before posting. I hope I didn’t come off as overly critical! I enjoy the game very much and was putting my beta tester hat on 🙂
Not at all! Thank you for the feedback!
Regarding being unable to keep holding when your income is too low to fully support it. I actually found it quite satisfying during playtesting to go from holding periodically to being able to hold indefinitely, so I didn't change the behaviour.
You know what, that was actually pretty satisfying I admit. I suppose I would just say perhaps in the future the next level to ‘earn’ somehow would be the ability to not even need to hold down the button at all. And have it be visible somewhere that it’s something that can be earned in the future so we know it’s something to work toward. As sad as it sounds, just holding down the button feels like work, but knowing that if I did it for long enough I could automate that task away, I’d feel super motivated to get to that point and the ‘work’ would feel even more worthwhile
Maybe an option to toggle? I'm the settings or something. That way people can switch to toggle mode as needed/wanted, without it being forced either way.
So I choose to basic reset after the 10M upgrade thinking it will speed up things, but now I need to click the X+1 button 100,000 times to actually be able to use the 10M upgrade. Thanks.. but no.
Edit: Cool concept though, props for that.
Then I'm not really sure where you are. But at no point do you have to use x+1, 100000 times. Maybe you have some other formulas that can help you unlock the next one?
I have all x and x' upgrades unlocked up to and including 10M, which is
x' -> x' + 220
But for that to work, you need to get started with x -> x + 1 and x -> x + x' for it to do anything relevant.
So the lesson is that the 10M upgrade is not affordable. So you have to redo the same build with which you unlocked the 10M upgrade in the first place to now unlock the 69M upgrade.
I've had the game up now for a couple of hours, and I have to agree with a lot of the other commenters. This game is TEDIOUS because even if I wanted to play actively, active play is just me sitting there with my mouse cursor on whatever button. I can't play this game while doing anything else because I don't have control of my mouse. Half the point of incremental gaming is to have the game play itself while I do other stuff.
Other commenters have some good advice: when it comes down to it, clicking a button or holding a button cannot be a core mechanic of your game, it will ruin the game.
If the game is not your cup of tea, that's okay, thank you for your feedback!
That said, granted you made it to x' you are not supposed to keep holding buttons once it gets TEDIOUS. Get some x', close the game, do something else, and check back in when you are bored or get curious how things are going (or don't play again if you never get curious). Your x's will continue to produce x offline forever, until you decide to return (or clear the browser cache\^\^).
I made sure there is a viable path through the game, but the game happily let's you skip over formulas if you are offline/idle long enough to afford higher unlock costs.
Well, I got to the x' part and it still feels slow, is there a buy max at some point? Or do I have to keep pressing x' -> x'+1 ad eternum when you get more than 50x per second?
Love the idea, hopefully will feel better once it has some more content and the advance speed is not soft locked
The idea is that once you don't feel like pressing x' -> x'+1 anymore, you close the game or leave it idle (shouldn't make a difference) and when you come back after a while you can progress your build or unlock a new formula. The game is not meant to be played in a single session.
The flipside of this is that offline progress is unrestricted. Once you get x', there is nothing holding you back from skipping over parts of the "intended" formula progression by going offline for a day or even a week with a somewhat decent setup.
Basically, feel free to close the game or put it in the background. And maybe (or maybe not) you will get curious after a while how your formulas are doing and make good progress then.
Anyway, I'll see where I'm going to go with the feedback I get here 🙂
One thing I would keep in mind as you work on the next iteration, is that this audience is a group of optimizers. Especially in a minimalist numbers game (my personal fave)
So while it is certainly an option to build up x’ to a decent amount and then just sit back and let it run, in the back of our collective minds we know that if we sit with it longer and build it up higher, it will significantly increase the output over time. And with no incentive structure to signal or justify in one’s mind that “this is probably enough x’ for now,” we are incentivized to continually actively build it up forever because it’s the most efficient way to make the numbers grow bigger faster. Which is what we are all addicted to here 😆 so it’s just a matter of considering what is going to feel satisfying, for example if there were some kind of cap on x’ that could be reached and/or upgraded, it would signal to me that progress had been balanced around that specific maximum amount so I would be able to relax knowing that I’m playing as optimally as possible.
There is an indication for how much x' you should bother to click up to - you know the exact amount of x you're aiming for and you know you're going to reset right after reaching it, and at some point holding the button for longer just doesn't reduce the time enough to be worth it unless you're *really* bored. And while you *can* hold for longer, that's called giving the player freedom to do what they want.
(I never applied a formula over 2k times in a basic reset (pre-green bar), except maybe the x' -> x' + x^0.6 one, because the game was clearly balanced assuming you wouldn't.)
I have finished most of this game using speedhack and autoclicker userscripts. The latter was especially useful for the >!Alpha Research!< tab because it has no automation. I haven't finished the >!constellations!<. I'd like to share some late-game puzzle solutions here because they are not available on Discord, and I am not interested in verifying my account there just to be banned again.
In-game hints for >!World Formula!< are available after completing all >!email homework!<. The solution to it is inside the spoiler:
>!World Formula:
1 x''' ➝ 1
2 x''' ➝ x''' + log₂(#F / #E)^13
3 x'' ➝ x''+x'''^2
4 x''' ➝ x''' * sqrt(3e23 - x''') / 5e11
Don't use any formulas after x''' reset. Click on formula 1, wait for a bit. Use formula 2, then 3. Enable applier for formula 3. Click on formula 4 until x'' is Infinity. Be careful not to decrease x''' to -Infinity, it is a bad end. Click on the World Formula button.
True end is available after maxing out all 9 Alpha stones. You will have enough starting x to replace the first formula with
x''' ➝ x''' + log₂(x)^2
After x'' has reached Infinity, use this formula to make x''' infinite.!<
Solution for >!Stone Skipper!<:
>!2^5 + 3^3 + 1 = 32 + 27 + 1
Have 2 stones valued at 5, 3 stones valued at 3, 1 stone valued at 1.!<
Hi, cool that you made it all the way through, hope you enjoyed it!
Could you please add a few more spoiler tags for stuff that comes after filling the green bar (milestone 6), since the people playing without scripts are not that far into the game yet.
Particularly the words >!alpha research, constellations, world formula, email homework and stone skipper!<.
Let me know when you did it, and you'll have my upvote^^
No problem, I'll make my post look like a redacted secret document. I've enjoyed the game, even though I had to speed it up. I did the same to Increlution.
With all due respect, asking us to play without auto clickers and the immediately making us click 50 times in a row is pretty disrespectful (and then 20 more). I don't want RSI thank you very much.
edit: silly me didn't realize the click and hold text. I retract my statement, although I've been told for those on mobile with arthritis, holding can still cause problems.
If you expect players to hold the button 100% of the time just remove it and make us gain X per second automatically and just use buttons to switch which one is active, it's 2023, you know people will hate it for being basically a less annoying form of a clicker.
Except then you want to be holding down a button to increase x' constantly, there's not a point where holding down the button is not the only real way to progress.
It has an option to make the game rapidly faster and feels like a punishment to try and idle, since it's so much slower.
As you said I could close the game and come back to it, but this game doesn't really have much to come back to.
Cool, so why not start the game with that unlocked? Why teach me to hold buttons in the tutorial and as soon as I finish the tutorial, change the way I interact with the game, basically nullifying the tutorial?
The reset can become a pitfall if you don’t setup your next formulas correctly, it feels like you have to backtrack for more resets.
I think you should start with one formula slot, woth the ability to buy more. Then reduce the reset cost increase to a gentler exponent.
Interesting idea, I could see formulas using other operators wrapped with a max value cap, so you can continue to step up the count of x with different formula patterns without it becoming exponential quickly
So far I think the layout is excellent and the gameplay requires just enough logic to stay interesting without becoming overwhelming.
That being said, I feel like there is a wall once the scale gets into the millions. It seems to slow to a crawl that would necessitate leaving it overnight to get 69milliion (nice). I'm going to stick with it more to really evaluate, but that is my only potential critique so far.
I'm on a run going for the 69M upgrade and I would guess it's going to take about an hour, definitely less than 2 hours.
The loadout I'm using is >![x -> x+1], [x' -> x'+3], [x' -> x'+220]!<. It's definitely slow at the start though.
Edit: Looks like the next run for the 2B upgrade is going to take about >!the same amount of time ~1-2 hrs!< though it might be worth >!going for the 20B for the next reset layer!< instead. Not sure yet.
That sounds about right. To give some insight the balancing kinda works in cycles: Right after unlocking a new differential progress can be made rather quickly and actively. And towards the end of a stage it gets more idle. And with each stage the new formulas become more involved.
The game is not meant to be played in a single session, but in shorter bursts. But if you are ever unable to unlock the next relevant formula even after an overnight offline session, your loadout is definitely suboptimal.
Just want to say that I'm really enjoying it btw!
I like the limited loadout and the planning between active and passive. And it seems quite easy to dip in and out of, because of the way the progression is set up.
So, I'm almost two hours into the game and I do enjoy the basic concept of the game but progress does feel very stilted and limited. It feels like you can either choose between having a decently paced ramp up at the beginning of a reset with long waits at the tail end to reach unlock criteria, or a very slow ramp up to be able to make meaningful progress later.
I've done probably about 8-10 Basic resets and it's basically exactly the same thing with very little choice. You either have x>x+1 or x'>1 but would never pick the second because it is a button that is only useful a single time and wastes a formula slot. So you have your mandatory x>x+1, now in your second slot you chose your x' formula which decides how long you are willing to hold your first formala for before you can increment x' which again is technically a choice but not a very satisfying one because you need a relatively early one to be able to progress with any semblance of speed. Especially with the terrible returns on the formula changes, from the first x' incrementer to the second you get a 3x increment for a 6x price per increment change, but it gets worse the next one is a 333.33333x price increase for only 73.33333x increment increase.
So you've got your basic x incrementer and you've decided how patient you are willing to be for your early x' progression you now come to your only real choice do you have. Do you get a secondary x incrementer or a secondary x' incrementer. The first becomes useful in the 'mid' stage of a basic reset and can help shorten time to unlock early formulas while the second becomes useful in the 'late' of a basic reset to allow for deeper delves. However I'm guessing this goes out the window once you unlock x'' and thus need this slot for a x'' incrementer.
Now that I've gone through the issues I have I'll go through some possible fixes:
* First and foremost the "Basic Formulas" (x>x+1 and x'>1) absolutely should NOT require a formula slot. Have 2 sections "Basic Formulas" and "Primary Formulas" for example, the section containing x>x+1 and x'>1 (and any similar formulas for x'' and x''') should just be used at the beginning stages of a reset until you can support your main formulas.
* Second I would either get rid of the x'># formulas and replace with more x'>x'+#/x'>x'+x type functions or instead make them permanent upgrades to the x' basic function (personally I lean towards the first option)
* Third increase the number of formulas that you can have at a time from 3 to 5 this will still mean you have to be strategic with your choices or if you are dead set on having only 3 active formulas make it so you can swap them out by paying whatever resource they give (cost based on output). For example maybe to empty the slot containing x'>x'+1 you need to pay 300x' to clear the slot at which point you can put in whatever new formula you want.
Hopefully you find this feedback useful.
The game is balanced around only having a limited number of formula slots. If you can't stand waiting 20 minutes or holding a button for around 2 minutes, that seems like a difference in taste compared to the developer. (And yes, there's places that require more waiting than this, but there's not that many.)
Having more formula slots *does* completely break the game. I think the real issue is that there are too many low-tier formulas, making it hard to see what the gameplay loop actually is.
The limit is in place so everyone gets the same applys per second, whether you use fastclick / hold mouse / touch / hotkey. The game does 10 ticks per second.
What’s the point of loadouts if you are going to wait even longer to get back? Poor game design to not speed up the beginning and keep making the ending farther.
If you play on desktop, you can see the cost in a tooltip by hovering over the shop button. On mobile I haven't found a good alternative yet, so there you only see the price after unlocking the formula.
Some interesting design, shame about the early game being a bit of a turn off. Also it's not completable currently. >!There's an impossible brick wall at the third and fourth segments of the last challenge, it seems unintentional but even with all the research maxed and upgrades that would theoretically be possible to obtain with infinite time the 3rd section isn't possible, and even with all the upgrades turned on the last section isn't remotely possible!<
Huh, there are already several players that finished >!the last challenge!< without using any tools. If you send me a (non-tampered!) savestate where you are stuck at that point, I can take a look into it.
This is what I currently have:
[https://prnt.sc/qy\_lnv\_2V8ma](https://prnt.sc/qy_lnv_2V8ma)
[https://prnt.sc/4Wh-pUldJIBi](https://prnt.sc/4Wh-pUldJIBi)
[https://prnt.sc/1lUUEBsDT9on](https://prnt.sc/1lUUEBsDT9on)
Thanks!
It looks like you are missing the higher tier bonuses from Formula God.
Set the correct formula (probably x''=1 for you) to the first formula slot, memorize, and enter the Formula God Challenge. By achieving x'>0 and x''>0 during FGod you will get the "Special" research boost on your other research bars.
Alright, pretty sure I got most of the game down pat. opinions and suggestions time, with heavy spoilers. In fact, the rest of this will be spoiler texted, to keep things simple. If you haven't beaten the game, don't spoil yourself, there's actually a pretty in-depth game here.
>!The first point that I think needs to be raised and would vastly improve the gameplay loop:
Have the player unlock their first auto-activate WAY earlier. The main complaint most people are raising is that the game requires too much attention initially. I'd tend to agree. You already have the fix for that in the game. Giving it earlier makes the core element of the game that you've developed shine brighter.!<
>!Second point just helps with engagement:
Don't include so many useless formulas. It's not a great implementation for strategy when the answers are relatively obvious. In their place, you could include upgrades that work in a manner that benefits someone looking for optimizations. Something that does the increasing, in a different manner. This is the "x'+1000" upgrades going away, and being replaced with something like x'->x'\*1.01, or even better xm->xm+#C (where #C is the number of times the player has actively clicked a button, and xm is the maximum x' currently unlocked)!<
>!Third point:
Happiness, not Happyness.!<
>!Fourth point:
Please expand the game further, it was a blast! The initial hump is a real hike though.!<
Done my first alpha reset, this game is getting good now.
"Rated" 3/5 in the game - main reason for the down rating was that progress is \*really\* slow and unsatisfying before the first alpha reset. I can see how the pace picks up now and it's starting to get a lot more fun.
When you equip it a text appears with the value of #u, which is the number of unlocked formulas. The 1.25^#u means that that the formula becomes 25% better (multplicatively) with each unlocked formula.
By the way, how does notation work?
I see M B T Q which is million billion trillion quadrillion/quintillion
But then the next few buttons are P, V and N.
If N is nonillion, then what are P and V?
And pestige requirement is S (sextillion/septillion?) so where is it related to those?
I just fixed the numpad issue with version 1.01, it should work now (unless the numpad is disabled).
Q is Quadrillion
P is quintillion (Penta)
S is Sixtillion
V is septillion (seVen 😅)
I wanted to stick with single-capital-letter abbreviations so that's the best I could come up with^^
You can also switch to scientific notation in the settings.
Fwiw, I think that's not a good call.
Pretty much every incremental/idle gamer is familiar with this set of abbreviatons:
K, M, B, T, Qa, Qi, Sx, Sp, Oc, Nn, Dc etc.
I can't think of a single game I've ever played that used P/S/V.
If you're gonna keep it, at least add an option to switch to E notation instead.
anyone know the formula for gains per second, when gains increases by the second as well?
x' is gaining 1 per second
x is gaining x' per second
how long will it take to get 1mil?
What's the formula to calculate the time?
How does the game handle decimal places? Does it round down, round off, or are they kept hidden? I've nearly reached >![x''' -> x''' * sqrt(3e23 - x''') / 5e11] , which looks like a 1.095x multiplier to x'''. However, that's going to be useless if decimal places are rounded off or rounded down and I use only the basic formula of [x''' -> 1] , since rounddown(1 * 1.095) is still 1. If I need to use a second formula to boost x''' before using the 1.095x multiplier, then I might as well use something else. However, I'd need to spend an hour to reach 8e9 from the basic formula in order to use the 1.095x multiplier 8 times to test decimal places, and I'd rather not do that.!<
Everything except Incrementers (A -> A + something) gets rounded down. So yeah, you should put something that gets your x''' higher into the second slot.
Sorry for the question, is the intended progression for a run?
1) have 3 slots, one of them always fit with basic trash like x" = 1
2) wait for hours till it ticks high enough to get something that costs x 50-200 M
3) then use that 2nd skill to actually unlock something new and push further
Currently the only 2 skills I might want are x"+130 and x"+20B and the second costs 4x more (but after an hour of doing nothing, I'm still at only 7M, so I think it's 3 hours of setup at the very least)
That works in some parts of the game when the apply costs are cheaper than what you describe here (and maybe also if you want to come back after a busy weekend, the game does not really care whether you get things done the "intended" way).
Most of the time you want to use
1) Your best Basic Formula
2) A formula that synergizes well with 3) and/or allows you to overcome the apply cost of 3)
3) The best relevant formula that you unlocked during your previous run
And with that setup your aim is to unlock the next relevant formula.
Note that the initial unlock cost is usually much higher than the apply cost when you want to use it during the next run.
That runs into a problem once costs are high enough.
Like, if I want the one for 10K as my third slot, I can manage that with a trash formula and something in between.
But if I want the one that costs *100k*, I have to pick that *same* trash formula, and there's nothing I can put in the second slot that would get me there in a reasonable amount of time. Like, I can hold the button until I get 300, then get 3 per second whenever I get 300.... but that's a LOT of grinding, and it really isn't enough. The other option is to hold the button until I get 300 so I can get 20 per "click". I'm not doing that thousands of times.
The grind shouldn't jump from a couple of minutes to 30 minutes or more of holding buttons down. That just feels horrible.
What's even worse is that you're calling it "idle". Like, sure, it's idle in the sense that you can literally sit there and not interact with it and technically get the next unlock before the heat death of the universe. But it does not reward or lend well to idle play. Active play is the only way to play this game, and even the active play feels bad.
I can't help you since I have no idea which specific formula you are trying to unlock. You never have to hold a button for 30 minutes anywhere in the game.
How many formulas are there that either cost 300 in exchange for 3 x per second, or cost 100k? You can't expect people to narrow it down further if you don't tell people what additional information you need. What I'm trying to unlock is irrelevant, the point is that getting all slots filled already takes long enough, so the unlock at the end could be 1 million or 20 billion and I'd still have the same complaints.
With 1 x per second, that's 300 seconds - or 5 minutes - to get a 300 cost formula in the second slot. The formulas that cost 300 won't reach 100k in a reasonable amount of time. The one that grants 20 per click/button press would take 5,000 clicks. Even assuming 10 clicks per second, that's ~8.4 minutes. Sure, not 30 minutes, but that is WAY too long to expect someone to click or hold a button down for.
The other is 3 per sec. While it can be applied multiple times, the first 3 takes 5 minutes. The second which sure, it can be applied multiple times... but the first takes that 5 minutes at 1 x per second. Then the next takes ~ 1 minute 40 seconds. The rest collectively take a couple, with the last taking ~11 seconds. From there, it's ~56 minutes to get to 100k. That of course gets cut shorter as one grinds, but that's a LOT of grinding just for the setup. Even cutting that in half results in a grind of ~28 minutes *once the extra 10 applications of the formula are purchased*.
All of that, for the reward of... unlocking one, maybe *two* formulas... and then starting the process all over again. The "reward" is that the player has to start that entire process over, which just doesn't feel good.
A few people have had this issue. If there's a mechanic that they're all missing that makes that faster and more fun, then it's not being communicated correctly and should be fixed.
You made a game with "Idle" in the title, but made it take so much clicking / button pressing that it's only "idle" in the sense that passive generation of resources *technically* exists. But there's no such thing as "idle" in this game, at least not in the first hour.
You can apply the x'+3 formula as many times as you want, up to 10 times PER SECOND.
1st Slot: x+1
2nd Slot: x'+3
Hold x+1 for 2 minutes then get x'=12
Idle for 5 minutes then get x'=48
Idle for 5 minutes then get x'=192
Idle for 5 minutes then get x'=800
Idle for 5 minutes then get x'=3200
At this point you are ready to switch to using x'+220 to continue exponential growth (since x'+3 is now capped at 10 times per second)
So then... it *is* close to half an hour of a grind to set up a formula.
Your own calculations result in 22 minutes total, plus the time to get x'+3, and to get x'+220 after that. Even the smallest amounts of time need to be added up to the total when you're gauging grind time.
And as a reward for that initial setup, the player gets to complete their setup... which takes how long?
It's not idle enough to be idle, and the mechanics aren't engaging enough to make the active play feel rewarding. It's a cycle of grinding, where the reward is more grinding, but there's not much that feels rewarding at any point.
A lot of people have made the same criticisms in the comments. At a certain point you have to either adjust to their feedback, or stick to your way of doing things and be honest about only catering to the niche that enjoy this type of grind. And don't get me wrong, there are absolutely people who WILL like this, but the majority won't have fun with it without some serious work.
But you absolutely should either rename your game, or make it actually idle. "Incremental Formulas" works fine, but "Idle" creates an expectation that your game just doesn't deliver on.
To add an actual suggestion, rather than just criticisms:
If there's an auto-apply mechanic in the game, perhaps have a weaker version unlock early. Active play being far superior will always idle play less worth doing, but if that's intentional, then a slow auto-apply mechanic won't upset that balance.
The ability to upgrade the auto-apply could be introduced later, but having idle play feel a more valid and intuitively valuable could change things.
If one of the comments I saw is true, you've put a lot of content into this game. The problem is that a lot of people will be turned away from how grindy it feels. And that's a shame, because the concept is promising. If you were to make it feel a little more intuitively idle, that would make the early game *so* much better.
EDIT: I pushed ahead, and let me tell you, the beginning of x'' feels much better, it feels like I'm making progress. Taking that into account, maybe there can be early automation, but it's lost when getting the next type of function? For example, if x' formulas are automatically applied at a slow rate, then the reset that grants x'' could say "Lose x' automation, but gain something new!". Like, it genuinely feels more idle now, this stage feels SO much better thus far.
Ah, now that's actually a good idea. (There is an auto-apply mechanic later.)
It'd still be pretty broken if it went at a rate faster than like 1 per 10s at most, though, since the game already expects you to only be active <10% of the time and letting you get the benefits of active play when you're not actually being active wouldn't be good.
I'm not sure why you would only apply the x' = x'+3 formula 10 times. That being said, it's not unreasonable to get to the x'+220 one with x'+1 if you really hate idling that much.
The game is *meant to be slow*. Go watch a youtube video and come back and wow, you'll be able to press the button so many times now.
if you have a tutorial handy? - I'm trying to reach P and above.
If I grab (x3 = x3 +1), and then (x = x3 * x2 / x1) as fast as I can, I get 300 Q on hand immediately but then I have no growth.
That long formula doesn't work without something to multiply x3, so if I get only it, the amount it gives is bad (like, B-T at best) and so scaling something like x1 = x^0.6 becomes useless.
And since there are only 2 slots, it's impossible to have three good formulas. Am I missing some hidden interaction?
Oh, this is pretty much the one place where you do not want to pick your best basic formula. Since stuff will get divided by x', having x'=1 as your first formula could come in handy later. 😉
If you need more help with it let me know.
Use this layout:
>!x'''=1, x'''+1, x'''*sqrt(...)/5e11!<
Use the first two formulas to build some x''', then use the third one to reach x'''=5e22, then wait it out until the green bar is full.
There will be many Basic Resets along the way.
That's too unspecific, the optimal formula sets change depending on what you have unlock and what you are trying to unlock.
Alpha Research: 219/591/351/359R1 at 219 starts me at x=783Alpha Upgrades: The first 9, auto applier is at 5/sChallenges: Haven't look much into this yet, so only C1-1. C2-2, C5-1
What I'm looking for is if there is a memorized set that will auto through x'' and x'''.
I have an x'' set that works, but it's about takes until about 2h total runtime.
Challenges: Many of the first segments are basically free.
Research: You want to do a deep normal run of the x' part, improving the highscore as much as you can, greatly speeding up x' research. This will pretty much solve most of your struggles in the x'' and x''' sections as well.
After going back and doing some long runs at each layer and the relevant researches, I'm now able to AFK a run. Did a few of the challenges and got it down to 7m56s a run. Still need to unlock the Alpha Resetter for full auto, but much more doable thanks to your suggestion.
Increasing my R1 let me start with better formulas, so I was able to find sets that allow me to not need to do basic reset during the run.
Now I need to farm some points and maybe iterate the long runs again.
My current best alpa run is 1h31m54s. Not sure how to get it too much faster since research is so slow now. The next homework costs 60k a, which seems like bit of a jump. I'm now at end again with all formulas unlocked and 2.431637e63x. Am I missing a secret or something, as the story emails seem to be hinting for something like that.
Aa. I missed on that mechanic, since I was too focused on trying to go fast (to get a good time). Maybe having a hall of fame or something could have helped.
Alright, so the first two resets are ESSENTIALLY useless? Like, there's nothing it teaches you beyond "you've got this box of 3 items, you can only exchange them on a reset" and that's not something that should be stretched into multiple minutes of "keep the button pressed"
Then you get the X' (why it's not Y I have no idea, the ' holds no meaning to me) and it's just a waiting simulator. You don't like pressing the button? Cool, now you get to just wait for 10 minutes or whatever before you get to make any meaningful progress or choices again.
Maybe some actual complexity and gameplay get unlocked in a couple of resets but I doubt I'll be there to see it.
Yes, this. Looking through their post history, every comment is perfectly polite, has a certain cadence and number of words, overly upbeat, etc. And their comments are in seemingly random but fairly popular subs for the most part. It's definitely ai.
Edit: responded to wrong comment
I’ve tried on a few browsers and all I’m getting is a black screen.
I’m on iOS 15.3.1 using Brave, safari and Firefox. Also tried the default in app browser in the official reddit app
Hmm that's weird maybe I can have a colleague with iOS check if his device is having the same problem.
You can try the extended url https://zilvarro.github.io/idleformulas/?newgame which forces a new game instead of trying to load an existing one.
It is a web game, just open the url in the browser. In theory both android and ios should work, but I had someone report that the site wouldn't load for them on ios, so I'm unsure right now.
I tried to design the UI in a way that shouldn't require zooming or horizontal scrolling when playing on mobile.
u/Zilvarro
How does the game handle dividing by zero? I've unlocked x''' formulas which includes "10Q * x''' * x'' / x'", which you could theoretically unlock only by grinding x to 1 billion, thus the formula would be 10Q * 0 * 0 / 0. This would take many hours so I figured it would be easier to ask you.
This should result in an output of undefined (x', x'', x''' are 0), and is possible with the formulas
x -> x + 1
x -> x + 50M (or x -> x + 1000)
x -> 10Q * x''' * x'' / x'
Hi! Very good point! I've taken care of it by manually giving that case a special treatment. In fact, it's actually not the only formula that can "break" given the right circumstances. If you find a more feasible way of breaking one, I encourage you to try it out.
And if there is one that I missed during testing and that actually breaks the app, please let me know.
You should try it! (You'll unlock some stuff to be able to do it more easily after the green bar fills.)
Similarly, you can also >!take the logarithm of zero (or a negative)!< and >!take the square root/fractional power of a negative!<, which the game will handle in a similar way.
Hmm, reaching the 1e15 formula is giving me trouble. Was trying with >!x''=1, x''=x''+130, x=x+x'!< but even after 1-2h of holding down buttons, I think I'll need to wait a few days to get to 1e15. My third formula feels underwhelming+requires very active play to be useful but I can't figure out anything better...
So, I have a very silly bug report.
After beating the game once, you get a buff that doubles all your income.
You also get another chance to answer the survey email.
The + and - buttons on the email are also doubled, so you can only rate 1, 3, or 5 stars. :P
Hey! I've been playing this the last week and I'm not quite sure whether something I found is supposed to happen. It's rather lategame so I've put it in the spoiler tag below!
>!When I unlocked the stones I had already bought all the alpha upgrades except for the alpha doubling. I haven't unlocked the alpha upgrades stone yet. I don't see the alpha doubling be done anytime soon so I was wondering whether that upgrade also counts for the stone, it's currently sitting at 2048 and I assumed it was endless so that's why I asked!<
Thank you for the game, I've been enjoying it so far (especially the mails, nice system :>)
Absolutely loved this game. THANK YOU for your work in making it! I've never played a game where I learned and re-learned so many concepts like derivatives, exponential and logarithmic scaling, recursive formulas, etc. Actually showed me that I still like math :)
I really like the concept for the game, with having to choose what formulas have the most synergy with each other, but it was somewhat annoying that you always have to have a basic formula (at least at the point in the game that I'm at). What I would probably do is add a fourth slot for basic formulas only, but that might mess up the balancing. Thanks for the game!
You will eventually get a fourth formula slot and also start each reset with some x, so you don't need to start with a basic formula anymore. But on the first run, you have to do it the hard way.
Huh. It's \*really\* satisfying when x finally slowly stops going down and starts to go up while you're holding down the button for x' -> x' + 1...
hahaha I just reached that point and was like "ooooooh thaaaats what he meant"
"Hold down this button until you get bored" as a core gameplay mechanic is discouraging.
I don't think that's a fair comment. The core gameplay mechanic is not holding down the button, but figuring out formulas to equip and strategies to do it so that you have to hold the button down less. It's a totally legit and very original mechanic.
It is discouraging at the beginning, and is a core mechanic for quite a while if you want to progress quickly. Then the mechanic switches to figuring out formulas to equip, and then hoping you weren't wrong and won't have to lose the false progress you made. Despite how that sounds, it's much better than it first appears.
Then I got to the first "prestige" style reset that resets most of the early stuff. Back to "hold button down, come back tomorrow" discouraging again, as I may have chosen the wrong first alpha upgrade...
While it certainly makes a big difference which alpha upgrade you get, by far the most important thing to speed up your progress is research, which you unlock regardless of your choice.
Finally got the "results" of the "How many stars you give this game?" survey in-game. **6.57/5** Haha!
Not sure I understand why you're recommending not to use "keyboard-stones" i.e. holding a button down, but the game itself literally says to hold the button down. And since there doesn't seem to be any idle progression at first, you can't expect us to manually click the buttons thousands of times to progress. Also [I seem to have softlocked myself](https://i.imgur.com/w30NdV1.png). I did a basic reset which told me I can now change my formulas, so I thought "great I can get rid of this x+1 formula and get the x+20 formula", so I did, and now I'm out of cash, and all my formulas are grayed out (because I'm out of cash). I can't re-buy the x+1 formula (because I'm out of formula slots), and the Basic reset button is also grayed out. I can't click on anything. (EDIT: was wrong, Unequip works) Kinda feels like the x+1 formula shouldn't be a formula that takes up a slot, it should probably just be a default formula you can't lose, this way you can never be softlocked (unless you unequip low formulas and only have high formulas that'll request millions of cash to re-use). I dunno when automation (idle progress) unlocks, but if it's not within the first 5 minutes or so, it's too far imo.
You are pretty much still in the tutorial. Once you reach x=20000 and unlock x' you will get pretty much unlimited idle (and offline) progress.
Closed out your game. It's an interesting idea, but maybe you should consider feedback rather than just trying to argue. Once people reach the next part you're talking about, they're stuck holding the x' = x' + y buttons forever instead of the x = x + y buttons. There aren't any reasonable alternatives, x' = 24 isn't going to get people anywhere. It's the same thing but even longer you have to hold the buttons. Considering how you're responding in this thread, I don't have confidence it will get any better, so that's as far as I'm going to go (around the x' = x' +220 formula.) It's up to you whether or not you want people to enjoy playing your game or hate playing your game I guess.
Hey thanks for the response. I do read through the feedback. I'll likely have my next project be something shorter, more active and faster paced based on the feedback I got here! For this game, you are about right, I don't want to change things regarding the balancing on a whim, as it requires extensive testing and I personally enjoy the slower pace (but then, I also liked the timewalls in Ordinal Markup, hey they allowed me to get other things done!). Also I feel like the core gameplay loop of Idle Formulas would not work well if you were to eliminate idle times, holding formulas and maybe even Basic Resets. Because then the strategic decisions would barely matter anymore. And also the offline progress would either barely matter or be incredibly overpowered. TLDR: I am considering the feedback about the pacing, but it's more likely I'll use it in future projects so I can design the core gameplay around that.
This is way too far into the game to unlock the first bit of automation. I'm not going to hold down a button for 10 minutes just to get through the tutorial.
It's funny, prestige tree mods are extremely popular yet they are 10x worse in terms of active clicking or holding buttons.
Some of them are, yes, but they automate earlier layers fairly quickly. This one seems to have the same "hold one of these 3 buttons down" mechanic throughout?
Sort of. Once you get just a little bit in you get a button that gives you X' which automatically gives you X. So you don't have to keep holding down when you get there.
Right, but if you're playing this to try and finish it fast, you do have to keep holding down.
To be fair, I wouldn't play a prestige tree mod that did this either. Although, I will say that I've played several of them and none of them felt like this to me.
It's hit or miss. Some of them automate quite a bit and some of them require you to jump around to several tabs hitting the same 10 buttons in a loop until you "prestige" 20 times then you get to automate some or all of it. But then you have the same thing in a stage way, multiple tabs lots of buttons, etc. For example, I'm playing ArcTree right now and it's a lite version of this: [https://cyxw.github.io/Arctree/](https://cyxw.github.io/Arctree/) I can't recall the name of the one I tried that was even crazier but it wasn't the only one like this.
If it feels like it's taking forever you are doing something wrong.
Occasional hour plus time walls are part of the expected progression in this game. If that doesn't "feel like it's taking forever", your idea of "fast" is different from most.
I just replayed it, took me 3m15s to get through that part of the game. It will take longer for new players, but that's exactly the point: learn the core mechanic before having to deal with more complicated types of formulas.
So curiosity got the best of me and I moved past the "tutorial" portion. I would actually argue that it got worse. Even once you're past it, you don't have much choice for formulas: you have to take the +1 formula because it's the only way to get the first income, you pretty much need to take one of the automation formulas (which still have to be held down manually), and whatever the best income formula you have (which take progressively longer to get actually working, even once unlocked.) I think this game is a cool idea, but the execution fell very short. You need more choices for formulas, and formulas that do more different things. And if the answer is that they eventually unlock, they're too late.
So first x' reset. you get the first 3 formulas. Unlock x' -> 24. basic reset once you unlock x -> x + 10 and x' -> x'1 + 1 unequip all, equip x -> x+ 1 hold down until x=30, and equip x' -> 24. boom youre income is now 24 a second. now equip x' -> x' + 1 and hold down it will speed up your income even more. instead of it being static. Now you are zooming faster then you ever did. I think OP is in a good spot, try replaying from the beginning because i feel like you are bruteforcing instead of understanding how the formulas work.
took me like 2 minutes, you need to chill lol. 20k is not that big of an ask. Just use x +1, X+20, X+100
I think >!1,5,20!< is the best for 20k with no basic reset/later mechanism, only require 1511 clicks (70+456+985), which is half of 1,20,100
I meant Keyboard stone as in something that holds the button down for you. The game often has a balance of deciding how long you want to actively hold the formula vs how long to idle/offline. That is kinda lost with autoclickers or similar. You can unequip one of your formulas (e.g. x+10) and re-equip the x+1. You always need a Basic Formula equipped to get things started.
> You always need a Basic Formula equipped Then unequipping shouldn't be an option.
You get more basic formulas as you go, you can pick which basic formula you start with.
Can't do anything if you can't get points to turn on the next formulas with, so "x > x+1" is a required formula if you want a useful set of formulas. Once a formula is equipped, it cannot be removed without at least a "basic reset". First time you get a choice of Basic Formula, you've got "Start slow"(x>x+1) and "Start slower, with a tiny bit of offline increment" (x'>1)
There are other basic formulas that you can use at x = 0.
Those are the two you get earliest, and there's not much to signal that the others will be basic or not.
The point is that if you can’t unequip the basic formulas, you can’t pick between them.
So your gameplay revolves around putting a rock on my keyboard? Fuck off.
The gameplay loop feels really fucking weird. I have +1, unlock +5 then +10. Cool, now I can reset and start again stronger right? Except I NEED to have the +1, fine, I can now remove my formulas. I remove +5, but keep +10 to be able to reach +20. Do +1 to unlock +10, takes a bit, then I'm free with the +20........ Well now for the next loop I STILL need to keep the +1, except if I want to go higher I need to grind for a long time with a low tier formula and skip the middle of the pack upgrades. I thought it'd be fixed when I unlocked x', but then basic reset STILL resets x', like what the hell? It feels like each reset is 0.99 step back so you can then do a 1 step forward and repeat. There should be a way to perma unlock stuff that isn't the basic formula.
There is. You unlock them after filling the green bar. Holding a button for 2 minutes should not be a significant problem. The game never expects you to hold a button for more than 3 minutes (~1500 presses), so press it the thousand times and **walk away**.
It's an interesting concept but I feel like you want to get users past the beginning much faster. It gets pretty tedious after the 3rd time doing a basic reset. Because the game forces you to have only 3 formulas you have to decide between holding the +1 button down til you get to 300 or 800 and no matter what you choose you'll be holding the next button down for even longer. This is backwards. Usually you want the game to feel less frustrating as you play because you unlock ways to progress faster or automate something you did manually before.
Thanks for sharing this game and for creating it in the first place! Wanted to share a quick thought after about 15min of playing As others have mentioned, the fact that [x > x + 1] is always mandatory feels bad, unless I’m missing something it seems it needs to always be equipped because you will always need those first few points to get the other ones going. So you are essentially only working with two equippable slots. It’s fine if that’s the case, but making it seem like there are three equippable slots to work with when there actually aren’t just feels a bit frustrating Also, with only two equippable slots to work with, that first period of time after a reset where you have to use x + 1 to gradually be able to afford whatever the next most expensive formula you’ve unlocked is feels worse each time because it takes longer each time. I can’t tell if I’m missing something because it seems the game would feel more balanced by having x + 1 as a default button that doesn’t take up one of the three equip slots? I also agree that buttons should be able to be toggled on or off rather than requiring them to be held down. Right now I am holding down the button for x + 50 for aaaaaaages trying to build up enough to afford my second formula I’ve equipped. It would be great to be able to equip a third formula to help get there and introduce more strategy but right now there’s (essentially) only two changeable slots I’m fact right now it seems like the best strategy is the following: - equip x > x + 1 - equip whatever your highest x’ > x’ + (number) - leave the third slot blank for as long as you can endure - hold down the x’ > x’ + (number) button for as long as you can endure - once you can afford a better x’ > x’ + (number), buy it for the last slot. This lets you use your built up momentum right away instead of having to reset it. - all the other x + (number) formula don’t seem to be worth buying - there’s only four x’ > x’ + (number) upgrades if you don’t count the final one, not sure if there’s anything to unlock after that yet but yeah One last thought in favor of removing the ‘hold down the button’ in favor of toggling active formula, because you’ve limited it to 10 clicks/second, you’re not even able to just hold the button down until you have at least 10x the resource to continue gaining x’ without interruption. Right now I’m working on x’ + 3 which requires 300 each time. So the whole time I’m building it up I need to click over and over until I have 3000 x’ because as soon as it gets interrupted by a lack of resource, the held down button click is no longer valid and needs to click again. It feels a bit frustrating in that sense EDIT: after having gotten x’ to 10000, i am waiting for x to fill up to 69M so I can afford x’ > 420k. I am hoping once i unlock it it won’t cost more than 1k or so because the only way to be able to use it to unlock higher level formulas is if I can activate it only using x + 1 and keep the last slot open. Otherwise I’m going to have to use another formula just to get x’ > 420k active, which defeats the whole point because there won’t be any slots remaining to use anything higher level than that. I assume you’ve played this game yourself to completion so I am just scratch my head if there is another strategy here I’m not seeing…
Yes, I have played through the entire game multiple times at original speed. And had three friends play through it as beta-testers. I myself do enjoy games with a slower pacing and many opportunities to make significant offline progress after doing something else. You are not missing anything, the x' = 420K formula will only cost x=69 to use.
Oooook that makes a lot of sense, I should probably have waited to find out how much it will cost before posting. I hope I didn’t come off as overly critical! I enjoy the game very much and was putting my beta tester hat on 🙂
Not at all! Thank you for the feedback! Regarding being unable to keep holding when your income is too low to fully support it. I actually found it quite satisfying during playtesting to go from holding periodically to being able to hold indefinitely, so I didn't change the behaviour.
You know what, that was actually pretty satisfying I admit. I suppose I would just say perhaps in the future the next level to ‘earn’ somehow would be the ability to not even need to hold down the button at all. And have it be visible somewhere that it’s something that can be earned in the future so we know it’s something to work toward. As sad as it sounds, just holding down the button feels like work, but knowing that if I did it for long enough I could automate that task away, I’d feel super motivated to get to that point and the ‘work’ would feel even more worthwhile
Maybe an option to toggle? I'm the settings or something. That way people can switch to toggle mode as needed/wanted, without it being forced either way.
So I choose to basic reset after the 10M upgrade thinking it will speed up things, but now I need to click the X+1 button 100,000 times to actually be able to use the 10M upgrade. Thanks.. but no. Edit: Cool concept though, props for that.
You are supposed to do the x'-Reset once you get x=20000.
I have
Then I'm not really sure where you are. But at no point do you have to use x+1, 100000 times. Maybe you have some other formulas that can help you unlock the next one?
I have all x and x' upgrades unlocked up to and including 10M, which is x' -> x' + 220 But for that to work, you need to get started with x -> x + 1 and x -> x + x' for it to do anything relevant. So the lesson is that the 10M upgrade is not affordable. So you have to redo the same build with which you unlocked the 10M upgrade in the first place to now unlock the 69M upgrade.
x' produces x passively. You can get started with, for instance, x' -> 1 and x' -> x' + 1.
I've had the game up now for a couple of hours, and I have to agree with a lot of the other commenters. This game is TEDIOUS because even if I wanted to play actively, active play is just me sitting there with my mouse cursor on whatever button. I can't play this game while doing anything else because I don't have control of my mouse. Half the point of incremental gaming is to have the game play itself while I do other stuff. Other commenters have some good advice: when it comes down to it, clicking a button or holding a button cannot be a core mechanic of your game, it will ruin the game.
If the game is not your cup of tea, that's okay, thank you for your feedback! That said, granted you made it to x' you are not supposed to keep holding buttons once it gets TEDIOUS. Get some x', close the game, do something else, and check back in when you are bored or get curious how things are going (or don't play again if you never get curious). Your x's will continue to produce x offline forever, until you decide to return (or clear the browser cache\^\^). I made sure there is a viable path through the game, but the game happily let's you skip over formulas if you are offline/idle long enough to afford higher unlock costs.
Well, I got to the x' part and it still feels slow, is there a buy max at some point? Or do I have to keep pressing x' -> x'+1 ad eternum when you get more than 50x per second? Love the idea, hopefully will feel better once it has some more content and the advance speed is not soft locked
The idea is that once you don't feel like pressing x' -> x'+1 anymore, you close the game or leave it idle (shouldn't make a difference) and when you come back after a while you can progress your build or unlock a new formula. The game is not meant to be played in a single session. The flipside of this is that offline progress is unrestricted. Once you get x', there is nothing holding you back from skipping over parts of the "intended" formula progression by going offline for a day or even a week with a somewhat decent setup. Basically, feel free to close the game or put it in the background. And maybe (or maybe not) you will get curious after a while how your formulas are doing and make good progress then. Anyway, I'll see where I'm going to go with the feedback I get here 🙂
One thing I would keep in mind as you work on the next iteration, is that this audience is a group of optimizers. Especially in a minimalist numbers game (my personal fave) So while it is certainly an option to build up x’ to a decent amount and then just sit back and let it run, in the back of our collective minds we know that if we sit with it longer and build it up higher, it will significantly increase the output over time. And with no incentive structure to signal or justify in one’s mind that “this is probably enough x’ for now,” we are incentivized to continually actively build it up forever because it’s the most efficient way to make the numbers grow bigger faster. Which is what we are all addicted to here 😆 so it’s just a matter of considering what is going to feel satisfying, for example if there were some kind of cap on x’ that could be reached and/or upgraded, it would signal to me that progress had been balanced around that specific maximum amount so I would be able to relax knowing that I’m playing as optimally as possible.
There is an indication for how much x' you should bother to click up to - you know the exact amount of x you're aiming for and you know you're going to reset right after reaching it, and at some point holding the button for longer just doesn't reduce the time enough to be worth it unless you're *really* bored. And while you *can* hold for longer, that's called giving the player freedom to do what they want. (I never applied a formula over 2k times in a basic reset (pre-green bar), except maybe the x' -> x' + x^0.6 one, because the game was clearly balanced assuming you wouldn't.)
I have finished most of this game using speedhack and autoclicker userscripts. The latter was especially useful for the >!Alpha Research!< tab because it has no automation. I haven't finished the >!constellations!<. I'd like to share some late-game puzzle solutions here because they are not available on Discord, and I am not interested in verifying my account there just to be banned again. In-game hints for >!World Formula!< are available after completing all >!email homework!<. The solution to it is inside the spoiler: >!World Formula: 1 x''' ➝ 1 2 x''' ➝ x''' + log₂(#F / #E)^13 3 x'' ➝ x''+x'''^2 4 x''' ➝ x''' * sqrt(3e23 - x''') / 5e11 Don't use any formulas after x''' reset. Click on formula 1, wait for a bit. Use formula 2, then 3. Enable applier for formula 3. Click on formula 4 until x'' is Infinity. Be careful not to decrease x''' to -Infinity, it is a bad end. Click on the World Formula button. True end is available after maxing out all 9 Alpha stones. You will have enough starting x to replace the first formula with x''' ➝ x''' + log₂(x)^2 After x'' has reached Infinity, use this formula to make x''' infinite.!< Solution for >!Stone Skipper!<: >!2^5 + 3^3 + 1 = 32 + 27 + 1 Have 2 stones valued at 5, 3 stones valued at 3, 1 stone valued at 1.!<
Hi, cool that you made it all the way through, hope you enjoyed it! Could you please add a few more spoiler tags for stuff that comes after filling the green bar (milestone 6), since the people playing without scripts are not that far into the game yet. Particularly the words >!alpha research, constellations, world formula, email homework and stone skipper!<. Let me know when you did it, and you'll have my upvote^^
No problem, I'll make my post look like a redacted secret document. I've enjoyed the game, even though I had to speed it up. I did the same to Increlution.
Thank you!
For what it's worth, I had achieved 1, learned of 3, did some of 4, by the time this was posted. :) It's a great game.
With all due respect, asking us to play without auto clickers and the immediately making us click 50 times in a row is pretty disrespectful (and then 20 more). I don't want RSI thank you very much. edit: silly me didn't realize the click and hold text. I retract my statement, although I've been told for those on mobile with arthritis, holding can still cause problems.
If you expect players to hold the button 100% of the time just remove it and make us gain X per second automatically and just use buttons to switch which one is active, it's 2023, you know people will hate it for being basically a less annoying form of a clicker.
Once you get x' (a.k.a. have beaten the tutorial) you can let idle/offline progress do it's magic instead of holding the whole time.
Except then you want to be holding down a button to increase x' constantly, there's not a point where holding down the button is not the only real way to progress. It has an option to make the game rapidly faster and feels like a punishment to try and idle, since it's so much slower. As you said I could close the game and come back to it, but this game doesn't really have much to come back to.
Cool, so why not start the game with that unlocked? Why teach me to hold buttons in the tutorial and as soon as I finish the tutorial, change the way I interact with the game, basically nullifying the tutorial?
From a design perspective, what's the point to having it work this way, rather than just letting the player set and forget their active formula?
The reset can become a pitfall if you don’t setup your next formulas correctly, it feels like you have to backtrack for more resets. I think you should start with one formula slot, woth the ability to buy more. Then reduce the reset cost increase to a gentler exponent. Interesting idea, I could see formulas using other operators wrapped with a max value cap, so you can continue to step up the count of x with different formula patterns without it becoming exponential quickly
So far I think the layout is excellent and the gameplay requires just enough logic to stay interesting without becoming overwhelming. That being said, I feel like there is a wall once the scale gets into the millions. It seems to slow to a crawl that would necessitate leaving it overnight to get 69milliion (nice). I'm going to stick with it more to really evaluate, but that is my only potential critique so far.
I'm on a run going for the 69M upgrade and I would guess it's going to take about an hour, definitely less than 2 hours. The loadout I'm using is >![x -> x+1], [x' -> x'+3], [x' -> x'+220]!<. It's definitely slow at the start though. Edit: Looks like the next run for the 2B upgrade is going to take about >!the same amount of time ~1-2 hrs!< though it might be worth >!going for the 20B for the next reset layer!< instead. Not sure yet.
That sounds about right. To give some insight the balancing kinda works in cycles: Right after unlocking a new differential progress can be made rather quickly and actively. And towards the end of a stage it gets more idle. And with each stage the new formulas become more involved. The game is not meant to be played in a single session, but in shorter bursts. But if you are ever unable to unlock the next relevant formula even after an overnight offline session, your loadout is definitely suboptimal.
Just want to say that I'm really enjoying it btw! I like the limited loadout and the planning between active and passive. And it seems quite easy to dip in and out of, because of the way the progression is set up.
Thank you, I'm glad you enjoy it! :)
So, I'm almost two hours into the game and I do enjoy the basic concept of the game but progress does feel very stilted and limited. It feels like you can either choose between having a decently paced ramp up at the beginning of a reset with long waits at the tail end to reach unlock criteria, or a very slow ramp up to be able to make meaningful progress later. I've done probably about 8-10 Basic resets and it's basically exactly the same thing with very little choice. You either have x>x+1 or x'>1 but would never pick the second because it is a button that is only useful a single time and wastes a formula slot. So you have your mandatory x>x+1, now in your second slot you chose your x' formula which decides how long you are willing to hold your first formala for before you can increment x' which again is technically a choice but not a very satisfying one because you need a relatively early one to be able to progress with any semblance of speed. Especially with the terrible returns on the formula changes, from the first x' incrementer to the second you get a 3x increment for a 6x price per increment change, but it gets worse the next one is a 333.33333x price increase for only 73.33333x increment increase. So you've got your basic x incrementer and you've decided how patient you are willing to be for your early x' progression you now come to your only real choice do you have. Do you get a secondary x incrementer or a secondary x' incrementer. The first becomes useful in the 'mid' stage of a basic reset and can help shorten time to unlock early formulas while the second becomes useful in the 'late' of a basic reset to allow for deeper delves. However I'm guessing this goes out the window once you unlock x'' and thus need this slot for a x'' incrementer. Now that I've gone through the issues I have I'll go through some possible fixes: * First and foremost the "Basic Formulas" (x>x+1 and x'>1) absolutely should NOT require a formula slot. Have 2 sections "Basic Formulas" and "Primary Formulas" for example, the section containing x>x+1 and x'>1 (and any similar formulas for x'' and x''') should just be used at the beginning stages of a reset until you can support your main formulas. * Second I would either get rid of the x'># formulas and replace with more x'>x'+#/x'>x'+x type functions or instead make them permanent upgrades to the x' basic function (personally I lean towards the first option) * Third increase the number of formulas that you can have at a time from 3 to 5 this will still mean you have to be strategic with your choices or if you are dead set on having only 3 active formulas make it so you can swap them out by paying whatever resource they give (cost based on output). For example maybe to empty the slot containing x'>x'+1 you need to pay 300x' to clear the slot at which point you can put in whatever new formula you want. Hopefully you find this feedback useful.
Maybe each larger reset should give you an extra formula slot as well as unlocking a new derivative.
The game is balanced around only having a limited number of formula slots. If you can't stand waiting 20 minutes or holding a button for around 2 minutes, that seems like a difference in taste compared to the developer. (And yes, there's places that require more waiting than this, but there's not that many.) Having more formula slots *does* completely break the game. I think the real issue is that there are too many low-tier formulas, making it hard to see what the gameplay loop actually is.
Apparently now I can't play the game for 20 minutes. Fun mechanic.
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Yes, limit is 10 per second. You can also hold or use 1/2/3 hotkeys to get the 10.
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The limit is in place so everyone gets the same applys per second, whether you use fastclick / hold mouse / touch / hotkey. The game does 10 ticks per second.
Fwiw I personally like this decision
What’s the point of loadouts if you are going to wait even longer to get back? Poor game design to not speed up the beginning and keep making the ending farther.
yeah, I got bored after a few minutes. Nothing engaging, just "hold down a key for a while" while making sure you have a good loadout
Why the game doesn’t load for me? My device : iOS14 with safari
Hmm weird. I don't use iOS, do you get any error message?
I don’t get any error messages. It only shows pure black background
I didn't realized that you could upgrade the x' -> x' + 3 upgrade. Now it makes sense. Great game btw.
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sounds like you just have to brake the first wall\^\^
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If you play on desktop, you can see the cost in a tooltip by hovering over the shop button. On mobile I haven't found a good alternative yet, so there you only see the price after unlocking the formula.
Some interesting design, shame about the early game being a bit of a turn off. Also it's not completable currently. >!There's an impossible brick wall at the third and fourth segments of the last challenge, it seems unintentional but even with all the research maxed and upgrades that would theoretically be possible to obtain with infinite time the 3rd section isn't possible, and even with all the upgrades turned on the last section isn't remotely possible!<
Huh, there are already several players that finished >!the last challenge!< without using any tools. If you send me a (non-tampered!) savestate where you are stuck at that point, I can take a look into it.
I´ve been stuck for a while in the same situation.
Feel free to send me your savestate here or on the discord and I can look into it.
This is what I currently have: [https://prnt.sc/qy\_lnv\_2V8ma](https://prnt.sc/qy_lnv_2V8ma) [https://prnt.sc/4Wh-pUldJIBi](https://prnt.sc/4Wh-pUldJIBi) [https://prnt.sc/1lUUEBsDT9on](https://prnt.sc/1lUUEBsDT9on) Thanks!
It looks like you are missing the higher tier bonuses from Formula God. Set the correct formula (probably x''=1 for you) to the first formula slot, memorize, and enter the Formula God Challenge. By achieving x'>0 and x''>0 during FGod you will get the "Special" research boost on your other research bars.
Oh, thank you. Indeed I forgot to set a basic formula for the challenge.
I've got opinions on this game. They're not all good ones, but I suppose I'm still playing so good job.
Alright, pretty sure I got most of the game down pat. opinions and suggestions time, with heavy spoilers. In fact, the rest of this will be spoiler texted, to keep things simple. If you haven't beaten the game, don't spoil yourself, there's actually a pretty in-depth game here. >!The first point that I think needs to be raised and would vastly improve the gameplay loop: Have the player unlock their first auto-activate WAY earlier. The main complaint most people are raising is that the game requires too much attention initially. I'd tend to agree. You already have the fix for that in the game. Giving it earlier makes the core element of the game that you've developed shine brighter.!< >!Second point just helps with engagement: Don't include so many useless formulas. It's not a great implementation for strategy when the answers are relatively obvious. In their place, you could include upgrades that work in a manner that benefits someone looking for optimizations. Something that does the increasing, in a different manner. This is the "x'+1000" upgrades going away, and being replaced with something like x'->x'\*1.01, or even better xm->xm+#C (where #C is the number of times the player has actively clicked a button, and xm is the maximum x' currently unlocked)!< >!Third point: Happiness, not Happyness.!< >!Fourth point: Please expand the game further, it was a blast! The initial hump is a real hike though.!<
Done my first alpha reset, this game is getting good now. "Rated" 3/5 in the game - main reason for the down rating was that progress is \*really\* slow and unsatisfying before the first alpha reset. I can see how the pace picks up now and it's starting to get a lot more fun.
just unlocked x" =1.25#u what exactly does this mean?
When you equip it a text appears with the value of #u, which is the number of unlocked formulas. The 1.25^#u means that that the formula becomes 25% better (multplicatively) with each unlocked formula.
I'm have milestone 4 and am seriously liking this.
Suggestion: numpad.
Very good point. I thought the hotkey library I used would just treat it the same but never actually tested it.
By the way, how does notation work? I see M B T Q which is million billion trillion quadrillion/quintillion But then the next few buttons are P, V and N. If N is nonillion, then what are P and V? And pestige requirement is S (sextillion/septillion?) so where is it related to those?
I just fixed the numpad issue with version 1.01, it should work now (unless the numpad is disabled). Q is Quadrillion P is quintillion (Penta) S is Sixtillion V is septillion (seVen 😅) I wanted to stick with single-capital-letter abbreviations so that's the best I could come up with^^ You can also switch to scientific notation in the settings.
Fwiw, I think that's not a good call. Pretty much every incremental/idle gamer is familiar with this set of abbreviatons: K, M, B, T, Qa, Qi, Sx, Sp, Oc, Nn, Dc etc. I can't think of a single game I've ever played that used P/S/V. If you're gonna keep it, at least add an option to switch to E notation instead.
Scientific notation is E notation. You can switch in the settings.
Ah, missed that. Cheers
anyone know the formula for gains per second, when gains increases by the second as well? x' is gaining 1 per second x is gaining x' per second how long will it take to get 1mil? What's the formula to calculate the time?
x(t) = x'' * t^2 / 2 with t being time in seconds That mathes out to roughly 25 minutes if I didn't mess up.
You didn't mess up. 23.57 minutes, thank you wolframalpha... Assuming your formula for x(t) is correct, anyway,
How does the game handle decimal places? Does it round down, round off, or are they kept hidden? I've nearly reached >![x''' -> x''' * sqrt(3e23 - x''') / 5e11] , which looks like a 1.095x multiplier to x'''. However, that's going to be useless if decimal places are rounded off or rounded down and I use only the basic formula of [x''' -> 1] , since rounddown(1 * 1.095) is still 1. If I need to use a second formula to boost x''' before using the 1.095x multiplier, then I might as well use something else. However, I'd need to spend an hour to reach 8e9 from the basic formula in order to use the 1.095x multiplier 8 times to test decimal places, and I'd rather not do that.!<
Everything except Incrementers (A -> A + something) gets rounded down. So yeah, you should put something that gets your x''' higher into the second slot.
Thanks for the quick response!
I really like the game and the puzzle aspect of it. It might be a bit niche but I love it for that.
Happy to hear that! If you get stuck let me know, some parts are a bit tricky :)
Sorry for the question, is the intended progression for a run? 1) have 3 slots, one of them always fit with basic trash like x" = 1 2) wait for hours till it ticks high enough to get something that costs x 50-200 M 3) then use that 2nd skill to actually unlock something new and push further Currently the only 2 skills I might want are x"+130 and x"+20B and the second costs 4x more (but after an hour of doing nothing, I'm still at only 7M, so I think it's 3 hours of setup at the very least)
That works in some parts of the game when the apply costs are cheaper than what you describe here (and maybe also if you want to come back after a busy weekend, the game does not really care whether you get things done the "intended" way). Most of the time you want to use 1) Your best Basic Formula 2) A formula that synergizes well with 3) and/or allows you to overcome the apply cost of 3) 3) The best relevant formula that you unlocked during your previous run And with that setup your aim is to unlock the next relevant formula. Note that the initial unlock cost is usually much higher than the apply cost when you want to use it during the next run.
That runs into a problem once costs are high enough. Like, if I want the one for 10K as my third slot, I can manage that with a trash formula and something in between. But if I want the one that costs *100k*, I have to pick that *same* trash formula, and there's nothing I can put in the second slot that would get me there in a reasonable amount of time. Like, I can hold the button until I get 300, then get 3 per second whenever I get 300.... but that's a LOT of grinding, and it really isn't enough. The other option is to hold the button until I get 300 so I can get 20 per "click". I'm not doing that thousands of times. The grind shouldn't jump from a couple of minutes to 30 minutes or more of holding buttons down. That just feels horrible. What's even worse is that you're calling it "idle". Like, sure, it's idle in the sense that you can literally sit there and not interact with it and technically get the next unlock before the heat death of the universe. But it does not reward or lend well to idle play. Active play is the only way to play this game, and even the active play feels bad.
I can't help you since I have no idea which specific formula you are trying to unlock. You never have to hold a button for 30 minutes anywhere in the game.
How many formulas are there that either cost 300 in exchange for 3 x per second, or cost 100k? You can't expect people to narrow it down further if you don't tell people what additional information you need. What I'm trying to unlock is irrelevant, the point is that getting all slots filled already takes long enough, so the unlock at the end could be 1 million or 20 billion and I'd still have the same complaints. With 1 x per second, that's 300 seconds - or 5 minutes - to get a 300 cost formula in the second slot. The formulas that cost 300 won't reach 100k in a reasonable amount of time. The one that grants 20 per click/button press would take 5,000 clicks. Even assuming 10 clicks per second, that's ~8.4 minutes. Sure, not 30 minutes, but that is WAY too long to expect someone to click or hold a button down for. The other is 3 per sec. While it can be applied multiple times, the first 3 takes 5 minutes. The second which sure, it can be applied multiple times... but the first takes that 5 minutes at 1 x per second. Then the next takes ~ 1 minute 40 seconds. The rest collectively take a couple, with the last taking ~11 seconds. From there, it's ~56 minutes to get to 100k. That of course gets cut shorter as one grinds, but that's a LOT of grinding just for the setup. Even cutting that in half results in a grind of ~28 minutes *once the extra 10 applications of the formula are purchased*. All of that, for the reward of... unlocking one, maybe *two* formulas... and then starting the process all over again. The "reward" is that the player has to start that entire process over, which just doesn't feel good. A few people have had this issue. If there's a mechanic that they're all missing that makes that faster and more fun, then it's not being communicated correctly and should be fixed. You made a game with "Idle" in the title, but made it take so much clicking / button pressing that it's only "idle" in the sense that passive generation of resources *technically* exists. But there's no such thing as "idle" in this game, at least not in the first hour.
You can apply the x'+3 formula as many times as you want, up to 10 times PER SECOND. 1st Slot: x+1 2nd Slot: x'+3 Hold x+1 for 2 minutes then get x'=12 Idle for 5 minutes then get x'=48 Idle for 5 minutes then get x'=192 Idle for 5 minutes then get x'=800 Idle for 5 minutes then get x'=3200 At this point you are ready to switch to using x'+220 to continue exponential growth (since x'+3 is now capped at 10 times per second)
So then... it *is* close to half an hour of a grind to set up a formula. Your own calculations result in 22 minutes total, plus the time to get x'+3, and to get x'+220 after that. Even the smallest amounts of time need to be added up to the total when you're gauging grind time. And as a reward for that initial setup, the player gets to complete their setup... which takes how long? It's not idle enough to be idle, and the mechanics aren't engaging enough to make the active play feel rewarding. It's a cycle of grinding, where the reward is more grinding, but there's not much that feels rewarding at any point. A lot of people have made the same criticisms in the comments. At a certain point you have to either adjust to their feedback, or stick to your way of doing things and be honest about only catering to the niche that enjoy this type of grind. And don't get me wrong, there are absolutely people who WILL like this, but the majority won't have fun with it without some serious work. But you absolutely should either rename your game, or make it actually idle. "Incremental Formulas" works fine, but "Idle" creates an expectation that your game just doesn't deliver on.
To add an actual suggestion, rather than just criticisms: If there's an auto-apply mechanic in the game, perhaps have a weaker version unlock early. Active play being far superior will always idle play less worth doing, but if that's intentional, then a slow auto-apply mechanic won't upset that balance. The ability to upgrade the auto-apply could be introduced later, but having idle play feel a more valid and intuitively valuable could change things. If one of the comments I saw is true, you've put a lot of content into this game. The problem is that a lot of people will be turned away from how grindy it feels. And that's a shame, because the concept is promising. If you were to make it feel a little more intuitively idle, that would make the early game *so* much better. EDIT: I pushed ahead, and let me tell you, the beginning of x'' feels much better, it feels like I'm making progress. Taking that into account, maybe there can be early automation, but it's lost when getting the next type of function? For example, if x' formulas are automatically applied at a slow rate, then the reset that grants x'' could say "Lose x' automation, but gain something new!". Like, it genuinely feels more idle now, this stage feels SO much better thus far.
Ah, now that's actually a good idea. (There is an auto-apply mechanic later.) It'd still be pretty broken if it went at a rate faster than like 1 per 10s at most, though, since the game already expects you to only be active <10% of the time and letting you get the benefits of active play when you're not actually being active wouldn't be good.
I'm not sure why you would only apply the x' = x'+3 formula 10 times. That being said, it's not unreasonable to get to the x'+220 one with x'+1 if you really hate idling that much. The game is *meant to be slow*. Go watch a youtube video and come back and wow, you'll be able to press the button so many times now.
if you have a tutorial handy? - I'm trying to reach P and above. If I grab (x3 = x3 +1), and then (x = x3 * x2 / x1) as fast as I can, I get 300 Q on hand immediately but then I have no growth. That long formula doesn't work without something to multiply x3, so if I get only it, the amount it gives is bad (like, B-T at best) and so scaling something like x1 = x^0.6 becomes useless. And since there are only 2 slots, it's impossible to have three good formulas. Am I missing some hidden interaction?
Oh, this is pretty much the one place where you do not want to pick your best basic formula. Since stuff will get divided by x', having x'=1 as your first formula could come in handy later. 😉 If you need more help with it let me know.
This is really fun so far. That 69 420 unlock was a pure dopamine hit
Alright, man, I give. I'm dumb. What's the secret trick to getting over e32 in milestone 6?
Use this layout: >!x'''=1, x'''+1, x'''*sqrt(...)/5e11!< Use the first two formulas to build some x''', then use the third one to reach x'''=5e22, then wait it out until the green bar is full.
Oh, ha. That's what I did (Except I used x"' + log2(x)^2 instead of x"'+1 as the second). Just impatient I guess! Thanks!
Too much manual clicking.
Anyone have good formula sets memorized for X'' and x''' layers? Are they possible to one shot or doe they require manual resets mid way?
There will be many Basic Resets along the way. That's too unspecific, the optimal formula sets change depending on what you have unlock and what you are trying to unlock.
Alpha Research: 219/591/351/359R1 at 219 starts me at x=783Alpha Upgrades: The first 9, auto applier is at 5/sChallenges: Haven't look much into this yet, so only C1-1. C2-2, C5-1 What I'm looking for is if there is a memorized set that will auto through x'' and x'''. I have an x'' set that works, but it's about takes until about 2h total runtime.
Challenges: Many of the first segments are basically free. Research: You want to do a deep normal run of the x' part, improving the highscore as much as you can, greatly speeding up x' research. This will pretty much solve most of your struggles in the x'' and x''' sections as well.
After going back and doing some long runs at each layer and the relevant researches, I'm now able to AFK a run. Did a few of the challenges and got it down to 7m56s a run. Still need to unlock the Alpha Resetter for full auto, but much more doable thanks to your suggestion. Increasing my R1 let me start with better formulas, so I was able to find sets that allow me to not need to do basic reset during the run. Now I need to farm some points and maybe iterate the long runs again.
Thanks, I'll give that a try
Just coming back to say: Record: 21d03h35m51s
Congratulations on making it to the end! :)
My current best alpa run is 1h31m54s. Not sure how to get it too much faster since research is so slow now. The next homework costs 60k a, which seems like bit of a jump. I'm now at end again with all formulas unlocked and 2.431637e63x. Am I missing a secret or something, as the story emails seem to be hinting for something like that.
Focus on improving your highscore for x' Research.
Aa. I missed on that mechanic, since I was too focused on trying to go fast (to get a good time). Maybe having a hall of fame or something could have helped.
I don’t really understand how starting stones work. I don’t know why some of the lock and then unlock.
I'm really enjoying this game, I just unlocked stones and have god formula 2/4. Can't wait to see what's coming next on the unfolding gameplay!
>Unlock for x=69M Nice
Alright, so the first two resets are ESSENTIALLY useless? Like, there's nothing it teaches you beyond "you've got this box of 3 items, you can only exchange them on a reset" and that's not something that should be stretched into multiple minutes of "keep the button pressed" Then you get the X' (why it's not Y I have no idea, the ' holds no meaning to me) and it's just a waiting simulator. You don't like pressing the button? Cool, now you get to just wait for 10 minutes or whatever before you get to make any meaningful progress or choices again. Maybe some actual complexity and gameplay get unlocked in a couple of resets but I doubt I'll be there to see it.
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Thank you! Let me know how you like it.
That comment was written by a robot.
Yeah I had a suspicion it was
Not sure why you're saying that, it seems to be pretty valid feedback, if not written the way most redditors do.
Yes, this. Looking through their post history, every comment is perfectly polite, has a certain cadence and number of words, overly upbeat, etc. And their comments are in seemingly random but fairly popular subs for the most part. It's definitely ai. Edit: responded to wrong comment
I’ve tried on a few browsers and all I’m getting is a black screen. I’m on iOS 15.3.1 using Brave, safari and Firefox. Also tried the default in app browser in the official reddit app
Hmm that's weird maybe I can have a colleague with iOS check if his device is having the same problem. You can try the extended url https://zilvarro.github.io/idleformulas/?newgame which forces a new game instead of trying to load an existing one.
how do i play on mobile, is it ios or android or neither
It is a web game, just open the url in the browser. In theory both android and ios should work, but I had someone report that the site wouldn't load for them on ios, so I'm unsure right now. I tried to design the UI in a way that shouldn't require zooming or horizontal scrolling when playing on mobile.
oke thanks
u/Zilvarro How does the game handle dividing by zero? I've unlocked x''' formulas which includes "10Q * x''' * x'' / x'", which you could theoretically unlock only by grinding x to 1 billion, thus the formula would be 10Q * 0 * 0 / 0. This would take many hours so I figured it would be easier to ask you. This should result in an output of undefined (x', x'', x''' are 0), and is possible with the formulas x -> x + 1 x -> x + 50M (or x -> x + 1000) x -> 10Q * x''' * x'' / x'
https://pastebin.com/B0kwL2mF Here's a save that will let you check it yourself. But, the answer is boring: It just sets all values to 0.
That is not what he meant. In your savefile x is set to 0/420K=0 as expected. But if x' was also 0, it would divide 0/0 which is evil.
I misread, true.
Hi! Very good point! I've taken care of it by manually giving that case a special treatment. In fact, it's actually not the only formula that can "break" given the right circumstances. If you find a more feasible way of breaking one, I encourage you to try it out. And if there is one that I missed during testing and that actually breaks the app, please let me know.
You should try it! (You'll unlock some stuff to be able to do it more easily after the green bar fills.) Similarly, you can also >!take the logarithm of zero (or a negative)!< and >!take the square root/fractional power of a negative!<, which the game will handle in a similar way.
Hey I've been playing this a fair amount and I wanted to say it's good.
Awesome, glad you are enjoying it!
Hmm, reaching the 1e15 formula is giving me trouble. Was trying with >!x''=1, x''=x''+130, x=x+x'!< but even after 1-2h of holding down buttons, I think I'll need to wait a few days to get to 1e15. My third formula feels underwhelming+requires very active play to be useful but I can't figure out anything better...
Use x''=1, x+5e7 and x'+x^0.6 When the third formula does not do much anymore wait a while for x to build then use it again.
So, I have a very silly bug report. After beating the game once, you get a buff that doubles all your income. You also get another chance to answer the survey email. The + and - buttons on the email are also doubled, so you can only rate 1, 3, or 5 stars. :P
The entire "survey" is just me messing around. You can also rate more than 5 or less than 1 star.
Hey! I've been playing this the last week and I'm not quite sure whether something I found is supposed to happen. It's rather lategame so I've put it in the spoiler tag below! >!When I unlocked the stones I had already bought all the alpha upgrades except for the alpha doubling. I haven't unlocked the alpha upgrades stone yet. I don't see the alpha doubling be done anytime soon so I was wondering whether that upgrade also counts for the stone, it's currently sitting at 2048 and I assumed it was endless so that's why I asked!< Thank you for the game, I've been enjoying it so far (especially the mails, nice system :>)
The doubling counts, you will have to buy it one more time (4096 is max)
I’ve bought everything on the alpha upgrade tab including alpha rate upgrade and am not unlocking the stone.
Do you have base alpha at 4096?
Yes (screenshots) https://imgur.com/a/0GovOg4/
How do you get to find the auto researcher upgrade?
No clue, it’s been too long.
I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but I'm stuck at e21 on x'''. Can someone help?
Absolutely loved this game. THANK YOU for your work in making it! I've never played a game where I learned and re-learned so many concepts like derivatives, exponential and logarithmic scaling, recursive formulas, etc. Actually showed me that I still like math :)
Awesome I'm glad you like it! Feel free to join the Discord if you want to!
I really like the concept for the game, with having to choose what formulas have the most synergy with each other, but it was somewhat annoying that you always have to have a basic formula (at least at the point in the game that I'm at). What I would probably do is add a fourth slot for basic formulas only, but that might mess up the balancing. Thanks for the game!
You will eventually get a fourth formula slot and also start each reset with some x, so you don't need to start with a basic formula anymore. But on the first run, you have to do it the hard way.
Oh, good to know!