Sorry for wall of text I hope this isn’t a waste of time to read :I
“Roblox simulators” are nothing new. They’re just a specific type of idle/incremental game, which is a pretty old genre. There’s lots of wisdom out there on the topic if you search for that instead of limiting yourself to Roblox games. Again, idle/incremental/simulator/grind games are essentially the same as MMORPGs. Much of the same wisdom on those topics carry over to simulators, so do some research on how to balance and pace those types of games.
I’m just an armchair game designer, so this is just my experience / two cents. But I think what makes a grind “worth it” / engaging is that there’s constantly some goal on the horizon. My favorite incremental games are Bee Swarm Simulator, Realm Grinder and Clicker Heroes. What makes these engaging to me is the fact that the gameplay changes. Yes, you’re always just “making number go up”, but the ideal strategy constantly changes as you unlock new mechanics, and you’re always seeing the effects of your actions on how fast you’re making number go up
Anyway, this is way too rambly. The TL;DR version is that pacing is the most important. It should be exciting to unlock the next thing, because it’ll allow you to make numbers go up faster in a slightly or completely different way. There should be short, medium and long loops, taking minutes, hours and days to cycle. I would start by designing the shorter loops, for no particular reason other than the fact that if players don’t like the short loop, they won’t stay around to see the medium ones. The shortest “progression loop” should be minutes or seconds, and loops should get longer as the player progresses through the game. E.g. filling your pollen container in Bee Swarm Simulator takes longer and longer because you unlock bigger containers. It takes more and more effort from the player, but becomes more and more efficient. Cutting out inefficiencies like transport time is a great progression reward because it’s visible to the player that these inefficiencies exist without having the game tell them explicitly.
lol my TL;DR became rambly too
My random rambly thoughts
Sometimes the game is completely changed, like when you unlock a new faction in realm grinder. Suddenly there are entirely new mechanics to explore and discover. You don’t know what things do, but it’s fun to try things and learn the new systems. IMO this is also what makes “rebirths/ascensions/soft resets” worth it, and in the beginning should happen often, like the first time around 30 minutes of gameplay. Usually it’s for some pretty large multiplier or entirely new content.
Sometimes the changes can be more subtle, such as spending all your currency to buy 10 more of those things you already have 200 of. Subtle but measurable, and it can be done once every couple of minutes. Because you know the effect, each possible action can be measured against others and this is where deep, thoughtful game play happens on both tactical and strategic levels. Even if you’re not the type of person who creates spreadsheets and stuff, you’ll have some kind of intuition about the systems.
In Bee Swarm Simulator, it’s fun to see the different effects of the bees and seeing how high you can stack these effects before they run out. You’re in part limited by the stats of your bees, but also in part by your mechanical skill which you can hone to some skill ceiling. This makes Bee Swarm Simulator an action incremental. This is similar to the “magic effects” that many incremental have, where the order and timing of various boosts allows for tactical gameplay, as well as seeing many extra clicks you can squeeze out of those 15 seconds of 100x bonus.
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