SmashCore

This was a really fun incremental game that just had some generally fun mechanics and physics as well.

One of the more satisfying iterations on the nodebuster-like incremental game. The particle visuals are very pretty, the generous and random magnification of your resources feels good, and the overall skills you unlock have enough room for skill and knowledge expression to accelerate faster without feeling punishing or halting. I appreciated that while there was a prestige mechanic, it was more of a formality instead of cyclic resets. I think I only prestiged 3 times, and each time you prestige you can easily unlock the ability to save more and more of your progress until you lose absolutely nothing. I appreciate the lack of prestige loops, though I do wonder if you could just cut the prestige system and move that content into the skill tree proper, adding more endless nodes throughout the somewhat linear progression of the skill tree as optional easing between each stage.

Very solid, however pushing the lower limit for how short a game can be before I'm annoyed with it - 100% after less than 4 hours including some amount of AFK time. The fundamental gravity well, rock smashing gameplay is good and while the upgrades are mostly not that interesting (just more explosions generally or effectively stat boosts, don't change how you play or anything at all) they're fine and satisfying to get still. What's new and interesting is actually the mechanisms for unlocking upgrades - the ore depositing systems that provide your money, the unique upgrades from what passes for bosses, and the Vault are all compelling and a bit different from what you normally get in an incremental. Overall a healthy 8/10, worth $5. I'm also extremely demanding and have played way too many incremental games so at this point getting anything other than a "3/10 boring, refunded" from me is hard.