Orb of Creation

Tried once in early access and again more recently. The concept is neat, but there's a whole lot of 'gather this resource so you can unlock this resource so you can gather it' requiring a bunch of active play, but without many decisions or differentiation between the pieces.

I'm coming into this review with mixed feelings on several aspects of the game, but overall an absolute recommend! The intention behind Orb of Creation was to create something unique in the incremental category, which it knocks out of the park. Very rarely do you feel as if what you're doing serves no purpose, or is just a time suck to get to the next thing (although there is some of that). This game is wonderfully addictive in all of the central game mechanics, so that the tasks you complete are mind-numbingly in their dopamine rushes. Now, onto the things that I believe need to be changed. While limited in their scope, both Agromancy and Rituals have specific time gates that need a rework in their design. In their current state, these two central mechanics are agonizing in the early game, and can wreck your late game if you played a certain way. A core part of the gameplay are Orb Points, used to progress Expert Researches so that you can unlock Technologies to spur on your gameplay. Using these difficult-to-earn points to speed up the massive time wall in Agromancy or Rituals can completely wreck the late game, forcing you to use the prestige mechanic prematurely. Reworking these two mechanics so that the time gate is removed would take away my biggest and only complaints with this amazing game. Even with these flaws, this twelve dollar game gives you hundreds upon hundreds of hours of gameplay to mess around with, making it worth the money. But please Marple, for the love of all that's good. Remove Zeal.

Just one more upgrade.... aaand its 10 hours later lol

I would like my time back.

I dunno what people are talking about but I think 1.0 is an improvement. I just wish the prestige system had more of an impact because it takes a long time to finish a world cycle, or maybe I'm just playing it wrong. Takes like 10-20 hours to finish a cycle, and maybe 10 more to really squeeze what you can out of it, so a week of gaming per cycle, for what feels like a 5% improvement towards the next cycle.

Game ate my save after too many hours.

I've played about 100 different incremental games, and this is the only one I fully recommend. Never requires idling, comfy "just one more thing", and great music to boot.