An incremental game that's also a platformer

I became interested in incremental games last year thanks to work like To The Core and the Gnorp Apologue. These aren't strictly idle games, because they are active and playing with skill makes the big numbers get bigger quicker. I've come to think of them as supplements to my regular entertainment diet; they are the most efficient way of getting my daily recommended dosage of videogames, if not always the most edifying.

An Incremental Game That's Also A Platformer is both the name of the game I played this week and an accurate description, but lets use its preferred acronym: IGTAP. In IGTAP, you complete platforming course to earn resources which can then be spent to buy a clone. The clone repeats your fastest time around the course, earning you resources without you having to complete the circuit yourself. If you have played incremental games and you have played platformers and you are like me, your brain just shuddered like a stretching kitten.

Clones don't earn as much resources as you do, at first, and so you complete the circuit yourself a few more times. You unlock a few more clones, increase the base resource reward, and increase the multiplier that the clones receive. The resources you're now earning per minute is already an order of magnitude higher than when you started.

I keep calling it a "resource" because I don't actually know what it is you're generating. Electricity, maybe? Given that it is collected by your be-legged ball clones crossing a laser beam finish line, and they disintegrate into chunks in the process, maybe clone guts are the resource.

I'm also describing the platforming challenge as a "circuit", because it has a beginning and an end, but each one is positioned within a larger, contiguous world. The first circuit is a single screen of platforms and spikes, which you must hop around. By repeating it over and over to earn your resource, you inevitably improve your time, and thus the efficiency of all the M&Ms-with-a-death-wish you now have running your best time.

At which point, you earn enough to unlock the wall jump ability for your character. Suddenly you can shortcut those spikes entirely, turning your five second journey around the circuit into a mere two second loop. Your resource gathering enters overdrive, you max out at 40 clones, and their journey to the finish is now a single unbroken line, a blurry chain of Uncool Spot spewing successfully to their demise and your profit.

The double jump also lets you explore the world beyond this first circuit, discovering the second, in which you repeat the process with a harder, multi-screen platforming challenge and bigger numbers until you unlock the air dash. At which point I'm no longer a stretching cat. I'm sprawled out on my back like a dog receiving tummy rubs.

I love platformers and I enjoy hard platforming challenges, but I'm not normally the sort to replay a level just to improve my time or pick up optional collectibles. IGTAP offers such direct, tangible benefits to improving the efficiency of your clones, however, that it felt like no chore at all to repeat sections until I had perfected every jump, cut every corner and improved my time.

Unlocking new platformer abilities like a double jump is a much more tangible, satisfying reward than most incremental games are able to offer, too. This combination might make IGTAP the first incremental game I find truly nourishing.

For now all I've got to go on is the demo, which is available to play on Steam. It took me a couple of hours to finish and I think it's worth your time, and the full game is aiming to launch this autumn.