Exponential Idle tries something a little bit different with the idle game genre by seating its simple gameplay mechanics into a bit of lore and some heavy math stuff that I really couldn’t wrap my head around. Even with some attempts to explain everything in a tall instruction screen, I still really couldn’t figure out what was going on and just tapped everywhere. It’s a bit of a shame, because a math-based idle game could be really neat! This one just was a bit too much.
You’re thrown immediately into the deep end with formulas, currencies and upgrades that barely make sense. Even re-reading the instructions now, I don’t get it. dt, t, f(t), db, b, x are all the things you have to care about and the upgrades have names like “dt + 0.01” and “y factor + 1”. You also have some of them that look like (x = 3y +2³ x 7.7). I guess it means that if you improve the value of all the variables, the numbers get bigger? It’s standard idle game fare, but I bet a small amount of simplification could’ve went a long way here.
It seems like there is everything you would expect in one of those games in Exponential Idle; You can prestige to get some upgrades and reset your progress (with the potential to go higher the second time around), you can complete quests to get stars that unlock new gameplay features, like “variable u”, but it ultimately goes all over my head and I really couldn’t stick with it. The idea is interesting, at least!
