IGTAP: an Incremental Game That's Also a Platformer

Looked forward to this game for months. Loved the demo and the teases it offered, and loved the full game too. Things really opened up after the (literal) upgrade tree, and things were good.

First you can just jump.
Then you unlock dash.
Then you unlock double jump.
Then you unlock color switching blocks when you dash.
Then you unlock zip blocks which can give you boosts.

Every single new piece of your kit you unlock, the game becomes more fun and fluid to traverse. Older puzzles unlock new routes, and newer puzzles incorporate your new kits. Previously inaccessible secrets or areas can now be reached. It's all very nice.

And then... all of that grinds to a halt.

After the zip blocks, you LOSE the ability to double jump, and instead your dash can now be used in eight directions.

Game completely kills itself here. The movement you've adapted to for HOURS suddenly is something entirely different. The double jump was so insanely useful for general traversal and course correction and then you just lose it? ♥♥♥♥ that. I was expecting the roster of movement and interactable's to keep growing, not suddenly decide half-way it wants to be an entirely different style of platforming.

You don't ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ remove abilities from a players kit once you introduce it to them as a core mechanic.

A fantastic platformer and a bad incremental game. A tentative not reccomended.

Starting with the good, the concept is excelent, finally allowing expression of mechanical skill in an incremental/idle game that I have not seen before. Excecution of the platforming elements is excelent. Movement is tight and the level design is great. Almost every part of the game has 2 or more routes that allow quicker traversal as you unlock movement abilities.

The big weakness is that the idle part is just not very good. No real prestige, no builds, no interesting upgrades other than new movement tech, the game "expands" a little after the first few levels but its just more of the same. There is just a couple simple multipliers that you upgrade on each level/globally, and one of them is the best time you have achieved on the level. This is where the mechanical skill ties in, but it doesnt work as well as i'd hoped due to diminishing returns. You could spend 10 minutes grinding out an extra 0.5s on a level but on a 20-30s level thats not even a 10% increase.

The result of this is a solid platformer that you have to wait 15 minutes to play the next level.

This game is targeting me. I love incrementals, I love platformers, and I love optimizing things to be as efficient as they can. This game ticks all of those boxes and then some.

I probably spent over 7 hours in the demo just optimizing every single course I could, and exploring everything. This was an instant buy for me and if you like any of those game genres it should be for you too.