Idle games keep getting better as our pandemic brains get worse
At which point, you can move on to one of dozens of mods that have emerged in the year and a half since, aping the game’s look and structure. (Including a rewritten, and massively expanded, version from Jacorb 90 themselves.) There are variants of “The ____ Tree” that take as their subject matter topics that run the gamut from game development, to money, to the creation of deadly planet-killing viruses, to even the creation of mods for The Prestige Tree itself. The vast majority operate as a series of nested optimization problems: What allocation of which resources allows me to push my point production to the next tier of prestige? Some are better tuned, or more clever, than others. But they’re all in conversation with each other in a way that’s as vibrant and fascinating as any other indie gaming scene.