Set in a post-human world, Papa Pib hopes to rebuild his colony of Pibbles in a giant tree. Through hard work and incremental progress, you aim to expand and cultivate the tree until reaching Sap Paradise. But how does Pibcremental stack up in this competitive genre?
Pibs For Days
Pibcremental offers an interesting take on the incremental game formula by introducing little creatures called Pibbles. These egg-shaped minions can be assigned to various tasks to generate resources automatically over time. In this regard, Pibcremental nails the idle and incremental components.
Set on a pixelated 2d plane, players will find hours of idle, incremental gameplay at their disposal. With eight core resources and production stations to unlock and upgrade, there’s a lot to keep players engaged. It reminded me a lot of All Hail The Orb, with the various stations being placed around the map and each having individual upgrade menus.
Pibble Prestige
As with many incremental games, you need to prestige your progress to cash in “Prestige Points” for the upgrade tree. I enjoy a vast upgrade tree and appreciate being able to branch off in any direction that suits me. It was also nice to see a reset function in case I made mistakes or wanted to try another build.
The prestige upgrades gave incredible boons that seriously change up the gameplay. It’s still a “click all the upgrades you can and run” gameplay loop, but things accelerate and trigger “events” exponentially as you work through the upgrades. Prestige unlocks help remove the early-game grind drag to keep the game fresh and fun, but you will have to start over many times to get all the unlocks.
Gimme Them Graphics
Pibcremental doesn’t have the flashiest graphics, but the pixels have a real charm. Even though they are basically just eggs, the Pibbles are animated and give a sense of chaos and joy as they complete their work cycle. Subtle hints of the post-human world also appear in the background, which is a nice detail.
I largely played muted while working, as is to be expected of these games, but there are some cute sound effects and background tracks. The UI is sleek and easy to navigate, and I had no trouble reading despite the pixel-art font. You can also zoom the camera in quite far to get a better look at things.
It’s The End Of The World
The various production stations have unique mechanics which keep the gameplay fresh during the early resource grind. Figuring them out isn’t difficult, but making them more efficient takes some understanding and many, many upgrades. Eventually, hatching pibs and unlocking them becomes so easy that you can rerun most of your progression within a fraction of the time, making the mechanics less important.
I did encounter a few issues with the standard settings. This was mostly because they were set to high/uncapped numbers, which is unnecessary for a game like this. I think the tips/tutorial pop-ups glitched because they didn’t show up as soon as I unlocked each new station, which caused some confusion. My Steam achievements also stopped working at some point, but that has since been “somewhat” fixed with some popping after I closed the game. They aren’t game-breaking issues, but I won’t be going for the 100% achievements since they seem a little buggy.
The Pibbiest Pib
Pibcremental is a decent incremental idle game with plenty to keep players busy and clicking for hours. It does what it set out to do and balances extending the gameplay with enjoyable progression well. If you enjoyed Petal By Petal or All Hail The Orb, then Pibcremental is going to hit all the right spots. If you’re looking for a more involved incremental game like Slugineers, then you may be disappointed.
Platforms: PC
Publishers: GrabTheGames, Gamersky Games
Developers: Arcane Cabinet
Played On: Steam
Key Provided By: Keymailer
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