u/_mrsclicked

I've been building a small visual game balancing tool.

While making an incremental game example I realized something. I can calculate stuff like upgrade cost over production per second and use that to compare how affordable each upgrade is as the game progresses.

But while testing this I realized... That's not really a simulation

An actual simulation would need to keep track of things like how much money the player currently has, what they bought, how production changed after buying it, multiple generators, and then keep running from there.

So now... I'm curious how other incremental devs approach this.

Would you find it more useful to have something that helps analyze the progression data you already have like affordability, growth, payback, comparisons, weird outliers, etc...

Or would you rather give it a starting economy and have it actually simulate the progression?

I'm thinking both could eventually be useful but I also don't want to build a massive simulator if it's not necessary

How do you guys usually do this? Spreadsheet? Your own simulator? Just lots of playtesting?

Playable Link: https://mrsclicked.itch.io/letsbalancealpha

Platform: web

Description: Like many indie developers, I started balancing my game with spreadsheets. They work... but I often found it difficult to visualize what was actually happening. like how systems interacted over time or when something would become overpowered or underpowered

To help with that, I started building a tool that lets you import game data, visualize it on graphs, compare multiple datasets, and adjust values directly to see how changes affect balance. The goal is to make projects a bit more intuitive than working in spreadsheets.

The app also includes templates and balancing modules that show the formulas being used, so you can understand, modify, and adapt them to fit your own design goals.

This is still an alpha build, and there are plenty of things being improved. What I'm looking for is honest feedback from developers who are actively making games:

• Does this solve a problem you currently have?
• Which features are useful?
• What's confusing or unnecessary?
• Would you actually use something like this during development?

If you'd like to try the alpha version, you can access it via the provided link.

I'd really appreciate any feedback, positive or negative.

Free to Play Status:

• [✅] Free to play
• [ ] Demo/Key available
• [ ] Paid (Allowed only on Tuesdays with [TT] in the title)

Involvement: Main developer