I actively reject incremental games being sent my way now because I am so fatigued with the genre, but occasionally one still piques my interest if it does something different. Feed The AI is a simple incremental top-down shooter-style game, but its incremental upgrade prestige system has a choices-matter narrative baked into the design. Whilst the outcome didn’t compel me as much as I’d hoped, I must admit, I like the set-up!
In Feed The AI, we play a human feeding bytes of information to an AI at an ever-increasing rate. The game is split into distinct chapters, each with its own skill tree that unlocks specific upgrades and new abilities as key story moments take place. This both gatekeeps and guardrails players from being too overpowered, but it does make the game feel quite narrow and linear. Each run has players moving a bit around a maze-like screen in darkness, collecting bytes of information as you zap them around your circle of influence. Your upgrades are largely tied to increasing the speed of attack, damage rate, circle of attack, and the light you can shine around the dark level. Later, you can set off viruses that attack things for you and turrets that act as both attack posts and buffs for your own weapon. There isn’t anything egregious with the gameplay, but it didn’t captivate me either. At least, I was active for the entire playthrough, which was nice. Physics, collision detection, and general functionality all worked as expected and intended.
The skill tree is split out between moment-to-moment progression with money you earn in the game and level-up progression whilst collecting enough information to fill 10 levels’ worth of XP in a single run to unlock the next story chapter. Every three or so level-ups, players get to choose a permanent upgrade that packs a big punch, but each carries a story choice that makes the AI either more of a tyrant, a protector, or somewhere neutral. If you push your moral compass to the tyrant or protector extremes, it will limit or sometimes remove weapons from you entirely, whilst boosting others hugely. It’s both a moral compass and a playstyle decision. All throughout the game, the AI comments on whether you are making the right choices and questions why you help it at all. I was kept guessing until the end as to whether the AI was being truthful or not, and that was the story’s strong point. I felt like the final story beat was slightly underplayed, but I enjoyed the journey getting to it, especially when chapter 4’s skill tree starts to get a little crazy.
Ultimately, I wanted to feel like my incremental choices mattered. With Feed The AI, they do from a story perspective and that brings replayability to see all three main endings. It is a shame that the ending is only a few text screens, and that does undermine the whole experience, but I think the dev is onto something here. Tie your choices and upgrades with narrative shifts and consequences that lock you out of certain parts of the game, and suddenly an incremental game is no longer a game played on autopilot. I’m looking forward to seeing how this idea progresses in other games in future.
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