Idle games are maybe the least gamey type of game out there. The entire point of them is that you spend much of the time simply waiting for processes to take place without your input. However, this game is something special. As crazy as it sounds, Exponential Idle takes the idle game formula and turns it into something with deep strategy with a little advanced math sprinkled in.
I’d like to note that no factorials are used in this review. Sometimes numbers are simply exciting rather than as big as your mom.
Remember, this review reflects my experience and therefore everyone else’s as well. If you disagree with any point I bring in this post, then you should reflect on your opinion until you agree with me as I am correct and you are wrong. Thank you for reading!
Gameplay
Basically, your goal is to make the number go up. You start with 1 whole dollar! Like in other idle games, you buy increasingly expensive upgrades which make the amount of money you earn over time go faster. Then, while the game is off, you are still making more money; hence the “idle” part of the name.
The first thing I love about Exponential Idle is the size of the numbers. Other idle games often go into numbers so big, they don’t have names and require scientific notation. Exponential Idle blows these games out of the water by orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude. This game invents an entirely new notation to describe numbers greater than 1.0e100000. This is ee-notation and works like so: ee100 would be 10^(10^100) or googleplex!
Like other idle games, Exponential Idle has a mechanic which allows you to reset all of your progress while getting a worthwhile permanent upgrade. However, Exponential Idle actually has 3 nested levels of resets each one resetting more than the last. It might sound complicated because it is! But you are eased into the complexity.
Idle games often have the problem of becoming a bit boring after a while. Exponential Idle keeps the gameplay interesting by doing more than just adding new upgrades. Every few days (if you keep progressing) you may get an entirely new type of upgrade: a minigame, a button that speeds up progress, or even a new way to automate what you’ve been doing manually up to that point.
And the automation is where I think Exponential shines. This game gets involved! Not only are there tools for automatically buying upgrades when you get enough money, there is a literal equation input field where you can use in-game variables like “time since last upgrade purchase”, “current amount of money”, or fricking “time since first started playing” to create a condition for when the game should do a reset on its own. Half the fun is trying to find the best conditions to get things done while you’re not there. This game’s strategy goes deep. There are entire strategy guides for this game: https://exponential-idle-guides.netlify.app/.
One more cool thing is that after beating the game, you are given the ability to program custom add-ons into the game with custom equations and upgrades. There is a large community of people discussing strategy and creating content for this game at the subreddit https://www.reddit.com/r/ExponentialIdle/.
Score
I like this game quite a bit. I think the concept is novel and the execution is really good. Being a math guru, I loved examining and understanding each new equation, especially the short lemma challenges later in the game. I played a lot of Cookie Clickers 2 before this game. I had to stop because it made my fingers bleed. While that game is good simple fun, Exponential gets the player much more involved than that game, which I think is a huge accomplishment.