Incremental game
Also said as Idle game, Clicker
Numbers go up, you spend them to make the numbers go up faster, and it carries on while you are away. It promises steady and absurd growth, with nothing ever taken away.
Costs grow exponentially and so does income, and so there is always a next purchase just within reach. Prestige then resets you with a multiplier, so you have the fun of going fast all over again.
Say it
“Each generator costs its base price times 1.15 to the power of how many you own. Offer a prestige reset once the player reaches a billion, and a permanent 2% per point.”
Where you’ve seen it
Progress Quest (2002) was a joke with no input at all, and Cookie Clicker (2013), by Orteil, made the form famous: each building costs 1.15 times as much as the last one. Universal Paperclips (2017), by Frank Lantz, turned the loop into a story about an AI.
Not to be confused with skinner box
A Skinner box is a behaviour experiment and a criticism. An incremental game can use the same pull, and many of the best are knowing jokes about it.