CYCLES
an idle game about automating yourself out of a job. build the machine layer by layer; each layer you finish retires the one below it - your own buttons go dark as you win. when the machine no longer needs you, you break the cycle. and wake up one layer higher. the loop remembers. that's the game.
you are the operator of a system that is learning to run itself.
it starts small: you click, you build, you watch a number climb. then you automate the clicking. then you automate the thing that automates the clicking. layer by layer the machine takes over - and one by one, your own controls deactivate. the buttons go dark not because you failed, but because you succeeded. you are automating yourself out of a job, and the job is you.
when the machine finally no longer needs you, there is one control left.
BREAK THE CYCLE.
you wake up one layer higher. doing it again. faster, this time, because you remember - and so, quietly, does the machine.
cold terminal calm.
the whole game is a monochrome-green console with the hum of a system running itself. lowercase prose, no carnival, no nags, no dark-pattern timers. the ui is the machine.
an idle game that respects your time.
meaningful offline progress, instant readability, honest math. leave it running for days or sit with it for an hour - both are intended.
depth that compounds.
a branching tree of upgrades each run, ten workers who grow a second skill as you go, and a small web of echo choices that bend every repeat. achievements double as a checklist of everything to see.
a loop that knows it's a loop.
the narration remembers. each cycle it gets a little more knowing. there is something on the other side of enough repetitions - not a door out, but a thing to understand. we won't say more than that.
built for the people who finished universal paperclips and wanted the feeling again.
