Incremental Push Up

Incremental Push Up is like a clicker idle game but I replaced Clicking -> with Real Life Push Ups.

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Incremental Push Up

Hello everyone! My name is Adam. I'm a 23-year-old university student and the developer of Incremental Push Up, an idle incremental game.

Results

Before diving in, here are my results.

After releasing my game, I started marketing it with short-form videos, and my app BLEW UP:

  • Hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok
  • Hundreds of thousands of views on Instagram
  • Hundreds of upvotes and more than a hundred thousand views on Reddit
  • Thousands of downloads
  • Generated $3k+ (not necessarily accounting for apple's cut)

All in a matter of days. (I did not make money before Sep 26)

Links:

Awards

I'm going for the following awards, in order of priority:

  1. The Main Grand Prize of $100k
  2. RevenueCat Design Award
  3. Best Game Award
  4. Build in Public Award

Definitions

(These are my own definitions.)

Incremental game: A game where the goal is to get bigger and bigger upgrades to get bigger and bigger results, like dealing more and more damage or making more and more money.

Idle game: A game that plays itself in some way. You can keep going over time, and it will bring results for you. Idle games are generally considered a subgenre of incremental games.

Let's Dive In

Incremental Push Up is a mobile idle game where, instead of clicking to make money or fight monsters like other idle games, you do real-life push-ups to defeat bosses.

To beat the game, you need to defeat all 12 bosses. The first boss has 30 HP and the last boss has 3 trillion HP, so you'll have to upgrade your blade to keep up. The blade deals direct damage to the boss for each push-up you do.

What makes it an idle game

  • You can buy and upgrade helpers that will deal damage for you while idle/AFK (while you're away from the app).
  • You can also buy and upgrade your mine, which will generate crystals for you (the currency of the game).

To keep you coming back to do at least some push-ups (and not rely solely on passive upgrades), I made it so your helpers and mine can only work while your battery is active (not your phone battery, but an in-game battery). This battery can only be filled up by doing push-ups.

Monetization

I let players try a bit of the game for free to see if they like it. Then I present them with a paywall, made with RevenueCat, for a one-time purchase to get access to the full game.

Availability

It's only available on iOS for now. Link.

My Journey During Shipaton

My original game idea for Shipaton was called Push Up Raiders, a game where everyone works together to defeat the same boss before the end of the month by doing push-ups. I would monetize it with subscriptions.

I knew that many push-up apps were going viral and that there was huge demand for them, so I wanted to make my own and add my own spin/twist. I also wanted to make beautiful minimalist art for my game.

I released Push Up Raiders in September ("Ready for Distribution" on Sep 17) and started marketing it with short-form videos, but I didn't see much traction, and no one started the free trial or purchased the subscription. Around that time, I realized a major flaw with my app: since it's a multiplayer game, it's only fun when there are a lot of players. Marketing is already hard, and this made it even harder. I needed to make my game fun no matter how many players I had.

The Pivot

I decided to pivot the app into a single-player incremental game because I had experience making one before, and I knew that incremental games have a strong community with strong demand and an openness to new games. So I went to work. I tried to reuse my old art and made some new art.

I ended up releasing a major update (what is now Incremental Push Up) not too long before the deadline ("Ready for Distribution" Sep 24). I started marketing my game with short-form videos again, using my past experience with content creation that I developed by trying to market my other apps. And this time, my app blew up:

  • Hundreds of thousands of views on TikTok
  • Hundreds of thousands of views on Instagram

I also made a post on the r/incremental_games subreddit, which also blew up, with hundreds of upvotes and more than a hundred thousand views.

This gave me thousands of downloads, and this time I had paying customers.

I ended up making $3k+ in a matter of days (not necessarily accounting for apple's cut). (I did not make money before Sep 26).

The bosses, helpers, swords, and mine art is made by me with no AI.

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