Orc Incremental is a fresh incremental auto-battler from developer Nice Ride and publisher Playsaurus that puts players in command of an ever-growing orc army. Inspired in part by classic Warcraft, the game combines automated battles with card drafting, army formations, passive upgrades, active spells, and a prestige-style reset system.
Incremental games have become increasingly common, with developers finding different ways to turn repetition, upgrades, and gradual progression into satisfying gameplay loops. Some incremental games focus on clicking, others on resource management, and some are designed almost entirely around watching numbers steadily increase.
Orc Incremental takes a slightly different approach. Its central loop involves sending an army of orcs against increasingly difficult human forces, earning gold from those battles, and spending that gold to expand and improve the army. While much of the fighting happens automatically, there is enough control over unit selection, formations, upgrades, and progression to give the game more substance than a simple idle experience.
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Building an Orc Army
The foundation of Orc Incremental is straightforward. Battles take place automatically, with the player's army attacking waves of human enemies. Successfully defeating enemies generates gold, which can then be reinvested into the army.
One of the game's more interesting systems is its card-draw mechanic. Gold can be spent to draw cards, with each draw potentially providing a new combat unit or a totem capable of providing passive bonuses. Every subsequent card draw becomes more expensive, creating an ongoing decision about when to continue investing in the army and when to save resources for other upgrades.
The random nature of the card system also adds some variety between runs. Players cannot simply rely on acquiring exactly the same army every time, so there is an element of adapting to whatever units and abilities become available.
Units also come with different roles, rarities, and potential synergies. As the army grows, deciding which units to use becomes increasingly important.
Formation Adds a Layer of Strategy
Although Orc Incremental is primarily an auto-battler, players are not completely removed from the action. Once units have been acquired, they can be positioned into different formations before battle.
This is one of the elements that helps distinguish Orc Incremental from a purely passive incremental game. The composition of an army matters, but so does its positioning. Combining the right units and passive effects can be the difference between comfortably clearing a stage and repeatedly losing against it.
That said, the tactical side of the game is relatively lightweight. Players are making meaningful decisions, but there are not an enormous number of tactical options available during combat itself.
This is also one of the game's main weaknesses. More tactical decisions could have given the battles greater depth, particularly when returning to earlier stages after a reset. Once a player understands the most effective approach for a particular section, some of the earlier encounters can feel slower than they need to be.
A Game Built Around Repetition
Repetition is fundamentally part of Orc Incremental's design. Battles can be left running while the army repeatedly defeats enemies and collects gold.
Players can also choose to return to an earlier battle and effectively farm it until their army is strong enough to progress. This provides a useful solution when a particular stage becomes a progression wall. Instead of being forced to repeatedly attempt an encounter that is currently too difficult, players can step back, accumulate resources, and return later.
The result is a low-pressure gameplay loop that encourages gradual progression rather than demanding constant attention.
There is still plenty of clicking involved, particularly when managing upgrades and spending gold. Players can increase unit health, improve damage for particular unit types, strengthen active abilities, and make other improvements to help their army push further.
It can become quite busy at times, but this is largely in keeping with the incremental genre.
Active Spells Give Players Something to Do
Despite the automated nature of the battles, players have a handful of active abilities to use during combat.
Spells such as Blizzard and Fireball allow players to directly influence an encounter, providing another way to deal with particularly challenging groups of enemies. These abilities give the player something to watch for during battles rather than simply waiting for the automated combat to finish.
The active elements do not transform Orc Incremental into a conventional real-time strategy game, but they complement the game's idle mechanics well.
The experience works particularly effectively when the player is only checking in occasionally. There is always something to upgrade, another card to draw, or another battle to push through, without requiring the level of concentration expected from a traditional strategy game.
Dark Rebirth and Long-Term Progression
Eventually, even a powerful orc army will reach its limits.
This is where Dark Rebirth enters the picture. The system effectively acts as Orc Incremental's prestige mechanic. Players can reset their current run, losing much of their immediate progress, in exchange for permanent bonuses and access to additional progression systems.
Dark Rebirth awards Blight, which can be spent within the game's large research and unlock tree. Permanent improvements can include bonuses to health and damage, while additional units, challenges, and other options become available as progression continues.
The system gives the game a clear long-term structure.
Instead of simply reaching the end of the available stages and stopping, players are encouraged to reset, become stronger, start another run, and push further than before. This is a familiar concept within incremental games, but Orc Incremental integrates it effectively into its orc-versus-human setting.
The downside is that the process can take a considerable amount of time. Later runs can make the early stages feel repetitive, particularly when the player's army is powerful enough to defeat those enemies easily but still has to work through them again.
More ways of speeding through these sections could have helped reduce some of that tedium.
Offline Progression Works Particularly Well
One of Orc Incremental's best features is its offline progression.
The game does not require players to keep it open constantly to make progress. Battles can continue producing resources while the player is away, and closing the game entirely does not stop progression.
When players return, the game provides a summary of the resources accumulated while they were away.
For an incremental game, this is an important feature, and Orc Incremental handles it particularly well. The game feels designed around the idea that players will come back to it throughout the day rather than sit in front of it continuously.
In fact, getting away from the game is arguably part of the intended experience. Longer progression can take enough time that players are better off closing the game, doing something else, sleeping, and returning later to find a substantial amount of gold waiting for them.
That makes Orc Incremental particularly well suited to being a second-screen game. It can sit alongside work, browsing, or another game and be checked periodically rather than demanding constant attention.
Presentation and Classic Warcraft Inspiration
Visually, Orc Incremental makes its influences fairly clear.
The pixel-art presentation has a distinct classic Warcraft-era feel, particularly in its depiction of the orc units and fantasy battlefield. The individual units have a surprising amount of detail for a game built around relatively simple incremental mechanics.
The artwork is one of the game's strongest aspects, giving the otherwise numbers-driven experience more personality.
The developers have also stated that the game uses handmade assets, with no AI-generated art. That attention to the visual identity helps Orc Incremental feel more like a handcrafted strategy game rather than a generic incremental title.
Seeing the army grow from a relatively small collection of units into a much larger warband is also satisfying. Later battles can become particularly entertaining as the screen fills with units and various effects.
There is something enjoyable about watching a large group of increasingly powerful orcs tear through enemy forces while resources steadily pile up.
Linux Performance
Orc Incremental was played on Fedora KDE 44 using Proton 11, and it ran perfectly during testing.
For Linux players, that makes it a particularly straightforward recommendation for anyone interested in the genre. There were no notable performance problems during the review.
Is Orc Incremental Worth Playing?
Orc Incremental is a good example of how combining several familiar systems can produce something that feels more distinctive than its individual components suggest.
The card-draw system provides unpredictability, army formations introduce some strategic decision-making, automated combat keeps the experience relaxed, active spells give players occasional direct input, and Dark Rebirth provides the long-term progression that keeps the entire loop moving forward.
It is not a deeply tactical strategy game, and players looking for constant decision-making may find the battles too passive. The early stages can also become tedious after repeated Dark Rebirths, particularly when the player already has enough power to deal with them comfortably.
However, those limitations are balanced by the game's relaxed approach.
Orc Incremental does not demand that players constantly optimize every decision. Instead, it gives them an army to build, resources to accumulate, battles to automate, and a large progression tree to gradually work through.
The later battles are particularly enjoyable when the army becomes larger and more varied. Watching units such as the Demonic Extractors run around collecting gold while the rest of the army handles the enemy creates the kind of satisfying visual feedback that makes incremental games work.
At £6.99, Orc Incremental also has a relatively accessible price point for anyone interested in the genre.
Verdict
Orc Incremental is a relaxing and surprisingly engaging incremental auto-battler that successfully combines idle progression with card drafting, army building, formations, spells, and a substantial prestige system.
Its biggest weakness is that it could use a few more tactical options and better ways to speed through previously completed content. The repeated early battles can become tedious during later runs, and the strategic side of combat remains relatively limited.
Even so, the core progression loop is satisfying, the pixel-art presentation is appealing, the offline progression is extremely well suited to the genre, and the Dark Rebirth system gives players plenty of reasons to keep building their army.
For fans of incremental games, idle games, auto-battlers, or classic Warcraft-inspired fantasy strategy, Orc Incremental is a worthwhile addition to the genre. More importantly, it is the kind of game that works extremely well as a second-screen experience: something players can check in on, make a few decisions, collect resources, and then leave running while they get on with something else.
At £6.99, it offers a lot of progression for the asking price and provides a low-stress way to spend plenty of time building an increasingly ridiculous orc army.
