Banana Clicker is an idle/incremental game that I designed and developed from start to finish, ultimately publishing it on Steam where it reached over 1,000 unique sales.
What Is It?
At its core, Banana Clicker is a progression game — players click, earn resources, unlock upgrades, and watch their numbers grow exponentially. But underneath the simple premise is a modular systems architecture designed for long-term balance and extensibility.
Systems Architecture
Progression & Economy
The economy system is built around a central resource manager that feeds into upgrade trees, prestige layers, and event mechanics. Each subsystem is decoupled and communicates through events, making it easy to add new content without ripple effects.
Balancing Tools
One of the biggest challenges in idle games is long-term balance. I built internal tools that let me simulate hours of gameplay in seconds, visualize progression curves, and tweak values at runtime. This saved enormous amounts of manual playtesting time.
Event-Driven Mechanics
Special events, milestones, and unlocks are driven by a lightweight event bus. Designers can define triggers and rewards in data files without modifying game code.
The Launch
Publishing on Steam was a valuable learning experience in itself — from setting up Steamworks integration and achievements to managing store pages, builds, and community feedback. Seeing real players engage with systems I'd built was incredibly rewarding.
Tech Stack
- Unity with C# for all gameplay and tooling
- Steamworks SDK for achievements, cloud saves, and stats
- Custom editor tools for balancing and QA
Takeaways
Banana Clicker taught me that shipping a game is a fundamentally different challenge than building one. The discipline of scoping, polishing, and actually releasing a product commercially shaped how I approach every project since.