Prestige/rebirth/ascension
The player voluntarily resets progress in exchange for a permanent multiplier or new mechanic, making each 'run' faster and more powerful than the last. Prestige is the engine of idle and incremental games — Cookie Clicker's ascension, AdVenture Capitalist's resets — where the loop is grow, reset for meta-currency, grow faster, repeat. Designers use prestige to give long-term structure to otherwise-endless growth, to create satisfying power spikes, and to gate new mechanics behind reset milestones (each prestige layer unlocks a new system). Key decisions: reset timing (when is prestiging worth it?), the meta-currency formula (how reset progress converts to permanent power), how many prestige layers deep the game goes (multi-layer prestige is a genre signature), and what unlocks at each tier to keep resets feeling like progress rather than punishment. Pitfall: a prestige that resets too much for too little gain feels like losing, and one with no new content beyond a multiplier becomes a hollow treadmill — each reset should reveal something new, not just bigger numbers.
- Dev effort: Small
- Timing: Real-time or turn-based
- Common in: incremental, idle
Seen in
- Cookie Clicker
- AdVenture Capitalist