Designing Progression in Gem Forge Idle: Upgrades, Workers and Automation

Progression in an idle game is not one number moving upwards. It is the feeling that every tap, upgrade, automated action and return to the game changes what becomes possible next. This is how I began layering that progression inside Gem Forge Idle.

The first layer is immediate

The most direct form of progress happens in the mine. A tap damages the current rock, and breaking it produces Gold and the possibility of a new material. This immediate response is important because it gives the player control before any idle system takes over.

From there, Gold can improve mining damage and speed. These upgrades point towards the same goal, but they change the experience in different ways. Damage affects how much progress each hit makes. Speed changes the rhythm of automatic mining. Both help the player reach further rock tiers, but the route can feel different depending on what is improved first.

Automation should change the player’s role

Automatic mining is not only a faster version of tapping. It changes the player from the sole source of progress into the person directing a system. Once mining can continue automatically, attention can move towards upgrades, discoveries, specimens and the workshop.

That is the kind of automation I wanted: not a button that makes the game play itself, but a tool that frees the player to make different decisions. Active tapping can still move a run forward, while automatic mining gives the game its idle rhythm.

Good automation should remove repetition without removing the reasons to care.

Progress can continue while the game is closed

Eligible offline rewards extend the mining system beyond the current session. When the player returns, the game can recognise elapsed time and award the progress that qualifies. That return should feel like the previous session left something useful in motion.

The workshop uses time in a more personal way. Processing jobs preserve their completion times across normal game closures. Instead of returning only to a larger total, the player can return to a particular specimen that has finished becoming a cabochon or faceted gem.

These two systems share the same idle principle but produce different feelings. Offline mining is broad economic progress. A processing job is anticipation attached to one chosen object. Using both helped the game avoid relying on a single timer for every kind of reward.

Workers made progression feel less mechanical

The workers screen introduced named characters such as Mei, the gemstone faceting worker. I am careful not to describe unverified worker benefits here, but the design direction itself matters. A workshop staffed by recognisable people feels different from a collection of anonymous timers and buttons.

Workers give me room to express progression through more than numbers. The player can see that the workshop is becoming a place with roles and specialists. Even when the underlying game still relies on systems and calculations, the presentation can suggest skill, craft and personality.

Short goals sit between upgrades and resets

Daily and weekly quests create a middle layer of progression. An upgrade can change the next few minutes, while prestige can reshape an entire run. Quests sit between those scales by giving normal play a shorter target and a reason to return regularly.

I did not want quests to feel like an unrelated checklist. They work best when they turn actions that already belong to the game into temporary goals. The player can mine, improve and collect while also moving towards a quest reward.

Prestige turns repetition into long-term growth

Prestige is the largest decision in the normal mining cycle. It restarts the current run in exchange for Tokens and permanent upgrades. The important word is permanent: the reset must create a stronger foundation, otherwise starting again would only erase work.

Later progression can open Ascension, extending the structure beyond prestige while preserving the achievements that are meant to remain. Protected specimens, finished stones and persistent mastery also give the player reasons to build something that lasts across resets.

This is where the smaller layers meet the larger one. Faster mining supports more discoveries. Better discoveries create more interesting collection and processing choices. Those systems build a run that can eventually be traded for permanent power, making the next journey through the mine different from the last.

Five scales of progression

Looking at the game now, I can separate its progression into five scales:

• Seconds: tapping, damaging and breaking the current rock.
• Minutes: buying damage and speed upgrades and reaching further material.
• Sessions: completing quests, comparing specimens and starting processing jobs.
• Time away: returning to eligible offline rewards and completed workshop jobs.
• Multiple runs: using prestige, permanent upgrades and later Ascension progression.

The game does not need to announce these categories to the player. They are useful to me as a way of checking whether every part has a purpose. If two systems occupy the same space without creating a new decision, one of them may be unnecessary. If there is too long a gap between meaningful changes, the progression may need another step.

Codex helped connect the layers, but I still had to judge them

Direct access to the Unity project made it possible for Codex to work across systems that depended on one another. An upgrade could affect mining behaviour. Saved time could affect offline rewards or processing. Persistent data could determine what remained after a restart.

Implementing those connections is only part of the work. I still have to play the game and decide whether the next upgrade arrives too quickly, whether automation becomes useful at the right moment and whether a reset feels rewarding. Those are design judgements, and they cannot be settled simply because the code runs without an error.

What this stage taught me

Before making Gem Forge Idle, I thought of an idle game mainly as something that continues while the player is away. Building one showed me that the more important question is what the player returns to. A larger number is useful, but a new decision is better.

The strongest progression in the project now comes from combining both. Numbers move forward, but they also open new rock tiers, discoveries, specimens, workshop results and permanent upgrades. Automation creates time for decisions, workers give the workshop an identity and prestige makes repetition part of a longer journey.