Monster Hunting: Incremental Grind Forever

Introduction

Monster Hunting: Incremental Grind Forever sets out to be a full idle RPG rather than a simple number-go-up loop: recruit a party of monster allies, fight through escalating waves, craft gear, join a faction, and push across hundreds of regions and reward tiers. Made by TCS Developer and released 25 September 2024 for NZ$7.39, it sits at Mostly Positive across the 21 English-language reviews this review reads in full. What emerges from reading the whole sample is a game with real, rewarded depth for players willing to commit — and a genuine, corroborated problem waiting for anyone who commits hard enough to reach the end.

Deep enough to hold hundreds of hours

The clearest evidence that this game delivers on its ambitions is the playtime logged by its fans. One reviewer reports 653 hours; another, 376; a third, 229 spent unlocking every achievement. "Solid clicker/idler with more complexity than most flooding the Steam store lately," that third reviewer writes. Several single out the offline system specifically: a 72-hour time bank that lets accumulated progress be spent across multiple return sessions, rather than the more common design of either progressing only while the app is open or capping offline gains at a much shorter window. "The offline time bank mechanic shines here," one review puts it. "You can burn through run after run when you start playing again... massively more helpful than grinding one run while offline." Multiple reviewers also credit the complete absence of pay-to-win mechanics, a detail that matters more in this genre than most.

Too many systems, explained too little

Set against that depth is a specific, repeated complaint about how the game introduces its own systems. One detailed review, from a player with over 38 hours logged, describes the game as "overcomplicated," with "hundreds of different windows where you can increase power of your team" that ultimately feel confusing rather than deep. A second, more measured critique — from a reviewer who explicitly calls this "a passion project with a lot of content" — pinpoints the actual problem precisely: "there are too many types of upgrades and currencies. They are introduced too quickly, have unclear impact, and are unmemorable." That reviewer gives a concrete example: unlocking a system called World Shifts, priced in a currency called Star Gems, with no in-game explanation of where those Star Gems came from or how to get more. That's a fair, specific criticism distinct from simply disliking complexity — the systems may well be well designed individually, but the game doesn't do enough to help a player track what each one does once several are running at once.

A corroborated bug at the very end

The most serious finding in this small review sample is also the most precisely dateable. Two separate, heavily invested reviewers — one reporting roughly 39 hours logged, one reporting 653 — independently describe the exact same problem: reaching approximately wave 1,348 triggers infinite monster health and currency values that display as NaN (not a number), permanently halting further progress and blocking the game's final achievement. "It's clear the hardest monster to hunt is the game-breaking bug," the more detailed of the two writes, noting the developer had previously helped resolve a separate issue but that this one remained. Steam's own achievement data is consistent with a real barrier here rather than simple player attrition: completion rates taper gradually through the game's reward-tier milestones, from 43.2% down through the teens and single digits, before falling off a cliff to just 1.7% for the "final boss" achievement specifically. The game's build history shows no update since early October 2024, roughly two weeks after launch — so a shopper today should assume this bug, reported by two of the game's most dedicated players, has not been resolved.

Final Verdict

Monster Hunting: Incremental Grind Forever is a genuinely ambitious, cheap idle RPG that rewards the kind of sustained investment few games this small ever earn — the numbers on its most dedicated fans' profiles speak for themselves. What holds it back from a stronger score is twofold: a real design problem where new systems and currencies pile up faster than the game explains them, and a specific, corroborated bug that appears to make the actual ending unreachable for exactly the players who put in the hours to get there. For the price, it's a reasonable pick for idle RPG fans who enjoy untangling complex systems and don't mind an offline time bank doing most of the heavy lifting — just go in with modest expectations about ever seeing the credits.