I’m no stranger to incremental games. What can I say? I’m a man of culture, so I, too, adore the genre where your purpose lies in making the numbers go up. In fact, I am also very much into the sub-genre of skill-tree-based incremental games, where you fight off waves of enemies of some kind to then upgrade skills in a tree to then do it better. They’re pretty neat.
What I’m saying is that I was rather excited to play Orange Acorn Games’ first game, Holding Pattern, which has been in development for four months and is releasing today. Truth be told, I was just expecting another one of those dopamine machines, but when I got to play it, I realised there’s a lot more to this game than what meets the eye.
Developer: Orange Acorn Games
Publisher: Orange Acorn Games
Genre: Indie, minimalist Incremental Game / Roguelike
Release Date: April 22nd, 2026
Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC
Copy was provided by the developer.
In Holding Pattern, you’re tasked with defending your galaxy from invaders. To do this, you hold your mouse over your home planet to create units, and then, when the invaders are in range, you hold onto them to launch units that will attack the invaders. It’s simple and very minimalistic.
After you complete stages, you earn money based on how many enemies you destroyed, how many unused units you have stocked up, as well as other bonuses. You then spent that money on upgrades in a skill tree so that you can defend your galaxy better in the upcoming stages or so that you can generate more money and units.
Some skills directly contribute to specific stat increases, like a percentage chance to critically strike or more damage for your units, but for the most part, Holding Pattern strays from the beaten path of minimal stat increases that this genre of games is known for. Rather than focusing on flat stat increases and multipliers, Holding Pattern is about meaningful upgrades that directly influence how well you do in the game and more “active” abilities.
The gameplay is very simple, obviously, with you holding onto the planet to create units and hovering over enemies to send out units… but then you unlock the ability to set enemies on fire, adding some tick damage, or you get AoE attacks and more attack speed, launch shockwaves and lightning strikes, and just get really strong.
Where other games are more based on hitting a wall and then prestige-ing, Holding Pattern has you fight towards the next big upgrade to overcome the increasingly difficult stages. There’s a bit of skill involved, too, and on-the-fly decision-making. The game does get fairly difficult, after all! And once you beat all the stages in the system, you’ll get to “ascend”.
With six ascensions in the game, there’s a lot to unpack here. Increasingly harder waves of enemies and more stages to beat, but you also get to speed up the game to zoom through stages. Your game resets to the beginning, which means having to re-acquire all of those upgrades again… This isn’t that much of a problem, though, as you are rewarded with additional moons, each with their own speciality.
The Harvest Moon, for instance, that I picked up after my first ascension lets me generate additional units and also turn enemies into allies, which is pretty dope – and it fits with my economy-focused playstyle because more units means more money… and I like money in these games. I completely missed, however, that there is a moon that literally generates money for you… Once you acquire your first or second moon, the game really ramps up in speed and you can breeze through the stages quickly.
What really surprised me, though, more than anything else, was just the amount of care that went into creating not just a simplistic and fun experience but also a whole soundscape made at home. Explosions aren’t just generic SFX you’ve heard elsewhere, but thuds against the table – which I found way too funny. There are bubble pops in there, lighter flicks, these cool “woosh” sounds and just a bunch of really fun noises, straight out of the ASMR handbook. I reckon this might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but personally, I just found that it only added onto the experience rather than taking away from it.
There’s a trend in game dev where games have to look and sound increasingly expensive, to the point where some titles just sound and look the same. One might argue that minimalistic games have also become too common and almost seem same-y. Holding Pattern genuinely surprised me, however, with the DIY soundscape, and I love that. It’s funny and charming and very unique. I wanna see more stuff like this in games!
Now, the game isn’t without issues. Sometimes the difficulty seems uneven, for instance. You hit a wall, and then you overcome it but you’re strong enough to also make the next few waves too easy. This is feedback I gave to the developer already, and they’re working on a fix. Similarly, the visibility gets a bit rough at times with money and damage numbers obscurring enemies. Again, I’ve shared my feedback already, and the developer seemed super open to my suggestions. It’s small nitpicks that are easily fixed, honestly.
Overall, the incremental portion of the game is a lot of fun and well-designed for the most part. My biggest issue with it may just be that 20 stages (+5 per ascension) may possibly be too many, but then again, complaining about “too much content” seems like a first-world problem to me, right?
Now, with that being said, I was more than surprised to see that the game also works as a roguelike. There’s a different mode to the game that you can select upon start up that essentially works the same way the incremental portion works, except you spend money at merchants to acquire skills… and you get to choose one of many random skills to pick up after each wave. The whole roguelike experience works pretty well, actually, and does offer a good challenge, although I do wish that some of its systems got explained better.
If you’re a fan of roguelikes, it might be too simplistic. Casuals of the genre might like the occasional run or two because of how easy it is to get into and how much variety there is. I reckon, however, that veterans of the genre might find the depth a bit lacking. I don’t think that’s a bad thing, though, especially for a side mode in an incremental game.
Having a gamemode like this, though, is super cool because there is a lot of overlap between roguelike-enjoyers and fans of incremental games. I felt reminded of a simpler version of Nova Drift while playing this due to how silly some of the runs get, and I hope that working on both the main portion of the game and the side mode will prove to be a good foundation for future titles by the developer!
All in all, I think Holding Pattern shines mostly through its uniqueness and the different choices the developer made in terms of designing it. It’s a cool entry into the genre of “number goes up” games and also works well as a minimalistic roguelike. I’ll be watching [their] career with great interest.
Verdict: Holding Pattern shines due to its unique design decisions and the minimalistic approach to both the roguelike portion and the main incremental gameplay. The DYI soundscape is fun and charming, the upgrades and skills feel meaningful, the game offers a steady challenge, and I think it works well for both veterans and casuals alike. I highly recommend checking Holding Pattern out if you are in for a good time.
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
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