this incremental game is about starting a nail business

as you progress, you learn more about the impact of your own life. you choose to leave a dent on your world, depending on how you act.

making nails is creating, breaking with nails is the harvesting of your world.

Taoism draws a real distinction between non-action (doing nothing, passivity, laziness) and wu wei (effortless action, acting so completely in accordance with the flow of things that no excess or waste is created). The Tao Te Ching's sage isn't idle. Chapter after chapter describes the sage as someone who acts, produces, governs, works, but does so without forcing, without excess, without leaving residue. "Production and non-possession, action without dependence, accomplishment without dwelling on it" (a paraphrase of chapter 2). The sage's zero net footprint isn't the same as the idle man's zero footprint. One is achieved through mastery of flow, the other through absence of engagement.

my goal is to create an idle game, inspired from universal paperclips that gives the player the option to play actively, instead of leaving your device and letting the game play itself. you must constantly manage all of your current stats, watching how much is  being produced and consumed, and you are the creator of your own impact.

you can end your life, or you can reincarnate.

also making an account is very easy, and puts you on a global leaderboard.

play full game at nailmaker.org

q: how to change price faster

you can hold down on the + and - button. thought i should clarify.

q: why isn't my nail count going down when i sell?

it is, just in tiny pieces. selling happens continuously in the background, not one nail at a time, so the number only visibly drops once it crosses a whole number. funds go up in little bits the whole time. that's normal.

q: what actually controls how fast i sell?

price and marketing. lower price + more marketing = way more demand, but demand scales weird, it barely moves at low levels then shoots up fast. cutting price hard can trigger a real sell-off, not just a small bump.

q: why is my iron not turning into nails fast enough?

nail makers need iron to work. if you're out of iron, buy more or wait on your breakers to mine it. more nail makers = faster iron use, so keep an eye on your iron amount not running dry. matter fact the whole game with balancing is watching how much you are producing vs consuming, which is the concept behind the yin and yang.

q: what's the map for?

once you unlock nail breakers, you get a map with iron and copper deposits. breakers use nails as ammo to mine it . every nail hits every deposit still active. once a map's empty, move to the next one. each maps have different deposit amounts, to keep you micro managing whether u need more iron or copper because the map has more copper than iron or more iron than copper.

q: why do i have copper and what do i do with it?

sell it for funds, or wait till u get a factory. factories can spit out either nail makers or nail breakers depending on where you set the balance slider, and use copper as ammo. a breaker is 1kg of copper and a maker is 100g.

q: what are yin and yang?

once your economy gets big enough, you unlock a balance meter. mining more than you use fills yin, using more than you mine fills yang. get them both to 100 and you earn a tao point, a permanent bonus. staying close to balanced also gives you a live bonus the whole time.

q: what's the point of tao?

tao boosts your production and demand permanently for the rest of this life. rack up enough of it and you unlock reincarnation.

q: what's the difference between "end run" and "reincarnate"?

end run kills your karma and starts you totally fresh, no benefits, just a score on the leaderboard. so its basically suicide. reincarnating keeps your karma forever and gives you better starting bonuses next life. karma never goes away once you have it.

q: what is nirvana?

the best possible reincarnation outcome. once you hit it, it's permanent. it's basically the closest thing this game has to "beating" it, but you can keep playing after.

q: is there a way to cheat or reset my save?

no built-in reset button, sorry. if you want a clean start, end your run. saves are local to your browser unless you're logged in, in which case they follow your account.