What is prestige in idle games? It's a voluntary reset. You give up most of your progress, such as buildings, upgrades and cash, and in return you get a permanent bonus, usually a prestige currency or multiplier, that makes every future run faster. It's how idle games keep you progressing after growth stalls.
New to the genre? Start with our guide to what idle games are. This guide goes deeper on prestige: why it exists, how rewards are calculated, when to reset and how to plan your runs.
Anthony Pecorella, who wrote a well-known series on the math of idle games, describes prestige as "a reset of most elements of the game (especially generators and multipliers)" that multiplies your production rate on the next run. Wikipedia compares it to "New Game Plus" in other games, except that the reward is usually a permanent bonus that carries over to all future runs.
What usually resets: your main currency, buildings or generators, most upgrades and any automation you bought.
What usually stays: prestige currency, permanent multipliers, achievements and some unlocks.
Every game draws that line differently, so read the prestige screen before you confirm. Names vary too. You'll see rebirth, ascension and other labels, and Realm Grinder stacks layers called "abdicating", "reincarnating" and "ascending".
Pecorella explains that idle games usually make costs grow exponentially while production grows at a linear or polynomial rate. Exponential costs "will eventually catch and far exceed any polynomial growth", so every run hits a wall where the next purchase takes longer and longer.
Here's a simple illustration with made-up numbers. If each new factory costs 15% more than the last one, the 50th factory costs over 900 times as much as the first. Your income can't keep pace, and progress slows to a crawl. Prestige is the way out. In Pecorella's words, "each prestige allows the player to get farther through the cost curve before falling behind."
In a 2017 analysis, Pecorella sorts prestige systems into two families. Some are based on your lifetime or best earnings, so past runs count. Others count only what you earned since the last reset, so each run stands alone. Most use a root, which means prestige grows much more slowly than earnings:
AdVenture Capitalist used a square root of lifetime earnings. Doubling your prestige typically took about 3 to 4 times the previous run's earnings.
Cookie Clicker used a cube root of lifetime earnings. Doubling took roughly 8 times as much.
Egg, Inc. used a since-reset formula with an exponent of about 0.14. Doubling took roughly 128 times as much.
The takeaway: each prestige needs a bigger run than the last one to feel meaningful. That's deliberate. Pecorella says prestige reins growth back into a more manageable range, which keeps upgrade targets sensible.
There's no single right moment. Pecorella's analysis doesn't give a formal rule for the best time to reset, and the answer depends on each game's formula. These rules of thumb are a sensible starting point:
Don't reset at the first chance. Your first prestige bonus is tiny if you take it early. Push on until progress clearly slows, for example when your next upgrade would take far longer than the last few did.
Aim for a meaningful jump. A simple target is a reset that would roughly double your current prestige bonus, or at least add a big chunk to it.
Watch the rate, not the total. If the game shows how much prestige currency you'd get right now, check how fast that number is climbing. When it grows more slowly each minute, the run is losing steam.
Spend what carries over. Before you confirm, spend any currency that survives the reset and claim any rewards you'd otherwise lose.
Finish nearby milestones. If an achievement or permanent unlock is close, get it first.
Don't count on offline time alone. Some games cap how long you earn while away. Pecorella notes Egg, Inc. had a 2-hour offline limit, for example, so a long break won't always replace a reset.
Short runs early, longer runs later. Because doubling your prestige takes several times the previous earnings, later runs naturally get longer.
Quick repeat resets, where they pay. Pecorella notes that in systems where each run stands alone, repeating the same reset is still rewarding, and Clicker Heroes lets players keep resetting at roughly the same point to get past a steep wall. In lifetime-based systems, the gain shrinks each time you reset at the same point, so you need to push further.
Layers. Wikipedia notes that some games stack several prestige systems that unlock new content, meta-currencies or game modes. Higher layers usually ask you to give up more for a bigger reward, so save them for when the lower layer stops paying off.
Plan the first minutes after a reset. Buy the cheapest income sources and any automation first, so your income starts compounding again quickly.
Keep a simple log. Note each run's length and the prestige you gained. If a run earned much less per hour than the one before, try resetting earlier or later next time.
Pecorella describes a "ladder climbing" effect: the big boost after a reset feels like progress and power. Wikipedia adds that stages that once took ages can be cleared much faster after a reset, which brings back a sense of progress and empowerment. In a 2015 Game Developer article by Simon Parkin, Pecorella put the wider appeal simply: "Everything is 'going up' so it feels like you're always progressing."
The same article notes that "the longer you're away from the game, the greater your incentive to return to the game." That's part of the design. It's worth setting your own play windows and treating boosts and paid shortcuts as optional, not required.
Usually, yes, once progress slows. Prestige is the main way idle games let you get further than a single run allows.
No. You lose most of the current run, but the prestige currency or bonus stays, and many games keep achievements and some unlocks. Check the prestige screen to see what carries over.
Often at first, then less often. Because prestige formulas typically use roots, each doubling needs several times more earnings than the last run, so later runs get longer.
Often they're just different names for a reset with a permanent reward. In games with several layers, such as Realm Grinder, ascending is one of the higher layers.
Cash Empire Clicker is an idle money tycoon game with a prestige reset called IPO that gives permanent bonuses, along with fifteen empire stages, player levels and Research Lab upgrades that increase asset income. You tap a money printer, buy twelve income assets and hire eleven managers that automate production. It's free with optional in-app purchases, and all money in the game is fictional.
Get Cash Empire Clicker free on the App Store
Read more about Cash Empire Clicker
Game Developer: The Math of Idle Games, Part I (Anthony Pecorella)
Game Developer: The Math of Idle Games, Part III (Anthony Pecorella)
Game Developer: The rise of games you (mostly) don't play (Simon Parkin)