Upgrade

Upgrade games are games that condense the traditional loop of games into 2 phases, a gameplay phase where you earn money to spend on upgrades, and an upgrade phase where you spend the money to upgrade your abilities in the gameplay phase. These games often have a simplistic yet satisfying focus, such as mining, like in Motherload (2004), or launch games, like Learn to Fly (2009); however, they can be combined with most any style of game. The genre was most popular on flash game sites in the late-2000s and early 2010s, however most popularity was focused on incremental games, which aimed to combine the 2 phases of upgrade games into a streamlined experience.