Dragonfist Limitless

The training montage is cinema's most efficient storytelling device, and Dragonfist Limitless turns it into a game design philosophy. Cameron Duff's solo-made incremental launched in 2023 with a pitch that openly inverts mobile convention: progress here is very slow, deliberately so, built on delayed gratification instead of handholding, while a sassy and possibly evil Sensei narrates your grind and the villain Emperor Axemetal awaits with his Five Generals of Beatdown. Forty thousand words of pitch-black comedy ride along.

What the loop feels like

You are weak, and the game tells you so constantly. Boxing, lifting weights, balancing, unlocking your ki: the gym grinds run slowly, and your Power Level barely moves at first. Then the multipliers start stacking, Scrolls and Tomes and clothing and achievements, and the same gym session that once felt like nothing doubles your gains. That's Dragonfist Limitless.

The other half is the fighting and the jokes. Side-scrolling bouts against blocking enemies reward gold, technique, or the option to just bludgeon through with raw Power Level. A new master teaches Thousand Fang Stance, the infamous Gut Blender enters your moveset, and the Sensei roasts your progress in the online chat. That's Dragonfist Limitless.

How it actually works

Unlike passive idlers, this is a highly active incremental. Training and combat are hands-on: gym routines, combos, timed blocks and stamina management generate Experience and Gold, and Power Level is the core metric driving both damage and defence as it climbs into absurd anime-scale numbers. Gold funds gym gear, consumables and permanent perks, while collecting clothing and items applies account-wide multipliers to stats, EXP and gold. The store listing promises stacking upgrade multipliers including, literally, the souls of your enemies, an incremental prestige loop, a weekly Power Level leaderboard, and study-under-masters move unlocks like Energy Beams and the infamous Gut Blender. Purchases exist to support the game, and the store is explicit that they are not required to compete.

Where it stumbles

The community's honest read is that the opening hours are the filter: many players drop it early because the game feels slow, weak and punishingly sluggish before the mechanics that accelerate progress arrive. It also demands active attention, with manual training and gym grinding rather than the close-the-app idle flow of the genre. And the appeal is genuinely niche, blending stat-sheet incrementals with beat-em-up elements and bizarre comedy in a way that mainstream action fans bounce off. Nobody pretends otherwise, least of all the game itself.

Playing it today

Free on both stores with optional supporter purchases and no pay-to-win, actively updated by a single developer, strongly rated by its audience, and supported by a lively subreddit and weekly leaderboards. Get it on the App Store for iOS or on Google Play for Android. For grinding with more soil and less comedy, our Goblins Wood entry covers the other merge-grind favourite, and Clicker Heroes remains the genre's classic beatdown loop.

The verdict

A cult classic in the making: slow, funny, honest about its grind, and refreshingly uninterested in taking your money. Survive the first hours and the montage takes over.