Can ‘Em All has everything I love about incremental games, except a clear conscience

It would be fair to say that my love for all things incremental is pretty established TNT lore at this point. What can I say? I love watching those numbers go up. But apparently even I have limits when it comes to what I'm willing to do to make the numbers go brrr, and Can ‘Em All might be a game that crosses the line. Possibly. 

Can ‘Em All is essentially what I imagined Team Rocket got up to at weekends when I was a kid. It's an incremental game based on the repeated murder of adorable critters using increasingly effective and brutal methods. The gameplay loop itself is everything I love about the genre, but I'm not sure my guilty conscience can handle hearing the cute little things scream while I kill them. 

Accomplice to incremental slaughter

In the interests of full disclosure, I haven't actually played Can ‘Em All. What I have done, though, is watch my fiancé play for far longer than either of us should be proud to admit. As such, I can't go into too much detail about the upgrade system or the intricacies of gameplay, but I can tell you that both of us ended this experience feeling like villains.  

You're thrown into a factory with one little creature running around, and a particularly adorable one at that. He's happy, he's having the time of his life, and then you come at him and start punching him in the head. He becomes more and more visibly broken by your attacks, screaming and yelling while you're chasing him around the room. The poor thing had no idea what was coming and ended up being fed into a crusher to be turned into soup for starving children. 

Talk about a moral dilemma.

There are upgrades, of course, though none of them are particularly joyful, as you mostly gain better weapons to kill the critters quicker. You get a bat first, which doesn't change the game all that much, but then you get a knife, and finally a gun. By that point, you're in a room filled with terrified creatures, taking potshots and hoping some of them die. These are truly dark times. 

A familiar guilt 

I'm no stranger to dark games, and Can ‘Em All is far from the most twisted game I've ever seen, but it does bring back memories of another dark and brutal game that has all the same depraved progression hallmarks: Bloodmoney!

Both games require you to inflict fatal damage on someone or thing, but somehow Can ‘Em All is my limit, while Bloodmoney! was a game I actually enjoyed playing, at least to begin with. I think the biggest reason for that is Bloodmoney! only asks you to gradually kill one person who initially tells you to hurt him, while Can ‘Em All requires the repeated murder of creatures who couldn't beg you to kill them even if they had a death wish. 

And in all fairness, when I say I enjoyed Bloodmoney!, I don't mean that I got some grim satisfaction out of hurting someone. I enjoyed how shocking it was, and the juxtaposition between the cutesy art style and the grim gameplay. I'm not a terrible person, and I hate seeing others suffer, but Bloodmoney! stands out because I wanted to keep playing despite feeling horrible at the time. 

Bloodmoney! is a horror game wrapped in pastel colors, but beneath that cheerful exterior, it still feels like horror, if that makes sense. Can ‘Em All is an incremental game dripping in the blood of the innocent. There's a difference, and I think that's where I draw the moral line. 

I don’t hate it, but I can’t play it

Despite what I’ve written here, I don’t hate Can ‘Em All. It’s everything I love in an incremental game, but the subject matter prevents me from feeling morally okay about playing it. I’ve always been an animal lover, and my daughter is a huge Pokémon fan, so I cannot in good conscience play a game where I’m beating up and slaughtering a bunch of critters, no matter how much I want to help the virtual children who apparently have no option but to eat them.

My love of incrementals is deep-rooted, and there are so many aspects of Can ‘Em All that make me want to play it. The graphics are lovely and crisp, the upgrade system is clear and addictive, as it should be in any good incremental game, and the idea of feeding the poor children is definitely a hook. There’s a huge amount of charm to be found in this dark and twisted game for the right player; I’m just not one of them. 

If you love incremental games and have the grit to do what needs to be done, you’ll probably enjoy Can ‘Em All, judging from its overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam (some of which are as unhinged as the game itself, and so darkly funny that I feel bad for laughing). I wish I could join you, but I’ll stick to growing my black holes. 

Can ‘Em All was developed by LuisDev and released on October 30, 2026. There’s also a demo available to play if you want to test your morality and willingness to commit slaughter before committing to buying the full game.