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Money$0.00
Warehouse0/10
TransportWaiting at harbour
Slider 1
About this page & FAQ

About Heavy Friction

Heavy Friction is the tactile idle game on PlayMemorize. The screen is a stack of industrial sliders. Each handle has a constant snap-back force pulling it back toward zero. Drag a handle from 0% to 100% of its track and you produce one Resource. Let go and the handle slides back · the heavy work has to be done against the friction.

The Burden. A fresh slider takes roughly ten full-track drags to fill. The friction is real · it is the whole game. Spend money on the Speed (Friction) upgrade to shave one percentage point off the resistance per level; at high enough levels a single sweep of the handle is enough to complete a stroke. Or buy Auto-Slide and the handle starts creeping forward by itself, so you can step away while it grinds.

The Bottleneck. Production is fast and manual. Revenue is slow and automated. Every Resource sells for $1, but the base auto-seller drains the warehouse at only one resource per minute · so early in the run you can produce far faster than you can sell, and your warehouse stacks up. The strategic question is when to invest in less friction (faster production) versus a beefier Auto-Seller (faster cash). Get the timing wrong and you grind for resources that won't sell for half an hour.

Upgrades. Four tracks: Speed (less friction, $1 base, +1.15× per level), Auto-Slide ($10 once per slider, the handle moves forward on its own), Auto-Seller ($100 base, +1 resource sold per minute per level), and New Slider ($10, $100, $1,000, $10,000 · adds another fully independent slider to the rack).

Deterministic and offline-friendly. Like every PlayMemorize game, Heavy Friction runs entirely in your browser. No account, no ads, no paywalls. Saves to localStorage; works offline as part of the PlayMemorize Progressive Web App.

Idle, not labyrinth. Heavy Friction is exempt from the cross-game labyrinth and Polymath roulette · idle pacing doesn't fit a 30-second mini-game shape. It lives on its own page in the Idle group on the home screen.

Part of the PlayMemorize family of free brain-training games.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q: What is Heavy Friction?

A minimalist, industrial-themed idle game on PlayMemorize. Instead of clicking, the primary interaction is a tactile drag-and-release on a heavy slider handle that fights you with constant snap-back. Drag from 0% to 100% of the track to produce one Resource. Resources accumulate in a Warehouse and an Auto-Seller drains them slowly into Money you can spend on upgrades.

Q: How does the slider physics work?

Each slider has a Track and a Handle. The Handle has a constant snap-back force that pulls it back toward 0% whenever you stop dragging. At base resistance it takes roughly ten full-length drags across the track to complete one stroke. Each level of the Speed (Friction) upgrade reduces the resistance by one percentage point and slows the snap-back · enough levels and a single sweep is enough to fill a stroke.

Q: How do I make money?

Resources go into your Warehouse the moment a stroke completes. The Auto-Seller drains the Warehouse at a slow constant rate · 1 Resource per minute at base, +1 per level you buy. Each Resource sold adds $1 to your Money. The bottleneck is real: early in the run you will produce far faster than you can sell, and the Warehouse will pile up. Investing in the Auto-Seller is what unblocks revenue.

Q: What are the upgrades?

Four tracks. Speed (Friction) at $1 base reduces resistance by 1 percentage point per level. Auto-Slide at $10 makes the handle move forward by itself at a slow constant rate · the player can still drag to help. Auto-Seller at $100 base adds +1 Resource per minute to your sales rate. New Slider costs $10, $100, $1,000, $10,000 · each adds a completely independent slider to the rack.

Q: Does my progress save?

Yes, automatically. Your money, warehouse, sliders, and upgrade levels are persisted to your browser localStorage on every action. Live handle positions are not saved · they reset to zero when you reload, so a half-pulled stroke does not survive a refresh. The Reset button starts over from zero.

Q: Can I play it offline?

Yes. PlayMemorize is a Progressive Web App; the page is pre-cached on first visit. Install to your home screen and Heavy Friction plays on the next flight, in a tunnel, anywhere.

Q: Why is this not in the Labyrinth or Polymath?

Idle games don't fit the labyrinth's 30-second-encounter shape · the whole point of an idle is that pacing is up to the player. Heavy Friction lives on its own page in the Idle group on the home screen and is intentionally exempt from the cross-game roulette.

Q: Is it free?

Yes, completely free. No account, no ads, no paywalls.