How To Grow a Black Hole

About How To Grow a Black Hole

How To Grow a Black Hole is a single player casual management game with a science fiction theme. It was developed by Desolation Digital and was released on June 23, 2026. It received mostly positive reviews from players.

How To Grow a Black Hole is a chill incremental game about feeding, upgrading, researching, and barely controlling the most dangerous cosmic object imaginable. Start small, feed your black hole, increase its mass, unlock new ways to grow, and push the numbers higher and higher until everything starts getting completely unreasonable. Just make sure things do not spiral too far out of control, becau…

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Play Modes

Single-Player

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Reviews

68%Audience ScoreBased on 387 reviews

gameplay21 positive mentions

optimization9 negative mentions

Unique and compelling gameplay mechanic involving balancing black hole growth and stability, requiring strategic management beyond typical idle games.
Visually pleasing with satisfying graphics and effects, including a nice UI design and customizable black holes which enhances the relaxing and immersive experience.
Good value for price, with offline progress, active developer engagement, and replayability through leaderboards and research upgrades.

Performance issues including high CPU/GPU usage and crashes, especially on some hardware and fullscreen mode, making the game unplayable for some.
Confusing and poorly explained upgrades and mechanics, lacking clear player guidance which hampers understanding and progression.
Forced collapse (prestige) mechanic feels punishing and frequent, with unskippable long animations, leading to repetitive and frustrating gameplay loops.

gameplay
66 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
32% positive mentions, 56% neutral mentions, 12% negative mentions
The gameplay presents a unique and engaging core mechanic of balancing black hole growth and collapse, blending incremental and idle progression with some strategic depth. However, many players find the gameplay loop repetitive, poorly explained, and marred by frustrating forced collapse mechanics and uninspired UI design. While the game excels visually and offers satisfying progression for fans of idle games, it struggles with clarity, balance, and meaningful player creativity, leading to mixed reception overall.
- “The mechanics of balancing the growth of a black hole while not collapsing it is very unique and fun.”
- “The gameplay loop is satisfying and there are multiple different ways to play which you can try out, plus meta progression.”
- “While it may not redefine the incremental genre, it offers a fresh and entertaining theme supported by polished mechanics and a rewarding gameplay loop that consistently encourages players to see just how massive their cosmic creation can become.”
- “However, I do agree that the logic of the game mechanics reeks of AI: the game shows you a whole lot of different numbers and stats and even provides tutorial messages which look well-thought out at first, but the way things work is rather obscure and very vague.”
- “Force collapse mechanic is not fun: you can have a run last hours or days trying to grow the black hole, and one click too many (either new feed source or mass) can instantly ruin your run and force a restart.”
- “The UI is awful, the gameplay loop is a mess, and it is an idler that you can't idle.”
graphics
61 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
51% positive mentions, 44% neutral mentions, 5% negative mentions
The game's graphics are generally praised for their simplicity, aesthetic appeal, and stunning visuals, especially the black hole effects and UI design. However, some users find them repetitive and lacking in variety or detailed visuals beyond basic particle effects, with certain graphical settings reportedly nonfunctional and occasional performance issues. Overall, while visually pleasing and fitting the game's theme, the graphics could benefit from more creativity and polish to enhance engagement.
- “The attention to detail is phenomenal — from the way accretion disks form and swirl, to the gravitational effects, relativistic visuals, and the gradual evolution of your growing singularity.”
- “The UI is clean, the visuals are gorgeous and the incremental elements and prestige system are well thought out and easy to understand.”
- “It perfectly combines simple gameplay, stunningly beautiful graphics, and numerous development opportunities.”
- “For some reason the demo runs fine but the full version, in the first 5 minutes, has a weird graphical bug that makes the display choppy and produces horizontal black pulsing shapes.”
- “Also, I'm pretty sure not a single one of the graphics settings does anything; vsync definitely doesn't work, fps limiting also doesn't work, and for some reason, you aren't even allowed to change your graphics settings.”
- “After playing for about 3 hours, the visuals are lacking — the same exact particle is used for every single item, from dust particles to black holes, with no variation or color changes even when changing skins; these recolors do not provide any gameplay boost.”
optimization
41 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
15% positive mentions, 63% neutral mentions, 22% negative mentions
Optimization for the game is highly inconsistent, with many users reporting poor performance, frame drops, and unplayable conditions on various systems, especially due to it running as an Electron/React app. However, some players with high-end hardware experience smooth gameplay and improved performance following patches. Overall, the game suffers from noticeable optimization issues that have been partially addressed but remain a concern for a significant portion of the player base.
- “Amazing optimized game ran perfectly on an 11 year old CPU and 14 year old GPU.”
- “The pricing is incredibly fair, and when it comes to performance, there is absolutely nothing to complain about—it runs flawlessly and buttery smooth on my setup.”
- “Edit: they fixed the graphics performance issues and now the animations are buttery smooth.”
- “Last patch completely gutted performance for myself and others as well, so the current state of the game is basically unplayable for me.”
- “Poor performance, can't fullscreen properly on Linux, couldn't click to make money after a while.”
- “For some reason even with my build, performance is abysmal for an idle game.”
music
9 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
56% positive mentions, 11% neutral mentions, 33% negative mentions
The music in the game is generally praised for its fitting, interstellar vibe and engaging soundtrack, enhancing the overall experience. However, some players note occasional audio issues such as music cutting out or being underdeveloped. Overall, the soundtrack is considered a strong and enjoyable aspect of the game.
- “Between the incredible visuals, the educational value, and the amazing soundtrack, this is a gem you should get today.”
- “The music is exactly what I'd want or expect from a game like this.”
- “Graphics are good, gameplay is addicting, sound effects and music are great.”
- “I thought the audio was bugged in my game because I couldn't hear any sound effects or music, but there was some sound right before collapse/game reset, so I think audio wasn't fully developed.”
- “Overall, I feel like you can almost tell it's made by AI; the UI is buggy and seems unfinished, the music randomly cuts out, grammar feels sorta AI-ish.”
- “I'm not a big fan of the music, but I can see myself putting on something else while playing.”
grinding
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
0% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 100% negative mentions
Grinding in the game is often described as tedious and slow, with some upgrades requiring repetitive runs that feel like grinding for its own sake rather than meaningful progression. However, the game's beautiful art, deep mechanics, and the ability to farm passively mitigate some of the monotony, offering a wealth of content and upgrades to keep players engaged.
- “There are upgrades that are locked behind a certain number of runs, which is just grinding for grinding's sake, not progression.”
- “Very tedious, very slow, but very pretty.”
- “Tedious.”
humor
6 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 0% negative mentions
The game's humor shines through its clever and playful premise of managing a black hole, blending scientific concepts with entertaining incremental gameplay. Humorous touches and a lighthearted presentation keep the experience fun and memorable, balancing complexity with engaging, witty elements. Overall, the humor adds charm and personality without overshadowing the game's strategic depth.
- “The presentation embraces its humorous premise from beginning to end.”
- “These humorous touches prevent the experience from becoming overly technical while giving it a memorable personality.”
- “It's especially funny that the developer supposedly worked in web development.”
stability
4 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
25% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 75% negative mentions
The game runs smoothly without crashes or major bugs, but users note some minor stability issues such as a buggy, unfinished UI and occasional music cutouts. Overall, the technical performance is solid, though certain elements feel incomplete or inconsistent.
- “Runs great.”
- “Game is alright, best clicker game I've played and cool concept but is buggy and not clear on what upgrades are actually impacting.”
- “Overall, I feel like you can almost tell it's made by AI. The UI is buggy and seems unfinished, the music randomly cuts out, grammar feels sort of AI-ish.”
monetization
3 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
0% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 100% negative mentions
The game's monetization is widely criticized as a cash grab, with restrictive measures like disabling refunds after minimal playtime. Players feel the pricing and release strategy prioritize quick profit over quality or fairness, contrasting with more transparent models like donations or ad-supported web games.
- “Basically a cash grab game, with no way to refund it because it will just brick itself if it sees your playtime is more than 2 hours.”
- “The devs released the game during an indie sale for a quick cash grab, then went on holiday.”
- “Could have been a simple web game and ask for donations or put ads in the site like cookie clicker to be honest, blackhole WebGL shader is pretty.”
story
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
0% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 100% negative mentions
The story includes a forced collapse mechanic that some find annoying but manageable, and features filler text that feels overly verbose and disrupts readability due to poor UI formatting.
- “Completely pointless flavor/filler text that sounds very much like usual flowery AI storytelling and ends up overflowing out of the UI and becoming unreadable.”
- “The forced collapse mechanic is a bit annoying. If the dev reads this, then, if you wanted to include jumpscares in the game, then, mission accomplished, but I have been able to avoid it.”
atmosphere
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 0% negative mentions
The game's atmosphere is praised for its beautiful visuals featuring black holes, space phenomena, and collapse effects, which together create an immersive sense of exploration.
- “The atmosphere and visuals of this game are really nice.”
- “Black holes, space, collapses, and other effects look beautiful and create an atmosphere of exploration.”
replayability
2 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 0% negative mentions
The game offers high replayability thanks to its stunning visuals and engaging core gameplay. Additionally, online leaderboards motivate players to continually refine their strategies, enhancing long-term appeal.
- “Stunning visuals and the core gameplay are very replayable.”
- “Replay value is strengthened through online leaderboards that encourage players to optimize every aspect of their growth strategy.”
emotional
1 mentions Positive Neutral Negative
100% positive mentions, 0% neutral mentions, 0% negative mentions
The game delivers a wholesome and emotionally engaging experience centered around themes of anticipation and release.

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Play Times

10h Median play time

9h Average play time

2-14h Spent by most gamers

*Based on 3 analyzed playthroughs

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Frequently Asked Questions

How To Grow a Black Hole is a casual management game with science fiction theme. Common tags for How To Grow a Black Hole include realistic, indie, automation, physics, idler and others.

How To Grow a Black Hole is available on PC and Windows.

On average players spend around 9 hours playing How To Grow a Black Hole.

How To Grow a Black Hole was released on June 23, 2026.

How To Grow a Black Hole was developed by Desolation Digital.

How To Grow a Black Hole has received mostly positive reviews from players. Most players liked How To Grow a Black Hole for its gameplay but disliked it for its optimization.

How To Grow a Black Hole is a single player game.

Similar games include Idle Research, Universe Sandbox, Fill Up The Hole, How to Train Your Cock, Universe Sandbox Legacy and others.

How To Grow a Black Hole

Platforms

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Reviews

gameplay

graphics

optimization

music

grinding

humor

stability

monetization

story

atmosphere

replayability

emotional

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