In an idle game, prestige means choosing to reset most of your progress in exchange for a permanent bonus that makes every future run faster. You give up your money, buildings and upgrades, and you keep a special currency that multiplies what you earn from then on. Idle games use it because rising costs eventually make progress crawl, and a reset with a bonus is the way past that wall.
Why do idle games have prestige? #
Idle games raise the price of every purchase by a percentage. In Bunny Bakery, each bakery station costs 15% more than the last one of its type. That sounds small, but it compounds: the first Cookie Counter costs 100 coins, and the 100th costs about 102 million. Your income grows too, but eventually it can’t keep up, and the next purchase that matters is hours away.
That’s the wall every idle run hits. Prestige solves it by sending you back to the start, where everything is cheap, with a permanent multiplier. You race through the early game faster than before and hit the wall further along. Then you reset again, and the wall moves again. We cover the full loop in how idle games work.
What do you keep and what do you lose? #
It varies by game, but the pattern is consistent:
| Usually reset | Usually kept |
|---|---|
| Your main currency | The prestige currency itself |
| Buildings, stations or businesses | Achievements and their bonuses |
| Regular upgrades | Cosmetics and collections |
| Temporary boosts | Settings and lifetime stats |
Bunny Bakery follows this closely. A prestige clears your coins, stations, upgrades and tap power, and you restart with 100 coins. You keep your Sparkle Stars, achievements, bunny chefs, settings and daily login streak.
Prestige goes by many names #
Games rarely call it “prestige” in the same way, but the idea is the same.
| Game | What the reset gives you |
|---|---|
| Bunny Bakery | Sparkle Stars, +2% production each |
| AdVenture Capitalist | Angel Investors; the listing says “each Angel earns you a boost to your profits” |
| Tap Titans 2 | Artifacts; you “cash in your progress for powerful old artifacts” |
| Clicker Heroes | Ascension, where you ascend your main hero to grow stronger |
| Antimatter Dimensions | Infinity points, spent on upgrades, with further layers beyond |
| Egg, Inc. | A “nested” prestige system, in the developer’s words |
“Rebirth,” “ascension” and “reset” all describe the same mechanic.
How are prestige rewards calculated? #
Most games scale the reward to how far your run went, but with diminishing returns, so a run twice as big doesn’t give twice the bonus. Bunny Bakery shows this clearly. Its Sparkle Stars use a square-root curve on the coins you earned during the run:
| Coins earned in the run | Sparkle Stars |
|---|---|
| 1 billion | 1 |
| 4 billion | 2 |
| 9 billion | 3 |
| 25 billion | 5 |
| 100 billion | 10 |
| 1 trillion | 31 |
Doubling a run’s coins gives about 41% more stars, and it takes four times the coins to double them. That curve is why short and medium runs often beat one enormous run: the first stars in each run are cheap, and the last ones are expensive.
When should you prestige? #
There’s no universal answer, but these rules hold across most idle games:
- Reset when progress stalls. If the next purchase that matters is hours away, a reset will usually get you further, faster.
- Compare the gain with what you have. A reset that adds only a sliver to your existing bonus can wait. One that adds a large share of it is worth taking sooner.
- Don’t hoard before a reset. Many games, Bunny Bakery included, base the reward on what you earned, not what you’re holding, so spending right before a reset costs you nothing.
- Check what carries over. Achievements and collections that survive resets make every run faster, so it can pay to grab a nearby one first.
- Use a boost to cross a threshold. If a bigger reward is just out of reach, a temporary income boost can get you there.
For the Bunny Bakery specifics, including when the prestige button appears and what the first reset gives you, see the Bunny Bakery prestige guide.
Layers of prestige #
Some games stack resets on top of resets. Antimatter Dimensions is the classic example: reaching Infinity is only the first layer, and later layers reset the earlier ones for even bigger bonuses. Egg, Inc.’s “nested” system works on a similar idea. These games suit players who enjoy long-term planning.
Others keep a single layer. Bunny Bakery has one prestige currency with a fixed 2% per star, which makes it easy to predict and gentle for newcomers. If you’re choosing a game by how deep its systems go, idle vs clicker vs incremental games sorts the genre by style, and the best idle games for iPhone and Android includes both kinds.
Is prestige worth it? #
For most players, yes. It’s the main long-term goal in almost every idle game, and the first few resets usually make a visible difference. If losing progress feels bad, look for games where resets keep your achievements and collections, so something visible always carries forward.
Frequently asked questions #
Do you lose everything when you prestige? #
No. You lose your main currency, buildings and regular upgrades, but you keep the prestige currency, and most games also keep achievements, cosmetics and settings.
Is prestige the same as rebirth or ascension? #
Yes. Different games use different names, including rebirth, ascension and reset, but they all mean trading current progress for a permanent bonus.
How often should you prestige? #
Whenever your progress slows to a crawl, which for most games means once the next useful purchase is hours away. Early resets tend to come quickly, and later ones take longer.
Why does prestige make an idle game faster? #
The early game is cheap, and a permanent multiplier makes you earn faster from the first second. You get through the early purchases quickly and reach further than the run before.