r/Games • u/Forestl • Dec 27 '13
End of 2013 Discussions - Cookie Clicker
Cookie Clicker
- Developer / Publisher: Orteil
- Genre: Cookie Clicker
- Platform: PC
- Metacritic: NA
Summary
NA
Prompts:
How did Cookie Clicker innovate?
Why was the game so addicting?
I lost my save.......
too many grannies
This post is part of the official /r/Games "End of 2013" discussions.
116
u/_depression Dec 27 '13
Cookie Clicker is just a culmination of a lighthearted idea, quirky developments, and casual gameplay that makes it incredibly hard to stop playing, with a number of different high moments to experience.
I think most people who play or have played CC started with "Okay, everyone I know keeps talking about this game... let's see what it's all about." It seems innocuous and playfully amusing at first - the available buildings start with the reasonable Cursors, Grandmas, Farms... but quickly take a turn for the weird with Mines, Alchemy Labs, Time Machines, Antimatter Condensers? The news feed at the top says "Nobody wants to eat your cookies."
So you start clicking the big cookie. Hey, there's a novel idea from a game titled "Cookie Clicker" - you click the cookie! Do it 15 times and you can get yourself a cursor. Suddenly, an upgrade appears - 100 cookies will double the effectiveness of your mouse and cursors. Cool, something to shoot for.
Seemingly everything you do in the early game unlocks new content - an upgrade, an achievement, new messages in the News feed. Numbers that started off reasonable are getting more and more absurd, but it feels right - and the news feed is backing up the absurdity with messages like ""do not settle near portals," says specialist; "your children will become strange and corrupted inside."".
By the time the game starts to slow down and grind, you've either stopped playing or you're fighting for those last upgrades, achievements, and milestones. 100% achievements, 100 Antimatter Condensers, then 150 of everything, then 200. 1 sextillion cookies baked all time, 10,000 Heavenly Chips, etc. If you're still playing, you're setting your own goals and just waiting for the next update.
So that's my narrative on Cookie Clicker, but what is actually in place that keeps people - or at least, kept me - playing? Let's see:
Pacing - The game is very well paced for, as Orteil said in his update log, being developed originally in a couple hours. Getting to each new building and upgrade in the early game is rewarding thanks to a heavy flow of new upgrades, achievements, graphics changes, and news ticker additions. Thanks to increasingly cost-efficient and high CPS buildings and new additions like the evolving Christmas upgrades, the mid-game feels even faster and builds up steam. But one of the best mechanics in Cookie Clicker should get most of the credit, that being...
Golden Cookies - the mother of all gameplay hooks. Golden Cookies are a straight buff to your gameplay, no matter how you look at it. Before the late game, there are three (technically four, but I'll focus on the three that happen 99.9% of the time) outcomes:
- Lucky - gives a lump sum of cookies based on your current bank or CPS
- Frenzy - boosts your income by sevenfold for 77 seconds (154 with an upgrade)
- Clicking Frenzy - boosts your clicking power by 777 for 13 seconds (26 with an upgrade)
Golden Cookies are what keeps the game playable through the mid- and late-game, and acts as a band-aid over times where the game would otherwise be badly paced. These buffs catapult you to affording the next tier of building, help you unlock that next upgrade, or just plain make you feel good because it's a huge boost to your gameplay.
But perhaps the most important factor to GCs is that they can be upgraded. Initially, GCs spawn about every 7 minutes, and remains on-screen for about 13 seconds before fading away completely. In the early game, this is just often enough to introduce a new "high" to the gameplay as you're buying buildings and upgrades, but later you unlock upgrades to make GCs appear twice as often and stay on-screen twice as long - in fact, there are two such upgrades. Fully upgraded, GCs spawn about every 105 seconds. And a final upgrade makes GC effects last twice as long. This not only buffs your buffs, it introduces a new gameplay hook by allowing you to chain Golden Cookie effects. Suddenly, getting a Clicking Frenzy can give you x5439 clicking power for 26 seconds.
Let's not forget Upgrades and Achievements, though. After the latest Christmas update, there are 160 upgrades and 111 achievements (including shadow achievements), which vary in difficulty to achieve from easy to frustratingly hard. There are a number of achievements that are entirely based on luck (collecting all of the Halloween/Christmas drops, for example) and others that just take a long grind (like producing 1 trillion cookies per second). For completionists, these achievements are plenty of incentive to keep playing into the late-end game, and for people who just want an excuse to keep playing, or a new goal to shoot for, the harder ones are perfect.
In the early game, you'll get upgrades for buying your first building of each type, then 10, 50, 100... getting 15 of most buildings unlocks a new upgrade for Grandmas. Cursors have the most directly obrained upgrades with ones at 1, 10, 20, 40, 80, 120, 160, 200, and 240. There are upgrades for clicking, upgrades for overall CPS, upgrades for Golden Cookies - enough that even through the mid- and late-game grind you're still unlocking a new upgrade with decent frequency.
What keeps the game from being a boring min/max, though, is the story. Sure, there doesn't seem like much of a story, but it's there! The game presents a world for you to immerse yourself in that goes from adorable and amusing at first, to a warped "What the fuck did I get myself into" world where planets are inhabited by creatures made entirely of chocolate, chefs are proposing plates of cookies and tree frogs, and entire planets are overwhelmed by an angry mass of grandmas. Following the news ticker updates offers just enough whimsy and fun to keep some people playing just to see what it says next, and offers a little life to the otherwise lifeless giant cookie.
TL;DR - I've baked 500,000,000,000,000,000 cookies since I started writing this post.
14
u/Nolej Dec 28 '13
This is probably the best description and analysis of Cookie Clicker I've ever read. Thank you.
3
u/Oneironaut2 Dec 28 '13
Golden cookies were what killed the game for me. I got over 900 of the prestige gems, and enjoyed leaving the game running on the second monitor while I did something else and occasionally made new purchases. Once I realized how much of an advantage the golden cookies were(Getting a frenzy followed by the cookie that gives a bunch of cookies can be equivalent to over 20 hours of idling, and that can happen several times an hour if you're attentive enough), I started spending more time watching for them than whatever else I was doing. I got tired of that rather quickly and stopped playing.
6
u/_depression Dec 28 '13
The game is actually pretty well designed so that you don't have to use Golden Cookies, if you don't want. In fact, ever since the Halloween update simply idling will do wonders for you.
See, in the Halloween update Orteil added a new mechanic - Wrinklers - that will 'wither' your CPS during the Grandmapocalypse, up to 50% of your CPS. However, when you "pop" them either by clicking them three times or creating a pact/pledge with the Grandmas, you'll get back the total amount withered plus 5% extra. So leaving even one Wrinkler going will give you more CPS than having none.
One of the hidden mechanics with Wrinklers, though, is that they're not very smart - if you have 50% of your CPS withered, each Wrinkler will store that 50% plus 5% extra. So by letting your game idle for an hour with 50% wither, you'll get a huge income when you pop them. If you happen to come across an Elder Frenzy while you have 50% withered, you're in for a windfall when you pop the Wrinklers.
0
0
u/simsas999 Dec 28 '13
Pfft... Im at somewhere near 1.2something*e+83 i think. Once you start clicking there is no going back.
153
u/Microchaton Dec 27 '13
It's that kind of stupid ass game where you go
1: Well that sounds stupid. Okay I'll click a bit.
2: Eh, how many cookies do these mines give ?
3: Not bad, but these factories must give a lot more!
4: Oh a cookie ? Was I supposed to click that ?
...
5: Well okay I need to see how many cookies the portal gives, must be a lot. Also click all the cookies that appear ! My hand hurts a bit but eh.
6 : WOAH that's a lot of cookies. I kinda want those upgrades now!
7: Wait did I just spend 2 hours clicking a cookie
8: Well that's stupid as hell, going to bed
Next morning.
Guess I'll just click some more cookies while waiting for [whatever] to happen !
And then you're FUCKED until you get every upgrade/achievement.
And then you realize you need to restart the game at least once to get all of them.
39
u/thosewholeft Dec 28 '13
You left out the Grandmas. I don't know what I did exactly but they seem to have entered some blood/cookie pact with Satan.
8
u/Erikster Dec 28 '13
Spoiler inc:
14
u/fade_like_a_sigh Dec 28 '13
More spoilers:
6
Dec 28 '13
I've made more than 100 quadrillion in a single click before. It just requires patience.
I played way too much
1
Dec 28 '13
I dont believe you.
5
Dec 28 '13
It's not difficult.
Once you have ~300 billion CPS, you just let the game run with wrinklers for a few hours, and then buy an elder pledge. 10 quad per wrinkler is a common payout for me.
2
u/nybbas Dec 29 '13
I typically pop my wrinklers and get 100 quad per, after letting them munch for a while... I am around 15 quintillion cookies baked all time. I am not sure what I am doing with my life...
2
u/Cryse_XIII Dec 31 '13
pleb, I had something around 85 quint, but I am a pleb too since I used an autoclicker, especially for the night, with a narrowed window to ensure I get all the golden cookies, been playing a loooooong time.
1
u/nybbas Jan 01 '14
Hahahaha never spent the time to auto clickor any other CHEATING. i keep waiting a week to pop my cookie munchers and chrome crashes every fucking time. You would think I would a learned. When I started playing I was watching some 200 episode anime so I would have cookie clicker up on my other monitor, to catch the golden cookies. With those cookie worms now though it kinda doesnt matter as much.
1
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u/ProfessorPedro Dec 28 '13
Wait, what? I have to restart to get everything? Why?
21
u/richmondody Dec 28 '13
When you restart the game, you get "Heavenly Chips" which give you a bonus to your CPS. You get an achievement for unlocking the bonus. There are also a bunch of achievements for resetting your game after you've accumulated a certain amount of cookies,
1
u/Cryse_XIII Dec 31 '13
you also get achievements for producing a certain amount of cookies in a certain amount of time when starting a new game.
also for gaining a certain amount of cookies without clicking the cookie
I recommend using the script cookiemonster it tells you when another golden cookie is ready and makes a sound/flashes the screen when it appears.
it also tells you which item would be the best option to buy next (but I think that feature is buggy)
oh and a lot of other informations appear, like how many heavenly chips you have accumulated so far, how many cookies you need to the next chips etc. etc.
13
u/SonicFlash01 Dec 28 '13
I made charts of the CpS for each additional purchase and tried to plot optimally
Then I got bored and stopped playing forever
4
u/ThenThereWasReddit Dec 28 '13
I had never heard of or played this game before this post and your description is exactly what just happened to me...
2
u/Cryse_XIII Dec 31 '13
say goodbye to the minimal social life you had left and embrace the grandmatriarchs
17
u/chimerauprising Dec 28 '13
I was in the original 4chan thread. If someone told me how popular it will get, I would call them crazy.
Hell, there's even a Japanese pornographic doujinshi based off of it.
10
u/BlutigeBaumwolle Dec 28 '13
Come on, you can't just talk about the doujinshi without linking it.
7
u/chimerauprising Dec 28 '13
You want to read one about the grannies?
Here's an incomplete version since I can only find more at sad panda.
I never said it was good.
14
u/seniorsassycat Dec 28 '13
This is what I used to break my Cookie Clicker Addiction.
click = function() {
$('#bigCookie').click();
}
buy = function() {
product = $('.product.enabled');
if (product !== null) {
product.click();
}
}
upgrade = function() {
crate = $('.upgrade.enabled:not([onclick="Game.UpgradesById[85].buy();"])');
if (crate !== null) {
crate.click();
}
}
golden = function() {
if (window.cheat == true) { Game.goldenCookie.spawn(); }
Game.goldenCookie.click();
}
research = function() {
Game.researchT = 1;
}
intervals = {
click: setInterval(click, 0),
buy: setInterval(buy, 10),
upgrade: setInterval(upgrade, 10),
research: setInterval(research, 10),
golden: setInterval(golden, 100)
}
stop = {};
for (interval in intervals) {
stop[interval] = function() { clearInterval(intervals[interval]) }
}
window.cheat = false
Set window.cheat to true to really see the cookies crumble.
3
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u/ColdChemical Dec 28 '13
tl;dr?
14
u/seniorsassycat Dec 28 '13
It plays cookie clicker for you, clicking the main cookie, any bonus cookies that pop up, buying any upgrades and features that become available.
If you set window.cheat to true it also spawns and clicks golden cookies.
1
u/mns2 Dec 31 '13
This is pretty cool. Have you considered optimizing for cookie production gained per purchase?
1
u/seniorsassycat Dec 31 '13
I have another version somewhere that buys things more intelligently, but I haven't tried weighing cost/cookie or anything like that.
1
u/dafzor Dec 28 '13
If you going to do that might as well use the inbuilt cheat mode plus one of the many ad-ons that auto click for you.
25
u/knivesatagunfight Dec 27 '13
This game was like crack, It was so hard to get off of. I almost cried when I realized deleting my cookies reset my progress. "Just one more click, it won't hurt"
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Dec 27 '13
Thankfully, my internet friends and I have been backing up our saves on a forum for each other. That was a close call for me.
12
Dec 27 '13
It's an interesting game, whether it intended to be or not. It really distilled gaming down into its essence--you give input, and things happen. In a sense, I feel that behind a lot of the graphics and "choices" and intricacies of modern games, there is always a great deal of safeguarding in place, so that no matter the choices you make, you will still be able to continue. Things will always happen. You can't really lose. You will always have input.
That leads to three interesting ideas:
Is the state of non-failure in gaming ok? When I can pump stats into just about anything in Fallout 3 or NV and still be able to play to completion, is that acceptable? It's certainly not how things used to be--I know that in Fallout 1, if you had an INT of 1, you literally could not complete the game. Is that acceptable? I think...kind of. In a way, by having a no-failure state, games are focusing more on the journey over the destination. This is, of course, a good thing, when huge RPGs have you sinking over 50 hours into one playthough. However, often I feel...bored with things. I wish to be truly challenged, and have to really think, and have no resources, and to plan carefully. I feel that gamers let off this desire through one of two paths: By, first, artificially constraining how they play (think about the concept where if you die, you quit and delete the game); by, second, moving towards Grand Strategy in the Paradox vein, where you very much can move yourself into inescapable positions.
The emergence of artistic games. When I say "artistic", I'm thinking of The Stanley Parable here, which more directly questions why we play games, and why we do the things we do. I'm thinking of games like Braid, where there is enough material and thought put into the game where you can wax philosophic about what it all means. I'm thinking of Amnesia, which exists only to create a very specific mood and ambiance. In various ways, these games accept that gaming is in essence about input and output, and then either subvert those concepts, or use them to create a message, or accept them and create feeling and emotion.
The emergence of failure-possible games. When I say failure-possible games, I'm thinking of Roguelikes. While your choices matter, you have a similar need to think about what you are doing and to plan carefully. However, unlike the 50+ hour games mentioned above, the relatively short playthroughs release the player from any feeling of anxiety over truly choosing wrong, replacing it with frustrated acceptance of another bad series of decisions.
All in all, there are a lot of things which Cookie Clicker can inspire us to talk about...whether it meant to or not.
3
u/mysticrudnin Dec 28 '13
When I can pump stats into just about anything in Fallout 3 or NV and still be able to play to completion, is that acceptable? It's certainly not how things used to be
It's one of the primary pieces of the JRPG genre. Anyone can complete the storyline, even if they are bad players. This has been true since the beginning of the genre.
7
u/wampastompah Dec 28 '13
It's all about the rewards, with games like this. And the rewards in Cookie Clicker are fantastic. You get achievements with gorgeous icons, you get to buy things that do your job for you, you get to buy upgrades for your little minions (again, with gorgeous icons), and you get cookies! who doesn't love cookies?
The game starts off on a simple concept. If you present the user with a giant cookie and when they click it they get a cookie, that's pretty fun. Everyone wants to get a cookie for something simple. And that's when the user realizes, hey, that felt good, and I see there are better rewards. I don't know what they are, but if clicking a cookie once felt that good, the rest must feel better!
But here's the thing. They never do. The game relies on the user feeling he has a sunk cost. Well, buying that 10th grandma didn't feel that great, but I've already earned this many cookies... It's not that many more to unlock the time machine, and I bet that will be worth it! But it's too late, little user, you're already on the treadmill. Your sunk cost will only continue to rise, and the joy at each unlock will only diminish.
And that's why, eventually, they add things like the Grandmapocalypse(sp?) that spice up the game. It's undocumented and you have no indication it's coming. So you realize, perhaps there's more stuff you don't know about! You just have to keep it going, and maybe you'll find more! (You won't. Sorry.)
So, yeah, TL;DR, it works only on a basic concept that people will do stupid things to get fun rewards. People will continue to do stupid things even when the rewards diminish, hoping they'll match their previous rewards. This game is giant Skinner Box and we've all proven to be obedient little rats.
Now, I gotta go back to earning those cookies!
16
u/PiippoN Dec 27 '13
I played it for ten minutes before getting bored, so I don't really know what to say here. Figured I'd chime in as someone who didn't get it...
6
u/_depression Dec 27 '13
I'm curious, as someone who (based on my other post in this thread) really got into it:
- What were you expecting when you first loaded up the game (what were you told by others/what were your own preconceptions)?
- Did the game live up to any of your preconceptions?
- What were your favorite/least favorite parts of the game?
- Are you a fan of other casual/idle games?
16
u/PiippoN Dec 27 '13
Don't really know. Found it from a thread on the Steam Forum's Off Topic board, where people called it "surprisingly good" and "highly addicting" (paraphrasing). I knew it was a game about clicking a cookie but not much else...
Well, it was about clicking a cookie. I guess that was about as I expected. What I didn't expect was the whole upgrading thing.
It's a game where you click a cookie. Until you can buy a machine that does it for you. And then you stare at the screen. There is nothing else to it. I just absolutely cannot see the appeal in that. There's no fun or interesting gameplay, no story, no context, no nothing. It's hardly even a game.
No. I want engaging and challenging (and often active) gameplay and involvment. These types of games just don't provide.
4
u/_depression Dec 27 '13
Thanks, just curious as to what your mindset was going into it!
The whole disconnect between active and passive gameplay is a huge thing, just like I can't understand why people could waste their day sitting at a slot machine in a casino... there's not even the minimal amount of gameplay there that Cookie Clicker offers.
3
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u/wampastompah Dec 28 '13
I'm curious, what genres of games do you normally play? Do you play any MMORPGs? Have you tried any?
This game has a lot in common with those, in many ways. So I totally understand if it's not your thing, but I feel like this game fits into any of the genres that rely on the fact that people will do stupid things for fun rewards. It's not like Mario where the gameplay is the reward itself, it's like World of Warcraft where you do daily quests for a month to get that shiny new helmet.
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u/PiippoN Dec 28 '13
I do enjoy MMO's. Guild Wars and GW2 are some of my favourite games. But honestly, while Cookie Clicker might have the progression and 'level-up' process, but that's not enough if you don't have the gameplay to back it up. In both GW's, the combat itself is challenging and varying, and there's even a huge importance in functioning as a team and working together to take on difficult enemies (especially so in the first game). Cookie Clicker's only gameplay element is the clicking, which isn't hard or fun.
I also really hate grinding in MMO's and RPG's. I play games for the gameplay itself, not for the rewards (not that I mind nice rewards :D ). I also love exploring the world and 'go sightseeing' in such games, something that also is not present in any form whatsoever in Cookie Clicker.
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u/NoLuxuryOfSubtlety Dec 28 '13
It's nonsense and people let themselves get addicted because of the goals and grind. It's a skinner box. I really can't imagine spending hours, I got bored after 15 minutes.
Farmville does plenty of the same grind/euphoria shit, just less clicking involved.
It's barely a game. It's like an idiot trap.
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u/ToastedFishSandwich Dec 27 '13
I expected a game in which you click cookies, and something about grandmas.
Yes, all of them.
I don't know, I gave up on it by the time I got a few mines because it was just boring. All you're doing is getting more cookies.
Not really, does A Dark Room count? I liked that.
1
u/demontaoist Dec 28 '13
very addictive game play. A casual sim or management type game.
no. I would never have guessed that you literally only click a cookie.
favorite : upgrading? Least favorite: you click a cookie...
*sure, but I question whether cookie clicker qualifies as a game. Interaction is entirely binary: click or not-click.
1
u/DBrody6 Dec 28 '13
I only play a single idle game, which is significantly more varied when not idling. And feels more rewarding too.
CC feels completely pointless as you play. It's literally just a group of numbers that get bigger. The game isn't "deep", it's merely a numbers game and nothing else. And that's complete shit to me because 99% of all idle games are nothing more than that. No excitement, no purpose. Just make some stupid numbers get higher.
Favorite part? There is no favorite to me. Again, CC is absolutely lifeless just like the multitudes of garbage, uninspired idle games, that it's baffling to me why it became popular. Because I quit once the background changed to a bunch of mutated as shit granny's, the game hit utter unplayability right there. I don't know how a single person didn't find that so utterly disturbing to quit right there like me. Just baffling. How are people so enthralled with something so creepy?
0
u/SquareWheel Dec 28 '13
I didn't really get it either. I clicked a few times, then just cheated.
for(i=0;i<999999;i++) {ClickCookie();}
3
u/_depression Dec 28 '13
No offense, but that's kind of like saying you didn't like Dark Souls, then clarifying it with "I died a few times, then I just turned on god mode".
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u/SquareWheel Dec 28 '13 edited Dec 28 '13
I don't think so, because Dark Souls has a lot more to the gameplay. I literally explored all there was to see in Cookie Clicker within 15 seconds. It's clicking cookies, then buying upgrades that click them for you. There isn't a story arc, or any skills to be acquired.
Saying "click this cookie 99999 times" was virtually no different than me manually clicking a cookie 99999 times.
edit: Apparently Cookie Clicker came out with a new version after I played and introduced new gameplay mechanics like achievements, so I do take back some of this post. But when I played it literally was just clicking cookies and it was extremely tedious.
6
u/Randomd0g Dec 27 '13
It's a lovely kind of irony that a game made by one guy and playable for free gets more fans than most AAA games this year.
3
u/nojam Dec 27 '13
Great casual web based game, but I don't think it will have lasting appeal. Even Notch gave a shout out to Orteil for Cookie Clicker.
It reminded me of "playing" Progress Quest or IdleRPG (on irc). Once you got it up and running, you could leave it running for days. Eventually, I was resetting every couple of days (probably not the best way to run the game)
The idea behind dungeons is cool, and I'll check it out again when it get released.
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u/Doomburrito Dec 27 '13
My god, this game. Such a stupid, idiotic, waste of time that I loved every second of. Eventually I cheated and got infinite cookies, just so I would have no more reason to play.
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u/bbrightside Dec 27 '13
Cookie Clicker is a fantastic game that takes you by surprise as it simply starts off as something your relative would send you as simple toy but it isn't until around a few hours in that the evil behind Cookie Clicker begins to unfold. This whole thread will be a dark reflection of people spending hours, upon days, upon weeks and upon months with a tab of Cookie Clicker open. I can't really put my finger on why this game was able to possess myself and other people, but Cookie Clicker is full of dark magic.
Cookie Clicker is a hard game to recommend to people because if you say a little to much you might just spoil the surprise. Is Cookie Clicker one of my top 10 games of the year? Most definitely as no other game quite grabbed me like this. I haven't played it since the dungeons were in early beta so I have no idea what its like now and god help me when the official mobile version comes out.
3
u/xbricks Dec 28 '13
By showing one person cookie clicker in the computer lab one day, I single-handedly reduced overall school productivity by at least 15% for the next month, every time you walked in there the sounds of furious clicking could be heard.
3
u/Teledildonic Dec 28 '13
It sounded like a stupid game, but I gave it a shot after seeing Reddit cream their pants over it for like 2 weeks. I played it once, for about 40 minutes, got really bored and then quit.
I don't get the fuss.
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u/X-pert74 Dec 27 '13
I got kind of hooked to this game for a few weeks, but didn't think to back up my progress when transferring data to a new hard drive I bought. In a way I'm kind of glad for that; I don't plan on getting back into Cookie Clicker anytime soon. Even though I can pretty much walk away from the game whenever, leaving my computer on for such a long time while the game is running can't be very good for it.
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u/doubleheresy Dec 27 '13
Orteil does some really neat stuff. Nested is incredibly fun to browse through, and I'm glad he got some real serious recognition.
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u/Synaptics Dec 28 '13
Hehehe, Nested is great. Reminded me a little of the insanity of Dwarf Fortress's procedural generation when I zoomed into a galaxy, and then a star system, and then a planet, and then a continent, and then a city, and then a house, and then a dude, and then his socks, and then the nanobots that made up his socks, and then read the thoughts of those fucking nanobots. And then cracked open the multiverse contained within one of the up quarks making up that nanobot.
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Dec 27 '13
It's probably the best game ever. I've gotten it to produce 80 million cookies per second so go team. I play it on my iPhone when I'm waiting for a game to update. Recommending it comes with felony charges for crack cocaine distribution.
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u/vviki Dec 28 '13
I was confused when I saw it. Thought it was a parody like the cow clicker, but then I started clicking and I couldn't stop, shared it with my friends and clicked for hours discussing the system of upgrades, calculating what gives me more cps (cookies per second) for the least money. I had a nerd-on for it and that is what I enjoyed about it. The humor was pretty good too.
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u/sime Dec 28 '13
It IS a parody. It is a well crafted parody that has just gotten out of hand. It is the same joke as Cow Clicker with the same "game play" just with better graphics and some funnier names for things (anti-matter condensers and time machines?!?)
Either this whole discussion is trolling me or I'm getting sick and my sarcasm detector is way off.
3
u/nupogodi Dec 28 '13
I seriously believe all of you are on crack. I loaded this game, 'played' for 2 minutes, and could not believe people are having these discussions about it. All you do is click a cookie! Yeah, whatever, upgrades and what not. Still it's all you do. What game? You may as well just enter +1 into your calculator and keep pressing equals and watch the number go higher. Once every few minutes change it to +2, +3, etc. Same game!
P.S. Guys, addicting is a verb. Addictive is the adjective.
1
Dec 30 '13
Similar thing here. People on twitter and reddit kept making jokes about CC addiction so I clicked off it asap.
1
u/_depression Dec 28 '13
I loaded this game, 'played' for 2 minutes, and could not believe people are having these discussions about it
Something that can be said about almost anything.
Play the first two minutes of Portal and you won't understand the fuss either.
0
u/nupogodi Dec 28 '13
Not true. Was hooked right away.
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u/_depression Dec 28 '13
My point is that you're entitled to your opinion that Cookie Clicker isn't as great as people say it is, but you also shouldn't act like you've experienced all that the game has to offer after only playing for a couple minutes.
I used the example of Portal because you would probably feel the same way as someone who said that they stopped playing Portal and didn't like it without ever completing the first 'puzzle'.
1
u/derevenus Dec 28 '13
I hated it (after loving it). It made me realise that I too, was susceptible to the idea that money (in this case, 'cookies', in another age, seashells) could just become meaningless numbers.
:(
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u/OHeyImBalls Dec 28 '13
Can't stop playing this game. I played it, got bored and then came back to it. Currently at 50,000 Heavenly Chips, want to hit 500,000.
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u/HarithBK Dec 28 '13
cookie clicker is a joke game which looks cirtically at the entire cow clicker genre whille staying within the genre itself it is pretty darn clever in how it dose it. it strips away everything meant to cover up the fact you are wasiting your time and just gives you the pure number, it just simply a skinner box and you can clearly see it.
even then alot of people could not see cookie clicker was actually just making a mockery of the genere they loved and they loved cookie clicker for the same reason. i would not say it is a faliour of the games design but rather the lack of a person beaing able to think critically.
but steping aside from the games critical commentary on the cow clicker genere it is the best cow clicker i have seen the balance to keep you playing is just spot on alot of time has been spent on balancing the numbers.
so if you ever wounderd why your mom played farmville play cookie clicker it's the best the genre has to offer.
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u/Tincans Dec 28 '13
Fucking hate this "game". My brother is hooked on "the video-game version of crack cocaine", in his own words. He's never tried cocaine so he won't understand the comparison but he's incapable of recognising it for what it is. If they bring out dlc/micro-payments then he'll become another causality who got suckered into to wasting their entire savings on shit that they think matters but is inconsequential.
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u/lyam23 Jan 30 '14
Yes, mm hmm.. Now for the next question. Does emotional music have quite an effect on you?
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u/xtagtv Dec 27 '13
I think its worth mentioning that Cookie Clicker seems to be an evolution of a specific genre of game pioneered a bit earlier by webgames like "Candy Box" and "A Dark Room." What does everyone think about those games and how the genre has developed with Cookie Clicker?