The real hidden gem here is the hilarious 40 minute mermaid-themed true crime podcast parody that you'll only hear a portion of if you progress quickly. As far as I can tell, it's fully custom-made for this game? Can't find any references to the characters online.
https://stimulation-clicker.neal.fun/ sounds/true-crime.mp3 - it's hosted on Cloudflare, but even so I don't want to cost OP significant bandwidth, so join the two strings above for the direct link.
"Aww, he was all cat 'n tonic when he first saw her." An absolute classic. I would do anything to know more about how this came to exist.
Speed-ran the game using this (well, I injected jquery first to select the element using $() because I'm an absolute Baboon) in about 45 seconds, spam clicking all the upgrades, and clicks stopped going up after hitting "342,044,125,797,992,850,000,000,000,000 stimulation" with 10k clicks per second.
What a ride. Love the implied commentary on our over-stimulated lives!
Fun fact: browsers' devtools consoles have de-facto standardized convenience aliases for querying the DOM, similar to jQuery [0][1][2][3][4]. This means you could do something as simple as:
to create the simplest dependency-free cheat speed runner. (And, as mentioned earlier, shrinking -- or logically also zooming in -- the page results in more DVD bounces.)
Ah, thanks for the heads-up, apparently there is something borked in Chromium wrt $ / $$ encapsulation, as it seems they are nor reachable from the (global) context setInterval so doing `window.$ = $; window.$$ = $$;` fixes that in Chrome. Not sure why. (Yet again embarrassed myself by trying a snippet that "simply must work ® according all documentations ™" in single a browser only before posting. Sigh.)
131,903,042,042,866,960,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stimulation per second
I envy your rig - mine glitched a lot to get it in <3min. Might not be doing myself a service by actually answering the Duolingo questions via LLM... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-J0ppP-H9s
The podcast makes a couple of winking references to other bits of the game, including a mention of "that time that poor boy was pushed into that hydraulic press".
Absolutely. Reminded me of all the effort GTA spent on radio, to much fanfare.
The entire production value is fantastic. Glad to see Neal expanding. This is only a half step away from something less jokey, and more marketable.
If that's the path he chooses, of course. But judging by his smiling face in the center of it all wearing a poor fitting crown, I think he's just in it for the lulz. And I may respect that even more.
This great packaging has a critical social media tone for me. Absolutely amazing fun and addictive showing almost dark patterns. For a deep dive:
"Ethics of the attention economy: The problem of social media addiction", [1]
I say this as someone who's tried all the state-of-the-art voice generation systems: so far, nobody has trained an AI to "chew the scenery" nearly as effectively and effusively as these voice actors having the time of their lives playing southern belles and bean company owners who are blisteringly envious that a dead mermaid is stealing their spotlight by dying from a megalodon attack.
Haha, the problem is: we still haven't gotten AI to generate voices! "State of the art" just uses regular TTS engines and then adds extra inflection as "special sauce" or stretches it out, etc. At least, that is how it works for these AI generators that need to do it "at scale." When you can spend more on classic speech models, you can go well beyond that (see Siri, Google, Alexa, etc).
I finished the game without cheating. I felt like a frog being slowly boiled (and it really does feel like you're boiling at the end). It's quite the journey...
I love how everything here isn't even farfetched. It's just standard YouTube and TikTok content. The red notification bubbles were also a nice touch, I felt myself really drawn to those, and if I think back, I guess that's the earliest example I can recall of where these patterns all started: Facebook's little red notification bubble
As far as clickers go, finishing this game without cheating is very easy. Only takes like 20-30 min. But nonetheless, it was enjoyable. Really regretted clicking the subway surfer wormhole button. Luckily that was right at the end.
Spam DVD logo upgrades as fast as you can. Open your browser as big as it will go. When the DVD logo gets close to the top, start shrinking the browser slowly. I think the DVD positioning is calculated from the bottom of the page, there's a bug where the logo(s) will get stuck near the top as you shrink the page and will constantly re-register a bounce multiple times per second. Eventually all the logos you buy will get clumped at the top, and you can get 1MM Stimulation per "bounce".
My phone could not handle it at all, it started dropping widgets after the slime (like subway surfers and hydraulic press disappeared) and then it started to lag before finally my whole phone became unresponsive for a couple minutes even after the tab was closed. On an iPhone 12 mini so not the newest but still a little surprising that it stopped so early in the game.
You need 2,000,000 stimulation points for the last item which wins the game. It sounds like a lot, but by that point you’ll be generating an insane amount of points per second and passive consumption is worth more than clicking. It does get overwhelming, at one point I had to mute the sound for a minute or two before resuming.
If you want to know what the last item is, rot13 the next paragraph (https://rot13.com/ is an easy way to do it):
Gur ynfg vgrz vf “tbvat gb gur bprna”. Gur tnzr jneaf lbh gurer vf ab tbvat onpx nsgre gung. Vg fjvgpurf gb n pnyzvat ivqrb bs jnirf ba gur ornpu, jvgu perqvgf.
I had to restart because I unwittingly clicked the mukbang guy too early: can't handle him unless he is drowned out by everything else. By contrast I enjoyed the wormhole button. Kind of the whole point of the experience, liked it way better than certain noises :)
Jonathan Blow had a great (imho) rant about those type of notifications that someone clipped from one of his live streams. (Warning: strong language.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9nmCIrs7HI
I saw that the Shadow of the Colossus remake has little achievement notifications when you kill colossi and that really burns my biscuit. You're watching this slow-motion scene of a colossus dying, sad music plays, you wonder if you're doing the right thing, and the PlayStation is like "yayyy!~ You're such a good gamer!~"
Jonathan Blow has good points sometimes, but he comes off as very "old man rants at cloud" most of the time. He's been stewing in his own sauce for far too long.
Wow, that was amazing. This is honestly a better piece of contemporary art (in terms of making you think about modern life and what is happening to our environment, the impact on ourselves, our kids, etc.) than most of what you might see at a fancy art gallery or a contemporary art museum in NYC.
Rather, I think they are not accessible enough. A picture on a wall, a movie or music can be experienced by hundreds or thousands of people all at once. Games in an art gallery have a much lower natural limit to the number of people who can interact with them simultaneously (at least in the same physical space). Sure, you can watch others do it, but that's not really the same thing (it's more like watching performance art than playing a game).
I have in fact been to art galleries which had interactive game-like exhibits. I basically never got to interact with them because, lo and behold, there was a long queue.
I've seen and played games at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in NYC. Maybe I got lucky but it's one of like three museum visits I've ever done as a tourist in the city.
Neal has continually outdone himself with every single release. Everything he makes is a labor of love and is so special and deserving of attention. From the factual stuff like "The Size of Space" and "Deep Sea", to the more amusing "Absurd Trolly Problems", "The Password Game", and so on. It's all so good and feels like a gift to the internet.
Stimulation Clicker's social commentary has to the best thus far. I know click games are a thing, but to combine that mechanic with a parody of the state of the modern attention economy is just pure art.
Neal, if you're reading HN, you rock. Please know how appreciative we are.
> This is honestly a better piece of contemporary art (in terms of making you think about modern life and what is happening to our environment, the impact on ourselves, our kids, etc.)
Zooming out, I think games in general is in a much better position to do this, as a medium, compared to the alternatives TV, movies and music.
I guess mainly because it's interactive, but it also feels like it can be broader than the other mediums, like on one hand you have Idle/Clicker games like these, and on the other the huge blockbuster AAA games.
I managed to cheat this by buying a bunch of DVDs and making my window as small as possible, meaning they hit the edges much more often and gained me infinity stimulation.
> Fantastic encapsulation and commentary on the modern web and attentionspace.
This is why I quit Hearthstone even though I never spent a dime on it. I realized I had been habituated into playing it every day. I started feeling like a lab rat trained to push a button for a reward.
Cookie Clicker taught me this about Destiny and Destiny 2 as well.
I got a lot of enjoyment out of those games - and they were partly the backdrop to socialising online with IRL friends who didn't live close to me - but at some point the absurdity of them became too obvious and we stopped.
That's one of the things that makes Stimulation Clicker so good, by being exposed to the most extreme version, it helps you identify other engineered attention grabbers in everyday life.
> This is why I quit Hearthstone even though I never spent a dime on it.
Good news, you now have time to pick up The Bazaar instead! (joke aside, it's quite fun, a lot more chill, and not nearly as exploitative as Hearthstone)
This is a fun clicker game whose point seems cynical and self-defeating on multiple levels.
Despite the HN comments complaining about it being overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the front page. The stimulation torture wasn't really torture, but another level to the game.
All the content creators whose inclusion at first seems like an indictment of the kinds of internet videos that lead to addiction or overstimulation also all get a pleasant shout-out which seems silly. Are these supposed to represent what's awful about the internet?
EDIT: To hammer the dissonance home, at the end of the game we are met with a calming ocean scene that I'm guessing the average player appreciated for about thirty seconds before clicking away.
To me, this whole exercise doesn't reflect how distorted humanity has become because of technology, but of how humans refuse to look themselves in the mirror.
We want to be the kind of people who buck the mold and escape systems of control, so that we can properly enjoy things like waves of the ocean, but at any point during this game we could just open a new tab and watch the ocean on a YouTube livestream. Instead we spend an hour clicking and advancing this manic stream of chaos.
What's more human, then: calmly watching the waves crash against the beach, or clicking buttons trying to win and discover what's at the end of a silly game?
> Despite the HN comments complaining about it being overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the front page.
Is this like a massive HN wooosh -- how can this be the top-voted comment?
From Neil Postman's 1985 "Amusing Ourselves to Death":
> “With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.”
> “Spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face.”
It's less about whether we "enjoy" the stimulation, more about what kind of people we become when we lose ourselves in this bizarre sea of superstimuli. We're like reinforcement agents creating adversarial examples for each other, drawing ourselves further out of any sort of meaningful life, into a fever dream where the most desirable job for the next generation is to be famous for being famous [1] rather than do anything for any kind of deeper purpose.
I like your description. I sometimes wonder if the final equilibrium state will be most people working on addictive products and the rest working on addiction treatment.
I'd say with the current state of things it's more like two singularities in which either:
- A landian-stephensian accelerationist timeline occurs where the majority of the urban population becomes some flavor of AGI-tuned VR junkie
- An extreme naturalistic counterculture movement occurs that causes majority of the civilized world to willingly roll themselves back 1 or 2 centuries technologically in order to feel something again
Perhaps the current obsession will just go the way of heavy drinking or smoking? Ie the population will eventually develop some partial immunity to the allure, but it won't even go away completely.
I personally believe that at some point, many people will realize that the majority of the people with economic means are the people who are able to concentrate and don’t waste all their time. Note that I don’t mean the super wealthy, I’m referring to people who are solidly middle class and have means. I know a lot of successful people who aren’t glued to their phones. I think there will be enough good and bad examples out there for people to start catching on.
- And there has to be the third, hyperminmaxers yearning forever more control and power trying to be(at) the machine. Thus becoming a reflection of the first.
- Fourth must be some sort of hybrid between denialist and creationist, whom I don't even want to envision through. Which would be a reflection of the second, but instead of withdrawing, they would bubble themselves into something terrifying version of the Amish.
>> Despite the HN comments complaining about it being overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the front page.
> Is this like a massive HN wooosh -- how can this be the top-voted comment?
100% agree. I had to read that sentence and surrounding parts like 5 times to check if I was missing a satirical nod somewhere. It's like writing a review of Franz Kafka's books and saying "Despite what we may say about bureaucracy, clearly lots of people enjoy it because his books were best sellers!"
Lots of art is there to make you think, not to "enjoy" it.
I think it's kind of necessary to be exposed to ideas and views of people like Postman to even think of them when you play a game like this. The top comment is disappointing, but so it goes.
I enjoyed the game, for the attention to detail and making a mockery out of so many things in our daily lives that are in essence absurd, in such a brilliant yet simple way. The frowning Duolingo owl. The pillow delivery tracking made me chuckle. The only thing I missed was booking a an apartment on booking.com with a billion reminders to hurry up as the place might be gone any second, or doing an online check in. Although maybe it happened, I refreshed the game accidentally and never came back.
I've built up a reflex to leave any sort of overstimulatory atmosphere. I don't watch short form videos and leave any page that causes high levels of stimulation (Temu's spinner stops me from shopping there, for example).
I quit this game after about 10 minutes when it hit a comical level of stimulation and still upvoted this. I loved the commentary because the game seemed to follow the natural "evolution" of the web, straight to the point where every app has attached mini games and multiple in-game currencies. Listening to the man popping his beer can and pouring it at the same time as a live police scanner was truly dystopian but also feels like a daily occurrence in modern society.
I think it's great that you didn't really have a stomach for the absurd level of noise and flashing lights, but I just don't think it's a moral victory that people should necessarily strive for.
Maybe, but my life feels better by going for run for 30 minutes or to the gym, or spending time with my kid and/or partner rather than clicking one button on a web page for 30 minutes straight.
I quit (the first time) after the first three totally unlabeled icons appeared. Not having hovered on them, I had no idea there was anything more. Lesson for designers of scroll bars and other commonly-hidden but important UI elements.
> at any point during this game we could just open a new tab and watch the ocean on a YouTube livestream.
That's a great observation.
I'm not sure how to phrase this exactly, but there's something going on for at least some people - definitely for me - that the thing we're seeking refuge in are given meaning by the things we're seeking refuge from. Like you said, at any point during the game - or before, or after - I could open a new tab and watch the ocean on YouTube, or even watch the same thing that was the ending of the game. Except, obviously, I wouldn't, because why would I? It would be totally random and arbitrary, a kind of plot non sequitur you'd complain about if it was a piece of fiction. This ocean scene only makes sense as an ending of this game, as a refuge, a contrast, a punchline. It's the stimulation game preceding it, that gives meaning to the ending.
I've noticed I often feel similarly about many hobbies, interests, tasks, - heck, even people - they rapidly stop being interesting once I don't have any stressing obligation I should be working on instead.
(My HN comment history, too, is strongly and positively correlated with amount of stuff I should be doing instead in my life, but not necessarily want to.)
Doesn't seem self-defeating if it aroused that level of analysis, seems like good art! Art can bring up questions that author didn't intend so it's often best not to bring the authors viewpoint into the discussion, or at least not make authorial intent the authority.
I've heard someone say good art isn't about saying new things, but saying known truths in new ways and I found this very effective. Your question about who really stays to watch the ocean is interesting, and I don't think diminishes the game.
you're looking at it from a framework that there's a "right" way to interpret a given piece of art, or that a given piece of art has "a point" instead of "a set of ways in which people interpret it". You're describing one way of interpreting it and then leveling a charge against the piece when, in reality, that charge should be leveled at that interpretation.
are you asking about this specific piece or about art in general? Either way yes I disagree.
I don't know the author of this work. I don't know what they intended, so I can't comment on their intentions. I don't know if there's an "intended interpretation" or not, I don't know what that intended interpretation is, I don't know if it lines up with the interpretation you described. If the author intended for a specific, singular interpretation, I would reject that; any interpretation is just one of many. Some interpretations make more sense than others, and how a piece is interpreted can easily change from person to person, or even over time for a single person. Whatever you get out of it: it's true that that's what you got out of it.
This is actually a 100+ year old divisive point in literary/media criticism - the older traditional view is authorial intent is the only thing that matters, the post-modern view is authorial intent shouldn't be considered at all and you should only look at the text in isolation. I think the sensible and most common view is that authorial intent should be taken into account, but should not be considered the final word - because you can't truly know what the author is intending, there may be subconscious things even the author isn't aware of (for example the complete sexlessness of HP Lovecraft is probably not intentional but probably telling), and how the author gets it wrong can be interesting and should be considered part of the piece as well (for example, when you mention how people won't watch the ocean, that's interesting, and should be considered part of the piece because the game leaves room for that kind of interpretation).
TLDR, there may be an intended point, but that's not the only thing a piece can be judged on. The best art leaves room for multiple interpretations, it has a life of it's own beyond the creator when it's experienced by people.
> Despite the HN comments complaining about it being overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the front page. The stimulation torture wasn't really torture, but another level to the game.
All the content creators whose inclusion at first seems like an indictment of the kinds of internet videos that lead to addiction or overstimulation also all get a pleasant shout-out which seems silly. Are these supposed to represent what's awful about the internet?
There's a literary/artistic technique called "irony" where the depiction isn't meant to be taken at face-value and instead is actually being shown because the opposite is intended. The whole game is an ironic application of Stimulation techniques, and in order to show its negative impact, one must use them ironically.
I didn't find it enjoyable or soothing... I played it for about 30 seconds, got the point, chuckled because it was a mildly clever poke at the stupid engagement tactics used to addict people to otherwise boring and pointless actions - sort of a demo of how we're all dumber than lab mice, who at least get food for pressing a button - and then came back here to see that some people actually kept playing it to some sort of end. Which is crazy.
These trends wouldn't be trends if they didn't work. The game can be awful and distracting, yet still succeed at garnering engagement. Not just in spite of the stimulation but partially due to the stimulation. It's not self defeating or hypocritical, it's a bad thing, an indictment, and also engaging all at the same time.
It got me to think and engage, so already I think it succeeds at being a great piece of art.
But is "overstimulation" ... "bad", according to the overall message? Is this game, livestreamer Ludwig, and all the achievements part of the problem being highlighted? (Not to mention the mean-spirited Mindspace parody) If you get enough stimulation here, it just seems like you get to cash it in so that you can advance to a state of higher enlightenment
> But is "overstimulation" ... "bad", according to the overall message?
Dozens of DVD signs jumping around, hydraulic press slowly pressing macaroons, infinite subway surfers, lofi girl, some guy eating burger, achievements popping left and right, hands molding some crap. All of that fit on a mobile screen with sounds of lofi, rain, thunder and constant clocking of dvd sounds. And I didn’t even reach bottom of the pit.
> But is "overstimulation" ... "bad", according to the overall message?
Having a "aha" moment while playing a game is enjoyable. That does not mean it can't be critical at the same time.
One of most popular misconceptions in art is that art that deals with serious topics has to be hard to consume and no fun is allowed to make it good art. Your reflection alone is a testament to what thoughts the game produced by making you do a thing. Of course the stimulation has to be somewhat enjoyable, wouldn't be realistic otherwise – in reality this is how they get you.
We're taking part in boiling a frog. The game starts off blank and peaceful with a single button inviting you to push it. It adds the DVD bounce, which is a nice little charming and nostalgic hit of dopamine. Then you get another DVD logo, which is a nice touch, double the points! Then you get a hydraulic press. Hydraulic press automation. Level ups. Audio. Oh no. Now it's the kind of unending audiovisual nightmare that browsing the modern web without adblock is, and it evolved in much the same way.
If you keep playing it -- either to find out what the whole point of this game is or because you are trapped in the game loop by your stimulation-seeking brain -- and you just keep building and building in overstimulating nonsense versions of real-world content until you are presented with the calmness of it doesn't have to be this way.
That first wave in the calm after the storm gave me literal physical relaxation: I felt the tenseness of my back & shoulders ease into a slump once the incessant babble of the attention-seeking components of the game went away. I felt better than I had a moment ago. It was nice. And it was, counter to your point, exactly a look in the mirror. Why do I put myself through the wringer on modern social media when I don't have to?
All of that to say I don't feel like the message is self-defeating at all. The dissonance is the point. Condition yourself as much as you like to the way things are by continuing to play the game, the peaceful beach is almost certainly nicer. Even just for 30 seconds.
Why not get out in nature? Touch grass, maybe, as the kids say these days.
I never understood the appeal of being calm. It's fucking boring. Since early childhood I needed extra stimulation: first I'd listen to mom reading stories while I was playing with toys, then at school I'd listen to the teacher while playing games on my PSP. That allowed my brain to stay engaged. Now I just finished an exhausting day - I lay on the sofa, put on some music, have a slideshow on my computer screen, play this game. After finishing it, I'm feeling relaxed and tired in a way "now I'm ready to go to sleep". A friend of mine jokes that I have a motor in my ass because I can't sit still, whenever we meet I want to keep walking around, just for the sake of not sitting in one place.
I honestly think that high-stimulation is a great thing, as long as we use it to our advantage, instead of being hindered by it. The essence of life is doing things against the natural forces of inanimate physics, rather than sitting and doing nothing. The more you do, the more you live. The absolutely worst feeling in my life that I battle as an adult is being tired, when my mind and body refuse to do high-stimulation activities, and I end up just laying in bed the entire day.
You're downvoted, but I agree. I found it basically a hodgepodge of 80s references over a basic story with one-dimensional characters (the heroes are Very Good and the bad guy is Very Bad). I would have assumed that it's aimed at young children, if the references weren't forty years before their time.
It's not just that, but also the main protagonist is written terribly and never given any real faults or challenges to overcome. During the entire book there is never a challenge that is not resolved by the next paragraph.
The Japanese friends that he makes are grossly stereotyped and are kept one dimensional during the entire book as well.
The main character also strikes me as incredibly creepy, and to a level where he could be classified as an para-social stalker. Just comes off as being a terrible person overall.
Spielberg's movie however is fantastic and one of those rare instances where the movie truly does outrank the book.
The film even has a proper ending which in itself is hugely thought provoking and something we definitely should consider. The book, if I remember correctly, just sets up for another book.
Short version, guy can't sleep. Someone tells him get a dog. Dog barks, still can't sleep. Well you'll also need a blah... repeat until the man has a small farm of loud animals going. Then finally "get rid of them" and suddenly it's all so quiet again.
It's pretty fascinating how much more calm everything seems when you finish/stop this game
There is a different version where a person takes drug A to solve problem X. But that has a side effect so they take drug B to solve that problem. And so on and so on and so on. Eventually, they decide to stop taking all the medicines and are finally "cured".
Lovely ending, and I appreciate how short this one is. For me it really does induce some mixed feelings for what we did to the web while at the same time I really enjoyed the nostalgia.
Another game I sunk way too much time into to get to the end is Idle Loops which ends up being kind of like programming once you get deeper into it:
https://dmchurch.github.io/omsi-loops/
(There are three versions, all open source on GitHub – this one is the third in the chain of forks, with the most updates)
I figured like thirty seconds into using the site that resizing it smaller would give me more DVD bounces per second. But then during resizing i kinda cheated myself some points accidentally, and discovered that trick where they're just bouncing on every tick.
Normally I'm a sucker for clicker games, but cheating the progress (even accidentally) always kills the point of it.
After you get to the cryptocurrency it's basically game over, you can earn over a million during a few market cycles, and the speed you can do it it raises (almost) exponentially. Stocks are similar, but much slower.
During my 20 minutes I noticed stocks and crypto seem to always fluctuate within a given range. So if you buy in the low end of the range you're guaranteed to see an opportunity to sell at the higher end of the range.
Crypto is just stocks with a wider range and more volatility.
You have to obtain the Item Shop upgrade, then buy the "Sign in with Google" item from shop, then sign in, then you can save your state to your Google Drive by pressing Ctrl+/S.
I was about to scoff at this and thought "Ugh, another cookie clicker", but then I started playing it. I'm glad it is quick because my head was going to explode. It is pretty damn brilliant take on today's stimuli overload. I think it is more a piece of art than a game. I was able to win quickly once I got crypto because it was bouncing from $400 to $50,000, but I almost barfed because there was SO much going on. Well done.
Cookie Clicker has received updates almost continuously for the last decade. I don’t have the commitment to ascend but I understand there’s quite a bit of content to be unlocked there even after you’ve maxed out your first “run.”
Cookie Clicker got me into programming back in the day! Super simple structure (back then) and fun way to experiment with coding in an interactive way with visual feedback.
A Dark Room (https://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/) is fantastic as well. It's not only a clicker/idle game, but it incorporates the mechanics in an interesting way.
On the whole, I've had to adopt a policy of not even touching clicker games. I find them incredibly addictive, and most of the time I'm not even enjoying the experience or getting anything out of it, I just feel hooked. I'd say Universal Paperclips and A Dark Room were exceptions to that, in that they actually had some depth, strategy, discovery, or story. But even those two I've had to stop myself from replaycing.
I'll play Universal Paperclips once a year or so when I remember it exists and have nothing I need to do for the next 3-6 hours. So I'd add that as a warning to anyone who wants to check it out: make sure your next 6 hours are ok to spend on it, in case you get sucked in.
There's a whole combat and map system that's hidden away initially. A lot of the progression really wants you to do that but it's hidden away at first so it's not obvious.
In that it distills the game mechanic of “make number go up” into a simplistic form. It just lakes the clicking.
PS, whenever I relapse and play too much World of Warcraft, I play some Cookie Clicker as a cleanse to remind myself of the fundamental pointlessness of the whole endeavor. Great game.
I think it is one of the few games that "changed my life" in the sense that by getting addicted to it for a few days, it made me see Cookie Clicker in every platform that tries to waste my time.
I remember when I first heard about it and I naively thought that such a simple game was silly and in now way could not be addictive, but I let myself play it for a while and it really changed the way I see games.
I'm sadly into the incremental game genre. Universal Paperclips is still my favourite, and I replay it often. A Dark Room is another really good one with some storytelling and an ending, which is not all that common in incremental games.
But if anyone wants to get deep into it, Dodecadragons is probably the best implementation of the incremental mechanics, but it's extremely addictive, so be careful with it.
Same to no cheating - Only been playing a couple of years, lots of background.
All-Time Stats
Total Kittens 84.84K
Kittens Dead 5710
Total Years Played 18.33M
Run Number 98
Total Paragon 90.36K
Rare Events Observed 22.31M
Unicorns Sacrificed 4.20P
Buildings Constructed 553.38K
Total Clicks 712.37K
Trades Completed 2.32G
Crafting Times 501.64M
Avg. Kittens Born (Per Century) 0.46
Transcendence Tier 27
Challenges Completed 8
let me save everyone's time of writing each recommendation individually - by linking https://www.incrementaldb.com/ where all the games are listed together
i went into this expecting a quick, shallow, PoC game to make a fast point. i was rewarded as the game continued to add incredible depth, showing real care and thought.
if there's one thing i can recommend, it's to read all the emails. they are hilarious and gave me the most joy. i burst out laughing while reading some which took me over my stimulation threshold and allowed me to fully embrace the absurdity of the entire thing (which i was initially playing somewhat competitively).
First thought: this is just silly. Then 5 minutes later: let me just get the ASMR slime video for 4000 stimulations before closing this. Now 10 minutes in I added the Listen to a Murder True Crime podcast for 10,000 stimulations, upgraded my hydraulic press, and now waiting for one of my 13 (technicolor upgraded) DVD logos to hit a corner so I can multiply my points by 10.
Firefox on MacOS seems fine. I minimized the window size and made some soup. The GUI was a little bit laggy though. When I got back I had ~10million or so and bought all the upgrades which ended the game.
The whole earn coins to purchase faster ways to earn coins is objectively stupid, I'm not going to do anything with them but I still feel like I need to earn more and feel good when I unlocked new stuff.
Is that Pavlov conditioning ? Used to buy new stuff and always make more money.
haha true, the ultimate meta. why do we feel the need to earn more coins? the game prescriptively doesn't say how it should be played - a player could well be content with rain sounds....
Ran into a bug where a double tap zoomed the page and it broke the game as I could not zoom out again. Unfortunately it does not save the progress in a cookie.
I also had an issue that restarted my computer and found the hard way it doesn't save. Using localStorage to store the state is simple enough, unfortunate that it doesn't.
oh my god the murder podcast mentions a hydraulic press death.
best thing in a while, bravo.
EDIT: I really wish the still-locked achievements gave a hover/hint. I simply can't figure out what these missing achievements are, and it looks like the count is wrong. Also, I wish I could revive my chicken. :(
Has anyone tried a speed run yet? Would be awesome if there was a leaderboard! I've done it twice now, I can see myself watching YouTube videos on people sharing strategies on the best sequence of upgrades to buy.
Holy moly that was an incredible experience. Well done!
The increasingly-dark Duolingo bird has to be my favorite part. Maybe I didn't get all the easter eggs there, but I almost wish the whole game just turned into an elaborate plot for vengeance for the owls.
I find it frustrating that after purchasing an item, the email notifications are endless. They include every minor update, like the delivery person stopping for a bagel. It feels like my phone is constantly bombarded with unnecessary information these days.
At first, I thought it was just a clicker; then it reminded me of the game "Don't Move" https://store.steampowered.com/app/334350/Dont_Move/ which is a very short experiment on what is a game. Finally, I realized it's something else entirely, and even more annoying.
Yeah Polyglot requires not making any mistakes; mess up and you'll have to restart to get it. I can't seem to get Roaring Kitty either -- and I should note, you can check how much you've made in the stock market with the "Screen Time" button, so I can say I've made over 4 million... probably it's not working...
Has anyone tried a speed run yet? Would be awesome if there was a leaderboard! I've done it twice now, I can see myself watching YouTube videos on people sharing strategies on the best sequence of upgrades to buy.
If you are interested in seeing what the depth of the game is and you are on desktop, unlock the hydraulic press by holding "enter" after clicking on the "click" button for easy currency, then after unlocking, do the same by clicking on the +1,000 simulation redemption (holding enter afterward) once you go through one hydraulic press animation. You will gain 100,000 simulation a second!
I remember cookie clicker taking days to finish when it first released, I like this is a self-contained experience that ends, and really generates the kind of anxiety it's trying to comment on by the end, and then gracefully steps away at the right time.
It’s really well done. At one point the character says something along the lines of “but they would rather do other things, like play on neal.fun instead of going to the amusement park”
Nice! I’ve been playing Star Trek Fleet Command the past few days and have been wanting to build a silly clicker game to mock/mimic some of the game’s aspects and this has given me inspiration.
Oh no. Last time [1] I wasted half a day clicking on buttons. There were some aliens, some AI stuff, then something happened to (this) universe. Never again!
Many years back, someone had made a clicker parody game internally at Google (go/swe-simulator-game). You clicked to write CLs, DDs, build a team, get into committees, get promoted. I wish that was made available externally, it was hilarious and painful at the same time.
My most efficient hack without JS: get the hydraulic press, start it, and click once to collect 1,000 stimulation. Then spam the space bar repeatedly to get another 1,000 for every key press
My phone became overstimulated and hot :o It is actually addictive even when I know it's totally stupid. Good to know I am not resistant to these "games". Nice experiment, thanks for sharing!
I was able to find a bug to get lots of clicks. Buy at least one bouncing DVD, open dev tools into responsive mode and make the screen width 52pixels (the lowest allowed). The DVDs will then bounce with each frame, racking up a bunch of points.
The crypto prices were so unrealistic. I was able to just keep buying Bitcoin with 2x leverage when it was low and make millions when it subsequently went up after. I barely paid attention to any other ways to make stimulation. Please implement liquidation mechanisms and more volatility.
I finished the game and immediately went to pick up my phone to check Instagram. Before I started I had just been thinking about how my lack of capacity to focus has been causing me to get nothing done. Not sure how to escape/re-train myself.
This is great but I can't make it work reliably. It crashed both on Android Chrome (a while after buying on-screen banners) and on Opera dekstop (earlier, before reaching crypto).
Found a weird bug... I've got a 3 monitor setup and the background animations (rain + pinwheel) only appears on 2 of the monitors... If the window straddles two of the monitors the animations only play on one half of the window!
A small improvement would be to stop based on the balance, rather than a number of clicks, to avoid going into ludicrous Yes JS Numbers Are All Floats territory.
let max_amt = 2000000000*2; // Twice most expensive item
let btn = $('.main-btn');
function cl() {
btn.click();
let curr = $(".main-stat-num").innerText.replace(/\D/g, '');
if (curr < max_amt) {
setTimeout(cl, 1)
}
}
cl()
I ended up stopping the execution using max=10 and then removing annoying elements using the web inspector and keep running. I really liked the subway surfers though
Well done Neal and team. I clicked around and chuckled at the obvious stimulation "memes", but quickly felt a compulsion to "win". Ended up scoring huge with the crypto mini game and unlocked everything. I'd say the biggest surprise was clicking on the ocean without thought (since I was mindlessly clicking at everything), and was left a bit disappointed that it ended. Lesson learned: Read everything carefully before clicking.
I thought my head was going to explode by the end... At some point during the game (right at the very end) I couldn’t even find my cursor on the screen anymore hahaha
I needed the ocean at the end. It's a very good game. The variable reward and quick repeatability captured me... It showcases what we are exposed to in a condensed manner.
The best strategy is to write a helper function in the console to click for you. Then invest heavily in the DVDs, DVD bounce rate, stimulation per bounce, and general SPS increases.
I reached several quintillion stimulation, at which point I was offered to purchase "go to the beach" for 2 million. This ends the game and plays a relaxing beach video.
The sad but funny part of this is: If I sent this to my computer science class of 12-13 year olds, 50% would not even get the joke and just go and play it like their usual brainrot cookie clicker.
I found a cool cheat. Get a few DVDs going then resize the window quickly in a bunch of directions. It'll group them all together and you'll get a ton of stim all at once every time you resize the window. It also makes the sound effect sound like a Geiger counter.
Just did 2+ hours of fascinated clicking as if I found a new part of Wikipedia, mainly because I assumed the "one way trip" to the ocean was a euphemism for what happened to the Titan submersible.
if (button) {
const clickButtonMultipleTimes = async () => {
while (true) {
const userInput = prompt("Enter the number of times to click the button (or type 'exit' to stop):");
if (userInput === null || userInput.toLowerCase() === 'exit') {
alert("Exiting the click process.");
break;
}
const clicks = parseInt(userInput, 10);
if (isNaN(clicks) || clicks < 0) {
alert("Please enter a valid non-negative number.");
continue;
}
for (let i = 0; i < clicks; i++) {
button.click();
}
alert(`Clicked the button ${clicks} time(s)!`);
}
};
clickButtonMultipleTimes();
} else {
alert("The button with class 'main-btn' was not found on this page.");
}
My takeaway from this is to get in the right side of interest.
Once you start making money with the crypto, it goes fast. One could say this applies to real life (stock market or crypto). But at the start, it is slow.
Unfortunately, at some point (while I was getting 5-10k SPS), there was this blue droplet(?) (for a lack of a better word) passing down my screen. Tapping it crashed the game for me on Firefox for Android in the sense that pretty much everything turned non-responsive after that. :\
EDIT: Almost crashed Chromium on Android / Vanadium, too.
Oh man that is wild. As soon as I added subway surfer, it became so much easier to keep clicking the simulation button. I was watching that random video and don’t even notice I keep clicking.
This game is truly a work of art. I literally got a migraine playing this game though and couldn't finish it unfortunately. This is the second piece of media to do this to me behind Koyaanisqatsi... now that I think of it, this seems like a modern interpretation of the film Koyaanisqatsi.
This is a Black Mirror level hellscape. It really does capture the overstimulation of the modern world without filters. I found myself simultaneously anxious and inclined to keep clicking so I can unlock the next tier. It's over the top but not by much.
By un-disabling the stock market buy and sell buttons, I was able to buy even when I didn't have enough money (stimulation), and I was also able to short-sell shares. So funny!
"Impressive. Very nice"
Finished without cheating. But halfway disabled sounds. It is too much.
You can easily finish the game by buying stocks, especially bitcoin. No cheating needed, was super simple. But great nonetheless.
I must not be the target audience for this kind of thing, but I really don't get it. The few times I've opened HN today I've seen this at the top, and the number of points has been higher. I've opened it 3 times, and clicked the button, and some other icons showed up below. The first time I didn't open even bother to mouse over the icons, so I didn't know you'd be buying things. I closed before I got to 50 stimulations. The second time, I did hover over the icons showing up, and clicked a couple, and nothing seemed to happen other than spending stimulation, so I closed before 100. I just did this a third time as it's now over 1200 points, and I really just don't understand what is going on. What am I missing?
I think this is a scenario where if you have to ask, you'll never know. Perhaps, ironically, there just wasn't enough immediate stimulation for you to continue...
I not only enjoyed it as a satire on the overstimulation problem but also learned that my compulsive-obsessive syndrome has a high correlation with overstimulation.
If you manually decrease window.innerWidth and window.innerHeight to low values (i.e. 50 and 50) then the bouncing dvd gets triggered ceaselessly. I enjoyed this unironically :D
This is also a good example of how horrible the web has become and how inefficient JavaScript programmers are.
Even if you hit the "end" none of the elements are cleaned up so will continue to use cycles in the background. If it's supposed to be a permanent end, then you should remove all elements besides the serenity media.
Major Cookie Clicker / Upgrade Complete vibes with this with a touch of social critique, love the descent into absolute chaos. Fun game and incredible artwork!
I don't want to read comments, but I can’t be the only one who wrote a script to click forever and turned the page into a chaotic, laggy nightmare. Pure art honestly
Wonderful comment on our noisy world. Highly recommend some sort of warning for users, particularly the subway surfer wormhole. I'm not light sensitive but even I now have a headache.
I really don't know if I could survive nowadays internet without uBlock. The picker functionality just changes the internet for me. I can make most of the noise disappear.
i finished the game in 20mins, got a headache now. very creative, i like it.
what happens after you buy the trip to the ocean? the game hung up at this point on my phone, seemed to use a lot of RAM. lots of animations were lagging from quite early on.
Love the idea, but after a couple minutes this just gave me a headache with all the different videos, sounds and animations going on. I don't think I'm cut out for new age dopamine generation.
OMG. I wanted to get the end, but I was doing it on mobile. I upswiped once, and leftswiped once, so it took THREE tries. The first two tries were each more than 10 minutes in. When I was finally, done, I realized I had skipped my planned workout.
My game froze up when I bought that upgrade. Not sure if that's by design or it might have been an internet hiccup. What happens when you go to the ocean?
It's a form of digital art meant to highlight the absurdity of the modern internet. Being overwhelmed by all of the forms of multimedia stimulation to finally escape to the ocean and appreciating simplicity is the point
It falls under the category of "incremental games" that are generally simple but addicting due to the dopamine release from watching those numbers go up
The genre exists in a weird place. Progress Quest is maybe the start, and then you get Cow Clicker, which was definitely a parody but took off because everyone thought it was funny, and then Wikipedia tells me AdVenture Capitalist started as a parody but then became a popular and profitable game. And that's kind of the problem with the genre: it's kind of artistically meant as a parody or a joke, but people keep liking them and wanting more, and now it's a real genre, and a few of the games (like Paperclips) have a lot of artistic value far beyond the initial "haha it's not much of a game" joke.
I finished the game. Got to level 32 and bought the upgrade Go to the Ocean for 2,000,000 stimulation. The audio chilled out and it went to the credits.
On its own it's not necessarily an issue, but I'd consider it a warning sign. The times in my life that I've obsessively played games like this have been times when my emotional health was suffering. I felt overwhelmed by life and the world, and games like this gave me a synthetic feeling of progress and accomplishment, gave me something extremely simple to do that I couldn't fail at. Games like this were a symptom of my problems at the time, not the cause, and when my life got more stable, I lost interest in playing them.
If they're playing in moderation, just to pass the time during otherwise-boring events, probably not an issue. If they're pretty much always playing, or if it's intruding on their life, or if they're not otherwise engaging with the world, consider worrying about their emotional health.
Thank you! I noticed too I played much more games when in low mood seasons. Especially Minecraft (inb4: yes, I'm 40yo but play Minecraft) has a lot of small quests I could achieve. Also, the old Diablo I play on my phone (DevilutionX) allows me to kill time (and beasts) but I find it repeatable, yet still satisfying.
I enjoyed the humor and the ending, it reminds me of some DOS games I grew up with. Nice work Neal :)
Clicker games can be considered banal, but when there is an interesting unexpected story or comedy behind the progressions, they are fun little pieces of art.
Two games I have played in the past of this ilk are Spaceplan [0] and Nodebuster [1], both of which only take around an hour or so to progress through. Fun and interesting like Neal's game.
unbelievable. he's cracked the code in a few areas. what is the one thing that all of these stochastic processes implement? e.g. is there a rhythm or proportion of them to each other, or a shape?
It's not a simple bifucation process or fractal, it's something else. I use fractals in music and they are too unstable to produce this ebb and flow of consonance and dissonance the game uses in the evolution of each widget.
it's practically a hypnosis method. what is the underlying pattern in these?
The real hidden gem here is the hilarious 40 minute mermaid-themed true crime podcast parody that you'll only hear a portion of if you progress quickly. As far as I can tell, it's fully custom-made for this game? Can't find any references to the characters online.
https://stimulation-clicker.neal.fun/ sounds/true-crime.mp3 - it's hosted on Cloudflare, but even so I don't want to cost OP significant bandwidth, so join the two strings above for the direct link.
"Aww, he was all cat 'n tonic when he first saw her." An absolute classic. I would do anything to know more about how this came to exist.
for people that don't want to click a lot,
paste in "setInterval(() => document.querySelector('.main-btn').click(), 20)" into the browser console, clicks 50x per second for you :)
If you shrink the window down as small as possible the DVD logos collide super fast and earn a ton of stimulation.
In Safari, show the Web Inspector and then shrink the window so that the inspector takes up all of the space.
ah ! clever
Speed-ran the game using this (well, I injected jquery first to select the element using $() because I'm an absolute Baboon) in about 45 seconds, spam clicking all the upgrades, and clicks stopped going up after hitting "342,044,125,797,992,850,000,000,000,000 stimulation" with 10k clicks per second.
What a ride. Love the implied commentary on our over-stimulated lives!
Fun fact: browsers' devtools consoles have de-facto standardized convenience aliases for querying the DOM, similar to jQuery [0][1][2][3][4]. This means you could do something as simple as:
to create the simplest dependency-free cheat speed runner. (And, as mentioned earlier, shrinking -- or logically also zooming in -- the page results in more DVD bounces.)[0] https://devtoolstips.org/tips/en/query-dom-from-console/ [1] https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/web_co... [2] https://developer.chrome.com/docs/devtools/console/utilities... [3] https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/devtools-gu... [4] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Ap...
I get a reference error when I try this (chrome stable on linux)
Ah, thanks for the heads-up, apparently there is something borked in Chromium wrt $ / $$ encapsulation, as it seems they are nor reachable from the (global) context setInterval so doing `window.$ = $; window.$$ = $$;` fixes that in Chrome. Not sure why. (Yet again embarrassed myself by trying a snippet that "simply must work ® according all documentations ™" in single a browser only before posting. Sigh.)
> I injected jquery first to select the element using $()
In Chrome and Firefox, $ and $$ are available in the console as replacements for document.querySelector and document.querySelectorAll, respectively.
This doesn't work in scripts though; only in the console. In a script you can use this:
I wonder what the limiting factor is here; I'm currently at
332,446,225,163,762,970,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stimulation
131,903,042,042,866,960,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 stimulation per second
And there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.
going to the ocean is the end, I got there with only a couple dozen million stim
My brain has never been happier to see a credits screen
Nah, just remove the element and keep going.
I envy your rig - mine glitched a lot to get it in <3min. Might not be doing myself a service by actually answering the Duolingo questions via LLM... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-J0ppP-H9s
Sir that's true evil! That's evil you know?
Ah, a new yardstick for browser performance :-P
The real answer to the web 2.0 appified social media hell hole is automation :D
thanks, u saved me few clicks ^^
Reminds me a bit of The Onion's "A Very Fatal Murder" podcast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Very_Fatal_Murder
I noticed the podcast at one point mentions neal.fun, so definitely custom made!
The podcast makes a couple of winking references to other bits of the game, including a mention of "that time that poor boy was pushed into that hydraulic press".
Thanks for the direct link- this makes understimulated listening much easier & it was easy to miss within the cacophony of everything else.
Was the mukbang also custom?
Yes, the actor has a credit at the end.
I started listening to the podcast at first, but then it just became impossible. Really awesome!
It's weird, it seems like it's the only custom made thing on the game, why only that one?
Loads of other stuff is custom made... All those emails for example.
Maybe someone made the podcast for some other reason and never released it?
Reaction streamer seems custom made as well
If I'm not mistaken, that's Ludwig! A friend of mine is a big fan; I was surprised to see him in this game("").
It's him, the name also appears in the credit roll at the end.
Absolutely. Reminded me of all the effort GTA spent on radio, to much fanfare.
The entire production value is fantastic. Glad to see Neal expanding. This is only a half step away from something less jokey, and more marketable.
If that's the path he chooses, of course. But judging by his smiling face in the center of it all wearing a poor fitting crown, I think he's just in it for the lulz. And I may respect that even more.
Less jokey?
This great packaging has a critical social media tone for me. Absolutely amazing fun and addictive showing almost dark patterns. For a deep dive: "Ethics of the attention economy: The problem of social media addiction", [1]
[1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/c...
Likely a ChatGPT masterpiece
I say this as someone who's tried all the state-of-the-art voice generation systems: so far, nobody has trained an AI to "chew the scenery" nearly as effectively and effusively as these voice actors having the time of their lives playing southern belles and bean company owners who are blisteringly envious that a dead mermaid is stealing their spotlight by dying from a megalodon attack.
Haha, the problem is: we still haven't gotten AI to generate voices! "State of the art" just uses regular TTS engines and then adds extra inflection as "special sauce" or stretches it out, etc. At least, that is how it works for these AI generators that need to do it "at scale." When you can spend more on classic speech models, you can go well beyond that (see Siri, Google, Alexa, etc).
I finished the game without cheating. I felt like a frog being slowly boiled (and it really does feel like you're boiling at the end). It's quite the journey...
I love how everything here isn't even farfetched. It's just standard YouTube and TikTok content. The red notification bubbles were also a nice touch, I felt myself really drawn to those, and if I think back, I guess that's the earliest example I can recall of where these patterns all started: Facebook's little red notification bubble
As far as clickers go, finishing this game without cheating is very easy. Only takes like 20-30 min. But nonetheless, it was enjoyable. Really regretted clicking the subway surfer wormhole button. Luckily that was right at the end.
Is shrinking the window down to make the DVD logos hit the edge more often considered cheating?
I think this is considered smart thinking (from my point of view).
Spam DVD logo upgrades as fast as you can. Open your browser as big as it will go. When the DVD logo gets close to the top, start shrinking the browser slowly. I think the DVD positioning is calculated from the bottom of the page, there's a bug where the logo(s) will get stuck near the top as you shrink the page and will constantly re-register a bounce multiple times per second. Eventually all the logos you buy will get clumped at the top, and you can get 1MM Stimulation per "bounce".
How much does it require to finish? I mean how many stimulation points?
I gave up when I bought auto hydraulic press.
Crypto investing is where the points really start to fly, mass clicking buy below $10k selling above $20k. Game finished pretty quick after that.
Edit: Just beat it in 19 minutes. Feel like you can't finish it much quicker than that without cheating.
Depending of your definition of cheating, resizing the window is a good passive way, specially after the DVD upgrade
I wonder if this was deliberate, to give more points to mobile users.
My phone could not handle it at all, it started dropping widgets after the slime (like subway surfers and hydraulic press disappeared) and then it started to lag before finally my whole phone became unresponsive for a couple minutes even after the tab was closed. On an iPhone 12 mini so not the newest but still a little surprising that it stopped so early in the game.
Same, though I’m on a iPhone 14 Pro Max.
Open browser console, drag over.
So should we all be crypto investing is the lesson :)
excited to see speed runs of this game on tiktok, split screen with an 'easy diy hacks' video playing
It was hard to tell how many points I was getting from crypto. But it went to the top of the list on Screen Time
Yeah the game was fairly slow but once bitcoin daytrading was unlocked the rest took a few minutes
You need 2,000,000 stimulation points for the last item which wins the game. It sounds like a lot, but by that point you’ll be generating an insane amount of points per second and passive consumption is worth more than clicking. It does get overwhelming, at one point I had to mute the sound for a minute or two before resuming.
If you want to know what the last item is, rot13 the next paragraph (https://rot13.com/ is an easy way to do it):
Gur ynfg vgrz vf “tbvat gb gur bprna”. Gur tnzr jneaf lbh gurer vf ab tbvat onpx nsgre gung. Vg fjvgpurf gb n pnyzvat ivqrb bs jnirf ba gur ornpu, jvgu perqvgf.
Or
If one is on computer or has access to shell from phone.Gunaxf!
The last, and most expensive item requires 2M stimulation, but I think you need to buy most of the preceding items to get to it.
you can see the credits by paying 2m points so depending on your definition of winning ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
It hung when I had 100k but I guess I will run it on PC next time.
I had to restart because I unwittingly clicked the mukbang guy too early: can't handle him unless he is drowned out by everything else. By contrast I enjoyed the wormhole button. Kind of the whole point of the experience, liked it way better than certain noises :)
Jonathan Blow had a great (imho) rant about those type of notifications that someone clipped from one of his live streams. (Warning: strong language.) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9nmCIrs7HI
I saw that the Shadow of the Colossus remake has little achievement notifications when you kill colossi and that really burns my biscuit. You're watching this slow-motion scene of a colossus dying, sad music plays, you wonder if you're doing the right thing, and the PlayStation is like "yayyy!~ You're such a good gamer!~"
Jonathan Blow has good points sometimes, but he comes off as very "old man rants at cloud" most of the time. He's been stewing in his own sauce for far too long.
if people ask me how my weekend was, i can unironically send them this site; this is my weekend condensed in 30 minutes
MSN Messenger had addicting bubbles way before
I wanted to gouge my eyes out hahaha. The ending cutscene made up for it all.
> I felt like a frog being slowly boiled
This game is an excellent simulation of what ADHD feels like, especially if you're putting off multiple critical tasks.
Wow, that was amazing. This is honestly a better piece of contemporary art (in terms of making you think about modern life and what is happening to our environment, the impact on ourselves, our kids, etc.) than most of what you might see at a fancy art gallery or a contemporary art museum in NYC.
For the live-action, logical conclusion of this concept, watch HYPER-REALITY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
> 8 years ago
Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a cautionary tale
Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus
(via https://x.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538?lang=e... )
You'll never see games at fancy art galleries or contemporary art museums in NYC because games are too accessible
Rather, I think they are not accessible enough. A picture on a wall, a movie or music can be experienced by hundreds or thousands of people all at once. Games in an art gallery have a much lower natural limit to the number of people who can interact with them simultaneously (at least in the same physical space). Sure, you can watch others do it, but that's not really the same thing (it's more like watching performance art than playing a game).
I have in fact been to art galleries which had interactive game-like exhibits. I basically never got to interact with them because, lo and behold, there was a long queue.
Except perhaps the most well known contemporary art museum in the world: https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/798
The Museum of the Moving Image has had video games in its collection since the 1980s. https://movingimage.org/collection/collection-spotlight_vide...
Hauser & Wirth have had essays on video games in their magazine: https://www.hauserwirth.com/ursula/too-late-for-earth-too-so...
The Smithsonian has a traveling exhibition specifically about Art in Video Games: https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/games
Maybe actually go to an art gallery/museum sometime instead of assuming you know what one is
It's "The Art of Video Games"
I've seen and played games at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in NYC. Maybe I got lucky but it's one of like three museum visits I've ever done as a tourist in the city.
Don't most art museums have free days for city residents, etc.?
Almost every game requires an expensive hardware purchase and often a separate $60-$70 for the game itself
Neal has continually outdone himself with every single release. Everything he makes is a labor of love and is so special and deserving of attention. From the factual stuff like "The Size of Space" and "Deep Sea", to the more amusing "Absurd Trolly Problems", "The Password Game", and so on. It's all so good and feels like a gift to the internet.
Stimulation Clicker's social commentary has to the best thus far. I know click games are a thing, but to combine that mechanic with a parody of the state of the modern attention economy is just pure art.
Neal, if you're reading HN, you rock. Please know how appreciative we are.
https://buymeacoffee.com/neal
I haven’t even had a chance to look at the game from that perspective yet. I don’t know why, but this game has me so excited!
> This is honestly a better piece of contemporary art (in terms of making you think about modern life and what is happening to our environment, the impact on ourselves, our kids, etc.)
Zooming out, I think games in general is in a much better position to do this, as a medium, compared to the alternatives TV, movies and music.
I guess mainly because it's interactive, but it also feels like it can be broader than the other mediums, like on one hand you have Idle/Clicker games like these, and on the other the huge blockbuster AAA games.
I accidentally got addicted to crypto trading and made 34 million stimulation before I realized there was a "win game" button.
I guess this game is more representative than we'd like to think.
"I accidentally got addicted" is such a wonderful phrase.
What is the win game button? I also got up to a pretty high stimulation and never saw any such button.
It's the icon of water waves.
Hahaha I thought my mobile browser finally crashed after I clicked that
Yeah, mobile devices struggle with this game, mine crashed as well after clicking on this button.
normally you would be shown a video of calming waves and the credits of the game, with all the other noise and distractions disappearing.
Luckily the first time I finished it on PC and got the ending right. My phone also crashed the browser upon ending button.
I managed to cheat this by buying a bunch of DVDs and making my window as small as possible, meaning they hit the edges much more often and gained me infinity stimulation.
But what did you win, really?
A bad taste in my mouth how I spend my time online in general
[flagged]
The ocean.
infinity stimulation
Fantastic encapsulation and commentary on the modern web and attentionspace.
There's certainly better ways to do this, but here's one way to automate 1000 clicks from the console:
Automating this art piece probably also says ... something.> Fantastic encapsulation and commentary on the modern web and attentionspace.
This is why I quit Hearthstone even though I never spent a dime on it. I realized I had been habituated into playing it every day. I started feeling like a lab rat trained to push a button for a reward.
Cookie Clicker taught me this about Destiny and Destiny 2 as well.
I got a lot of enjoyment out of those games - and they were partly the backdrop to socialising online with IRL friends who didn't live close to me - but at some point the absurdity of them became too obvious and we stopped.
"moved on" - to Call of Duty.
That's one of the things that makes Stimulation Clicker so good, by being exposed to the most extreme version, it helps you identify other engineered attention grabbers in everyday life.
> most extreme version
Well...
http://ivark.github.io/
I found this link on here like six months ago and my life hasn't been the same since.
> This is why I quit Hearthstone even though I never spent a dime on it.
Good news, you now have time to pick up The Bazaar instead! (joke aside, it's quite fun, a lot more chill, and not nearly as exploitative as Hearthstone)
> I realized I had been habituated into playing it every day
So like a hobby?
Did you have fun playing it?
It’s when you feel guilt or fomo for not playing every day that it becomes a problem. Many games like this.
A hobby is something you’re supposed to do for fun, not out of habit.
Hahaha yeah! Me too! Good thing I escaped that!
Now back to my coding job, I really have to focus and push enough of these buttons or I’ll get fired and won’t get my pay
Least we're getting paid for those buttons
...now back to my hourly check of HN frontpage. Gotta be diligent and keep up with the industry news.
Are you me?
a fun way is to resize the window to be super tiny and the DVD Bounce really gets going into the millions
Good one. Sounds like a geiger counter.
woah! great job
Automate that bitcoin!
```
setInterval(() => { let max = 100; while(max-->0) { let price = +document.querySelector(".last-price").textContent.trim().slice(1).replace(",","").split("\n")[0]; if (price > 20000) { document.querySelector(".stock-sell").click(); } else if (price < 10000) { document.querySelector(".stock-buy").click(); } else { break; } } })
```
Running it async will prevent the main screen from lagging:
Or use requestAnimationFrame to run infinitely at ~60fps
This doesn't seem to logarithmically scale when you get the click percent increase upgrade, while the other code does.
If you're already using setTimeout, why not just use it directly?
What's all this overengineering and waste creating timeouts?
Why not just use setInterval?
Then to stopHow could you be so wasteful traversing the DOM tree every time to find .main-btn? Shame on you.
That's an infinite loop.
Breakable by `clickLoop = null`.
Infinite version:
let button = document.getElementsByClassName('main-btn');
let clicker = setInterval(() => button[0].click(), 1);
To stop, use this:
window.clearInterval(clicker);
Just go into developer mode and just break on a line like so:
and run and resume.Automating it is the most fun part of these silly games. Here's a bash script to do it on mac (brew install clickclick first)
I did the same exact thing and then wanted to post it into the groupchat then see this.
1000 iterations too!
Why are we like this XD
> Automating this art piece probably also says ... something.
if you do that you're not really experiencing it
To everyone who is doing this:
The only person you are cheating is yourself!!!
Short-circuiting a clicker game (and all other forms of nullifying Skinner boxes) is self-care.
You could shorten it by using $('.main-btn').click()
This is a fun clicker game whose point seems cynical and self-defeating on multiple levels.
Despite the HN comments complaining about it being overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the front page. The stimulation torture wasn't really torture, but another level to the game.
All the content creators whose inclusion at first seems like an indictment of the kinds of internet videos that lead to addiction or overstimulation also all get a pleasant shout-out which seems silly. Are these supposed to represent what's awful about the internet?
EDIT: To hammer the dissonance home, at the end of the game we are met with a calming ocean scene that I'm guessing the average player appreciated for about thirty seconds before clicking away.
To me, this whole exercise doesn't reflect how distorted humanity has become because of technology, but of how humans refuse to look themselves in the mirror.
We want to be the kind of people who buck the mold and escape systems of control, so that we can properly enjoy things like waves of the ocean, but at any point during this game we could just open a new tab and watch the ocean on a YouTube livestream. Instead we spend an hour clicking and advancing this manic stream of chaos.
What's more human, then: calmly watching the waves crash against the beach, or clicking buttons trying to win and discover what's at the end of a silly game?
> Despite the HN comments complaining about it being overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the front page.
Is this like a massive HN wooosh -- how can this be the top-voted comment?
From Neil Postman's 1985 "Amusing Ourselves to Death":
> “With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.”
> “Spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy with a smiling face.”
It's less about whether we "enjoy" the stimulation, more about what kind of people we become when we lose ourselves in this bizarre sea of superstimuli. We're like reinforcement agents creating adversarial examples for each other, drawing ourselves further out of any sort of meaningful life, into a fever dream where the most desirable job for the next generation is to be famous for being famous [1] rather than do anything for any kind of deeper purpose.
[1] https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/what-is-gen-zs-no...
I like your description. I sometimes wonder if the final equilibrium state will be most people working on addictive products and the rest working on addiction treatment.
I'd say with the current state of things it's more like two singularities in which either:
- A landian-stephensian accelerationist timeline occurs where the majority of the urban population becomes some flavor of AGI-tuned VR junkie
- An extreme naturalistic counterculture movement occurs that causes majority of the civilized world to willingly roll themselves back 1 or 2 centuries technologically in order to feel something again
Perhaps the current obsession will just go the way of heavy drinking or smoking? Ie the population will eventually develop some partial immunity to the allure, but it won't even go away completely.
I personally believe that at some point, many people will realize that the majority of the people with economic means are the people who are able to concentrate and don’t waste all their time. Note that I don’t mean the super wealthy, I’m referring to people who are solidly middle class and have means. I know a lot of successful people who aren’t glued to their phones. I think there will be enough good and bad examples out there for people to start catching on.
The most successful people I know absolutely are glued to their phones. They're networking and messaging and reading and planning on their phones.
But from the outside it looks very similar to candy crush. . .
Why not both?
- And there has to be the third, hyperminmaxers yearning forever more control and power trying to be(at) the machine. Thus becoming a reflection of the first.
- Fourth must be some sort of hybrid between denialist and creationist, whom I don't even want to envision through. Which would be a reflection of the second, but instead of withdrawing, they would bubble themselves into something terrifying version of the Amish.
"Dune: Prophecy"
https://youtu.be/CzVHWNosS2o?si=NtT7P8SX3LebjIuf
Can't wait for the Butlerian Jihad
See: Walkaway by Cory Doctorow (2017)
Been reading their latest on interoperability. Interesting stuff, and a possible avenue for tech sanity in the upcoming years.
We are already there.
>> Despite the HN comments complaining about it being overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the front page.
> Is this like a massive HN wooosh -- how can this be the top-voted comment?
100% agree. I had to read that sentence and surrounding parts like 5 times to check if I was missing a satirical nod somewhere. It's like writing a review of Franz Kafka's books and saying "Despite what we may say about bureaucracy, clearly lots of people enjoy it because his books were best sellers!"
Lots of art is there to make you think, not to "enjoy" it.
I think it's kind of necessary to be exposed to ideas and views of people like Postman to even think of them when you play a game like this. The top comment is disappointing, but so it goes.
I enjoyed the game, for the attention to detail and making a mockery out of so many things in our daily lives that are in essence absurd, in such a brilliant yet simple way. The frowning Duolingo owl. The pillow delivery tracking made me chuckle. The only thing I missed was booking a an apartment on booking.com with a billion reminders to hurry up as the place might be gone any second, or doing an online check in. Although maybe it happened, I refreshed the game accidentally and never came back.
If HNer's were as enlightened as they think they are, this would have been flagged and buried.
It's not self-defeating, it's a commentary.
I've built up a reflex to leave any sort of overstimulatory atmosphere. I don't watch short form videos and leave any page that causes high levels of stimulation (Temu's spinner stops me from shopping there, for example).
I quit this game after about 10 minutes when it hit a comical level of stimulation and still upvoted this. I loved the commentary because the game seemed to follow the natural "evolution" of the web, straight to the point where every app has attached mini games and multiple in-game currencies. Listening to the man popping his beer can and pouring it at the same time as a live police scanner was truly dystopian but also feels like a daily occurrence in modern society.
I think it's great that you didn't really have a stomach for the absurd level of noise and flashing lights, but I just don't think it's a moral victory that people should necessarily strive for.
I do. Less people tolerate crap like this (not the submission, but patterns it emulates), the less we will see it implemented.
You lasted 10 minutes? I lasted about 30 seconds. Life is too short.
There’s some pretty funny commentary in there mixed into the absurd overstimulation
Maybe, but my life feels better by going for run for 30 minutes or to the gym, or spending time with my kid and/or partner rather than clicking one button on a web page for 30 minutes straight.
I think I quit after the DVD sounds
I quit (the first time) after the first three totally unlabeled icons appeared. Not having hovered on them, I had no idea there was anything more. Lesson for designers of scroll bars and other commonly-hidden but important UI elements.
The mobile version places an explicit "upgrades" button to indicate that they're clickable.
perhaps it's another commentary...
> at any point during this game we could just open a new tab and watch the ocean on a YouTube livestream.
That's a great observation.
I'm not sure how to phrase this exactly, but there's something going on for at least some people - definitely for me - that the thing we're seeking refuge in are given meaning by the things we're seeking refuge from. Like you said, at any point during the game - or before, or after - I could open a new tab and watch the ocean on YouTube, or even watch the same thing that was the ending of the game. Except, obviously, I wouldn't, because why would I? It would be totally random and arbitrary, a kind of plot non sequitur you'd complain about if it was a piece of fiction. This ocean scene only makes sense as an ending of this game, as a refuge, a contrast, a punchline. It's the stimulation game preceding it, that gives meaning to the ending.
I've noticed I often feel similarly about many hobbies, interests, tasks, - heck, even people - they rapidly stop being interesting once I don't have any stressing obligation I should be working on instead.
(My HN comment history, too, is strongly and positively correlated with amount of stuff I should be doing instead in my life, but not necessarily want to.)
Doesn't seem self-defeating if it aroused that level of analysis, seems like good art! Art can bring up questions that author didn't intend so it's often best not to bring the authors viewpoint into the discussion, or at least not make authorial intent the authority.
I've heard someone say good art isn't about saying new things, but saying known truths in new ways and I found this very effective. Your question about who really stays to watch the ocean is interesting, and I don't think diminishes the game.
you're looking at it from a framework that there's a "right" way to interpret a given piece of art, or that a given piece of art has "a point" instead of "a set of ways in which people interpret it". You're describing one way of interpreting it and then leveling a charge against the piece when, in reality, that charge should be leveled at that interpretation.
I do believe there's an intended interpretation or "point", and that's what I'm commenting on. Do you disagree with this?
are you asking about this specific piece or about art in general? Either way yes I disagree.
I don't know the author of this work. I don't know what they intended, so I can't comment on their intentions. I don't know if there's an "intended interpretation" or not, I don't know what that intended interpretation is, I don't know if it lines up with the interpretation you described. If the author intended for a specific, singular interpretation, I would reject that; any interpretation is just one of many. Some interpretations make more sense than others, and how a piece is interpreted can easily change from person to person, or even over time for a single person. Whatever you get out of it: it's true that that's what you got out of it.
This is actually a 100+ year old divisive point in literary/media criticism - the older traditional view is authorial intent is the only thing that matters, the post-modern view is authorial intent shouldn't be considered at all and you should only look at the text in isolation. I think the sensible and most common view is that authorial intent should be taken into account, but should not be considered the final word - because you can't truly know what the author is intending, there may be subconscious things even the author isn't aware of (for example the complete sexlessness of HP Lovecraft is probably not intentional but probably telling), and how the author gets it wrong can be interesting and should be considered part of the piece as well (for example, when you mention how people won't watch the ocean, that's interesting, and should be considered part of the piece because the game leaves room for that kind of interpretation).
TLDR, there may be an intended point, but that's not the only thing a piece can be judged on. The best art leaves room for multiple interpretations, it has a life of it's own beyond the creator when it's experienced by people.
> Despite the HN comments complaining about it being overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the front page. The stimulation torture wasn't really torture, but another level to the game. All the content creators whose inclusion at first seems like an indictment of the kinds of internet videos that lead to addiction or overstimulation also all get a pleasant shout-out which seems silly. Are these supposed to represent what's awful about the internet?
There's a literary/artistic technique called "irony" where the depiction isn't meant to be taken at face-value and instead is actually being shown because the opposite is intended. The whole game is an ironic application of Stimulation techniques, and in order to show its negative impact, one must use them ironically.
I didn't find it enjoyable or soothing... I played it for about 30 seconds, got the point, chuckled because it was a mildly clever poke at the stupid engagement tactics used to addict people to otherwise boring and pointless actions - sort of a demo of how we're all dumber than lab mice, who at least get food for pressing a button - and then came back here to see that some people actually kept playing it to some sort of end. Which is crazy.
These trends wouldn't be trends if they didn't work. The game can be awful and distracting, yet still succeed at garnering engagement. Not just in spite of the stimulation but partially due to the stimulation. It's not self defeating or hypocritical, it's a bad thing, an indictment, and also engaging all at the same time.
It got me to think and engage, so already I think it succeeds at being a great piece of art.
But is "overstimulation" ... "bad", according to the overall message? Is this game, livestreamer Ludwig, and all the achievements part of the problem being highlighted? (Not to mention the mean-spirited Mindspace parody) If you get enough stimulation here, it just seems like you get to cash it in so that you can advance to a state of higher enlightenment
> But is "overstimulation" ... "bad", according to the overall message?
Dozens of DVD signs jumping around, hydraulic press slowly pressing macaroons, infinite subway surfers, lofi girl, some guy eating burger, achievements popping left and right, hands molding some crap. All of that fit on a mobile screen with sounds of lofi, rain, thunder and constant clocking of dvd sounds. And I didn’t even reach bottom of the pit.
> But is "overstimulation" ... "bad", according to the overall message?
Smartest HN commenter.
I think work that contemplates a social phenomenon without driving home any particular opinion or moral can still be interesting.
Neither the most human thing you can do is not think that deep on it.
Having a "aha" moment while playing a game is enjoyable. That does not mean it can't be critical at the same time.
One of most popular misconceptions in art is that art that deals with serious topics has to be hard to consume and no fun is allowed to make it good art. Your reflection alone is a testament to what thoughts the game produced by making you do a thing. Of course the stimulation has to be somewhat enjoyable, wouldn't be realistic otherwise – in reality this is how they get you.
lol, my browser crashed (low power limited memory living room PC) well before any ending.
Spoiler warning OMG. :P
This is so German
We're taking part in boiling a frog. The game starts off blank and peaceful with a single button inviting you to push it. It adds the DVD bounce, which is a nice little charming and nostalgic hit of dopamine. Then you get another DVD logo, which is a nice touch, double the points! Then you get a hydraulic press. Hydraulic press automation. Level ups. Audio. Oh no. Now it's the kind of unending audiovisual nightmare that browsing the modern web without adblock is, and it evolved in much the same way.
If you keep playing it -- either to find out what the whole point of this game is or because you are trapped in the game loop by your stimulation-seeking brain -- and you just keep building and building in overstimulating nonsense versions of real-world content until you are presented with the calmness of it doesn't have to be this way.
That first wave in the calm after the storm gave me literal physical relaxation: I felt the tenseness of my back & shoulders ease into a slump once the incessant babble of the attention-seeking components of the game went away. I felt better than I had a moment ago. It was nice. And it was, counter to your point, exactly a look in the mirror. Why do I put myself through the wringer on modern social media when I don't have to?
All of that to say I don't feel like the message is self-defeating at all. The dissonance is the point. Condition yourself as much as you like to the way things are by continuing to play the game, the peaceful beach is almost certainly nicer. Even just for 30 seconds.
Why not get out in nature? Touch grass, maybe, as the kids say these days.
I never understood the appeal of being calm. It's fucking boring. Since early childhood I needed extra stimulation: first I'd listen to mom reading stories while I was playing with toys, then at school I'd listen to the teacher while playing games on my PSP. That allowed my brain to stay engaged. Now I just finished an exhausting day - I lay on the sofa, put on some music, have a slideshow on my computer screen, play this game. After finishing it, I'm feeling relaxed and tired in a way "now I'm ready to go to sleep". A friend of mine jokes that I have a motor in my ass because I can't sit still, whenever we meet I want to keep walking around, just for the sake of not sitting in one place.
I honestly think that high-stimulation is a great thing, as long as we use it to our advantage, instead of being hindered by it. The essence of life is doing things against the natural forces of inanimate physics, rather than sitting and doing nothing. The more you do, the more you live. The absolutely worst feeling in my life that I battle as an adult is being tired, when my mind and body refuse to do high-stimulation activities, and I end up just laying in bed the entire day.
It feels like this quote from "Ready Player One" (2018 film)
"Once we can roll back some of Halliday's ad restrictions, we estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual's visual field before inducing seizures"
> 2018 Film
It was also a great book!
Well, you're half right -- it was a book.
You're downvoted, but I agree. I found it basically a hodgepodge of 80s references over a basic story with one-dimensional characters (the heroes are Very Good and the bad guy is Very Bad). I would have assumed that it's aimed at young children, if the references weren't forty years before their time.
It's not just that, but also the main protagonist is written terribly and never given any real faults or challenges to overcome. During the entire book there is never a challenge that is not resolved by the next paragraph.
The Japanese friends that he makes are grossly stereotyped and are kept one dimensional during the entire book as well.
The main character also strikes me as incredibly creepy, and to a level where he could be classified as an para-social stalker. Just comes off as being a terrible person overall.
Spielberg's movie however is fantastic and one of those rare instances where the movie truly does outrank the book.
Is the movie different enough? I didn't even watch it, because I hated the book so much.
The film even has a proper ending which in itself is hugely thought provoking and something we definitely should consider. The book, if I remember correctly, just sets up for another book.
Ow, My Balls
Reminds me of a story I heard as a kid.
Short version, guy can't sleep. Someone tells him get a dog. Dog barks, still can't sleep. Well you'll also need a blah... repeat until the man has a small farm of loud animals going. Then finally "get rid of them" and suddenly it's all so quiet again.
It's pretty fascinating how much more calm everything seems when you finish/stop this game
There is a different version where a person takes drug A to solve problem X. But that has a side effect so they take drug B to solve that problem. And so on and so on and so on. Eventually, they decide to stop taking all the medicines and are finally "cured".
I felt an immediate, physical relief when I hit the credits screen.
"A Squash and a Squeeze" by Julia Donaldson must be a take on that
https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/50346/is-julia-d... says it's a take on an old Jewish Polish folk tale
Neal.fun keeping weird internet alive, one micro game at a time.
Other favorites:
* Absurd Trolley Problem: https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/
* Password game: https://neal.fun/password-game/
Lovely ending, and I appreciate how short this one is. For me it really does induce some mixed feelings for what we did to the web while at the same time I really enjoyed the nostalgia.
Another game I sunk way too much time into to get to the end is Idle Loops which ends up being kind of like programming once you get deeper into it: https://dmchurch.github.io/omsi-loops/ (There are three versions, all open source on GitHub – this one is the third in the chain of forks, with the most updates)
Best way I've found to stimulate quickly, resize your window to be as small as possible, and have lots of bouncing DVDs.
I figured like thirty seconds into using the site that resizing it smaller would give me more DVD bounces per second. But then during resizing i kinda cheated myself some points accidentally, and discovered that trick where they're just bouncing on every tick.
Normally I'm a sucker for clicker games, but cheating the progress (even accidentally) always kills the point of it.
This is the way, two minutes and already at a million.
You can get a massive amount of money with the stock market plugin once you get the cryptocurrency and leverage upgrades.
After you get to the cryptocurrency it's basically game over, you can earn over a million during a few market cycles, and the speed you can do it it raises (almost) exponentially. Stocks are similar, but much slower.
Why do you think that stock and crypto plugins will be very profitable? There are no tools to combine finance data in easy way?
Something is broken with HN because I'm also seeing this comment thread in the post about the Yahoo Pipes replacement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42609819
However, when I reply it says Stimulation Clicker at the top so no idea what's going on. @dang?
I'm seeing the same issue. In fact, the Pipes thread is where I'm posting this.
During my 20 minutes I noticed stocks and crypto seem to always fluctuate within a given range. So if you buy in the low end of the range you're guaranteed to see an opportunity to sell at the higher end of the range.
Crypto is just stocks with a wider range and more volatility.
> seem to always fluctuate within a given range.
... except for sometimes, when they don't.
Also, zoom in the window!
Level 42 was my limit
I had a great run and accidentally reloaded my page :(
Feature request: save current state in local storage so I can resume when I open it back again.
You have to obtain the Item Shop upgrade, then buy the "Sign in with Google" item from shop, then sign in, then you can save your state to your Google Drive by pressing Ctrl+/S.
I was about to scoff at this and thought "Ugh, another cookie clicker", but then I started playing it. I'm glad it is quick because my head was going to explode. It is pretty damn brilliant take on today's stimuli overload. I think it is more a piece of art than a game. I was able to win quickly once I got crypto because it was bouncing from $400 to $50,000, but I almost barfed because there was SO much going on. Well done.
Did anyone else get the seemingly _actual_ NordVPN that clicked through to NordVPN? Wondering if they sponsored this.
With the affiliate link!
Unironically, if this was on Steam and monetized through their item shop, it would probably make a fortune. See banana: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2923300/Banana/
Banana is used by bots to exploit specific in-Steam tradable items and rewards. It's not a real game.
Can you explain this a bit more? I know there is a lot of shady stuff happening with Steam tradable items, but always fun to learn about new ones.
All this "game" does is generation of different marketable banana items to "players" running it.
Looks like NFT nonsense but without the blockchain
There is a buymeacoffee link. I'm pretty stingy with donations, but thought this was worth 3 coffees.
For those of you loving this, a classic: https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/
Cookie Clicker has received updates almost continuously for the last decade. I don’t have the commitment to ascend but I understand there’s quite a bit of content to be unlocked there even after you’ve maxed out your first “run.”
It still peters out eventually
Cookie Clicker got me into programming back in the day! Super simple structure (back then) and fun way to experiment with coding in an interactive way with visual feedback.
Since we're all sharing clicker games, this one by Frank Lantz is a real classic: https://decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
A Dark Room (https://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/) is fantastic as well. It's not only a clicker/idle game, but it incorporates the mechanics in an interesting way.
On the whole, I've had to adopt a policy of not even touching clicker games. I find them incredibly addictive, and most of the time I'm not even enjoying the experience or getting anything out of it, I just feel hooked. I'd say Universal Paperclips and A Dark Room were exceptions to that, in that they actually had some depth, strategy, discovery, or story. But even those two I've had to stop myself from replaycing.
I'll play Universal Paperclips once a year or so when I remember it exists and have nothing I need to do for the next 3-6 hours. So I'd add that as a warning to anyone who wants to check it out: make sure your next 6 hours are ok to spend on it, in case you get sucked in.
Not available on mobile (except by installing an app).
:(
Toggle the "Desktop site" setting in your mobile browser. (Worked in Chrome on Android.)
For a clicker, it's pretty slow. You have to do some pretty significant grinding.
Spoilers!
There's a whole combat and map system that's hidden away initially. A lot of the progression really wants you to do that but it's hidden away at first so it's not obvious.
Isn't cookie clicker one of the earliest?
https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/
I feel like Progress Quest from 2002 is the spiritual predecessor of the clicker genre:
http://progressquest.com/
In that it distills the game mechanic of “make number go up” into a simplistic form. It just lakes the clicking.
PS, whenever I relapse and play too much World of Warcraft, I play some Cookie Clicker as a cleanse to remind myself of the fundamental pointlessness of the whole endeavor. Great game.
Cookie Clicker is indeed eye opening.
I think it is one of the few games that "changed my life" in the sense that by getting addicted to it for a few days, it made me see Cookie Clicker in every platform that tries to waste my time.
I remember when I first heard about it and I naively thought that such a simple game was silly and in now way could not be addictive, but I let myself play it for a while and it really changed the way I see games.
Anti-Idle from 2009 says hi.
http://www.kongregate.com/games/tukkun/anti-idle-the-game
Both in the pretty rare category of clicker games that you can complete and get an ending.
I'm sadly into the incremental game genre. Universal Paperclips is still my favourite, and I replay it often. A Dark Room is another really good one with some storytelling and an ending, which is not all that common in incremental games.
But if anyone wants to get deep into it, Dodecadragons is probably the best implementation of the incremental mechanics, but it's extremely addictive, so be careful with it.
Don't forget Kittensgame! - https://kittensgame.com/web/#
I have not forgotten it. I have been playing it every since I started at google (long build times, ya know?) 7 years ago...
All-Time Stats
Total Years Played 7.951M
Run Number 24
Total Paragon 23.614K
Buildings Constructed 143.148K
Total Clicks 2.411M
Transcendence Tier 25
Challenges Completed 11
I have never cheated in it, or used a script to click things.
Same to no cheating - Only been playing a couple of years, lots of background.
All-Time Stats Total Kittens 84.84K Kittens Dead 5710 Total Years Played 18.33M Run Number 98 Total Paragon 90.36K Rare Events Observed 22.31M Unicorns Sacrificed 4.20P Buildings Constructed 553.38K Total Clicks 712.37K Trades Completed 2.32G Crafting Times 501.64M Avg. Kittens Born (Per Century) 0.46 Transcendence Tier 27 Challenges Completed 8
what does Transcendence Tier 27 do for you? there is nothing else after 25 right?
You seem to have done a lot better than me with less clicks.
[dead]
Or Swarmsim: https://www.swarmsim.com
For this crowd, there is also bitburner, where you write programs to automate making the numbers go up: https://bitburner-official.github.io
Want to make the numbers go up a bit? Write some for loops. Want them to really go up? Time to write a distributed job scheduler.
let me save everyone's time of writing each recommendation individually - by linking https://www.incrementaldb.com/ where all the games are listed together
Antimatter Dimensions is another conerstone in the genre.
http://ivark.github.io/
Don't click it, that's most of a year I'll never get back.
No kidding - it really did take about a year for me to finish it. That was _with_ a guide.
I wonder if we can get a superintelligent AI to play this one!
don't need it - just click the "click" button and then hold down enter.
You haven’t gotten very far if you think that’s all the game requires.
That's exactly what a superintelligent AI would say...
Well there went two hours of my day.
8 hrs
i went into this expecting a quick, shallow, PoC game to make a fast point. i was rewarded as the game continued to add incredible depth, showing real care and thought. if there's one thing i can recommend, it's to read all the emails. they are hilarious and gave me the most joy. i burst out laughing while reading some which took me over my stimulation threshold and allowed me to fully embrace the absurdity of the entire thing (which i was initially playing somewhat competitively).
First thought: this is just silly. Then 5 minutes later: let me just get the ASMR slime video for 4000 stimulations before closing this. Now 10 minutes in I added the Listen to a Murder True Crime podcast for 10,000 stimulations, upgraded my hydraulic press, and now waiting for one of my 13 (technicolor upgraded) DVD logos to hit a corner so I can multiply my points by 10.
Don't blame me.
I thought it was insane just hand-clicking but this legitimately made it overwhelming to the point where I had to close the tab.
Crashes on mobile chrome after about 10 minutes probably for the best
Firefox on MacOS seems fine. I minimized the window size and made some soup. The GUI was a little bit laggy though. When I got back I had ~10million or so and bought all the upgrades which ended the game.
Same, I can't believe I spent that much time, the guided meditation killed me.
Crashed on desktop brave as well. I mean, it was still running but I couldn't click on anything.
Same
Lost progress.
It was fun and quirky, but Happy it ended though.
got laggy for me, but I got frustrated by cacophony before that
Same. iPhone 14 Pro, both safari and chrome. Eventually the sound stops and it gets super laggy.
Almost kind of fitting.
Same on samsung internet. I was happy it crashed.
Samsung has a browser?
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sec.androi...
It's pretty good too.
If you like this kind of games, please give https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html a try
I spent an embarrassing amount of time playing this. Eventually it became overwhelming, but for a while it was (un)surprisingly engaging.
Same, the true crime podcast is hilarious :D
Yep. A+ for effort - the "podcast" is nearly 40 minutes long, and gets progressively sillier as it goes.
In case you want to listen to it without the accompaniment of mukbang, slime ASMR, lofi beats, and hydraulic press noises, the source audio is at:
https://stimulation-clicker.neal.fun/sounds/true-crime.mp3
It has an ending, so play till the end :)
I'm surprised it does actually work very well.
The whole earn coins to purchase faster ways to earn coins is objectively stupid, I'm not going to do anything with them but I still feel like I need to earn more and feel good when I unlocked new stuff.
Is that Pavlov conditioning ? Used to buy new stuff and always make more money.
> I'm surprised it does actually work very well.
probably you got lucky with having correct browser or smth...
Firefox Android. Usually that's the first one to break website, that and safari.
haha true, the ultimate meta. why do we feel the need to earn more coins? the game prescriptively doesn't say how it should be played - a player could well be content with rain sounds....
s/coins/dollars
Ran into a bug where a double tap zoomed the page and it broke the game as I could not zoom out again. Unfortunately it does not save the progress in a cookie.
I also had an issue that restarted my computer and found the hard way it doesn't save. Using localStorage to store the state is simple enough, unfortunate that it doesn't.
When that happened to me, a simple ⌘0 reset the size.
what device has both zoom tapping and apple's ctrl button?
Literally every Mac with a trackpad, which includes every laptop.
It’s not “Apple ctrl button”, it’s the “command” key. Macs have a “control” key too.
Ditto. It was also running at about 3 fps on my iPhone 12 on safari.
It was a nice shopping trip worth of fun though.
oh my god the murder podcast mentions a hydraulic press death.
best thing in a while, bravo.
EDIT: I really wish the still-locked achievements gave a hover/hint. I simply can't figure out what these missing achievements are, and it looks like the count is wrong. Also, I wish I could revive my chicken. :(
You can inspect element on the achievements to see what their unlock text is.
I feel like a winner. Is there a leaderboard?
Has anyone tried a speed run yet? Would be awesome if there was a leaderboard! I've done it twice now, I can see myself watching YouTube videos on people sharing strategies on the best sequence of upgrades to buy.
Update: The answer is yes of course! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42613699
Holy moly that was an incredible experience. Well done!
The increasingly-dark Duolingo bird has to be my favorite part. Maybe I didn't get all the easter eggs there, but I almost wish the whole game just turned into an elaborate plot for vengeance for the owls.
Did you get the Duolingo renewal email? :D
I find it frustrating that after purchasing an item, the email notifications are endless. They include every minor update, like the delivery person stopping for a bagel. It feels like my phone is constantly bombarded with unnecessary information these days.
This. Just send me one email with a receipt and a link to the tracker. I'll open it if I want to know.
I came here after checking in on my Cookie Clicker tab and this was number 1 on HN. It couldn't be.... it is.
For fans of clicker games I discovered this site [0] a while back and come back to it every so often to find some great ones.
[0] https://www.incrementaldb.com
This is reminding me of an ascii art game called Candy Box. It begins very minimal like this, but unfolds into a wonderfully imaginative RPG game.
https://candybox2.github.io/candybox/
At first, I thought it was just a clicker; then it reminded me of the game "Don't Move" https://store.steampowered.com/app/334350/Dont_Move/ which is a very short experiment on what is a game. Finally, I realized it's something else entirely, and even more annoying.
Can't seem to get a few of the achievements:
* Roaring Kitty (Definitely made over 100k on bitcoin trades)
* Polyglot (Duolingo no longer appears -- did I need to never answer any incorrectly? It seemed like incorrectly answered questions re-appeared later)
Yeah Polyglot requires not making any mistakes; mess up and you'll have to restart to get it. I can't seem to get Roaring Kitty either -- and I should note, you can check how much you've made in the stock market with the "Screen Time" button, so I can say I've made over 4 million... probably it's not working...
Has anyone tried a speed run yet? Would be awesome if there was a leaderboard! I've done it twice now, I can see myself watching YouTube videos on people sharing strategies on the best sequence of upgrades to buy.
If you are interested in seeing what the depth of the game is and you are on desktop, unlock the hydraulic press by holding "enter" after clicking on the "click" button for easy currency, then after unlocking, do the same by clicking on the +1,000 simulation redemption (holding enter afterward) once you go through one hydraulic press animation. You will gain 100,000 simulation a second!
Fun game, love incrementals.
Really wonderful, worth playing towards the end!
I remember cookie clicker taking days to finish when it first released, I like this is a self-contained experience that ends, and really generates the kind of anxiety it's trying to comment on by the end, and then gracefully steps away at the right time.
Impressed with the effort. The fake crime podcast is gold.
It’s really well done. At one point the character says something along the lines of “but they would rather do other things, like play on neal.fun instead of going to the amusement park”
Nice! I’ve been playing Star Trek Fleet Command the past few days and have been wanting to build a silly clicker game to mock/mimic some of the game’s aspects and this has given me inspiration.
The same person behind the Absurd Trolley Problems: https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/
I already did a speedrun on it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTIxBBKNz8g
I love it! Here's my stab at an automated speedrun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z8P1F-lyB8
For a 20-something guy this is basically what using the internet is like now. Incredible.
For a 40-something guy I only had ICQ/Yahoo!/MSN/AOL messager popups during the internet of '99, which would of been a few times per minute.
So yeah, I guess we're actually not that different after all.
I pulled down to reload my email for more dopamine out of habit and it refreshed the page.
Oh no. Last time [1] I wasted half a day clicking on buttons. There were some aliens, some AI stuff, then something happened to (this) universe. Never again!
Many years back, someone had made a clicker parody game internally at Google (go/swe-simulator-game). You clicked to write CLs, DDs, build a team, get into committees, get promoted. I wish that was made available externally, it was hilarious and painful at the same time.
[1] https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
This is the stupidest thing - why am I so addicted to it?????
Neal.fun has clearly hacked my brain. it is too much fun and I don’t know why.
Enjoy
let button = document.querySelector('.main-btn'); document.querySelector('.main-btn'); if (button) { let clickCount = 0; const interval = setInterval(() => { button.click(); clickCount++; if (clickCount >= 10000000) { clearInterval(interval); console.log('Clicked 1000 times!'); } }, 10); // Adjust the interval (10ms) if necessary } else { console.log('Button not found!'); }
The "Meditation" one made me chuckle. "Relax your mind"...
As you wage all-out war on your senses.
Not to mention the "faster meditation" upgrade, which plays the calming audio at 2x speed. (You know, so that you can relax twice as fast.)
It's all about the destination, not the journey!
lol - I actually have done guided meditations at 2x, when I was starting out.
I feel like a cat that's chasing a laser pointer and knows it's a toy but doesn't mind
This was an incredible piece of art, and I say this unironically. Absolutely incredible.
My most efficient hack without JS: get the hydraulic press, start it, and click once to collect 1,000 stimulation. Then spam the space bar repeatedly to get another 1,000 for every key press
I do not like how enjoyable this was.
Pretty troubling!
My phone became overstimulated and hot :o It is actually addictive even when I know it's totally stupid. Good to know I am not resistant to these "games". Nice experiment, thanks for sharing!
Haha. Nice little idle game. Buy and sell Bitcoin for what win.
I was able to find a bug to get lots of clicks. Buy at least one bouncing DVD, open dev tools into responsive mode and make the screen width 52pixels (the lowest allowed). The DVDs will then bounce with each frame, racking up a bunch of points.
The crypto prices were so unrealistic. I was able to just keep buying Bitcoin with 2x leverage when it was low and make millions when it subsequently went up after. I barely paid attention to any other ways to make stimulation. Please implement liquidation mechanisms and more volatility.
I finished the game and immediately went to pick up my phone to check Instagram. Before I started I had just been thinking about how my lack of capacity to focus has been causing me to get nothing done. Not sure how to escape/re-train myself.
My 6 year old son was entertained for about 2 minutes. Not enough stimulation in this one.
What browser are you using?
This is great but I can't make it work reliably. It crashed both on Android Chrome (a while after buying on-screen banners) and on Opera dekstop (earlier, before reaching crypto).
Somewhat on same lines as this "challenge" and its responses ...
https://x.com/hobdaydesign/status/1634525287403728897
I was doing okay until the wormhole, and then I actually started to feel ill.
This.
Found a weird bug... I've got a 3 monitor setup and the background animations (rain + pinwheel) only appears on 2 of the monitors... If the window straddles two of the monitors the animations only play on one half of the window!
If you want to speed run it
A small improvement would be to stop based on the balance, rather than a number of clicks, to avoid going into ludicrous Yes JS Numbers Are All Floats territory.
I ended up stopping the execution using max=10 and then removing annoying elements using the web inspector and keep running. I really liked the subway surfers though
You can cheese the start by making the window really small, which makes the dvd logo bounces happen really fast!
This worked for me to go all the way to the end of the game:
setInterval(function() { document.querySelectorAll('button, .upgrade-icon').forEach((button) => button.click()) }, 1)
There should be a warning for people with ADHD... also for epilepsy...
other than that, one of the most creative clickers.
Well done Neal and team. I clicked around and chuckled at the obvious stimulation "memes", but quickly felt a compulsion to "win". Ended up scoring huge with the crypto mini game and unlocked everything. I'd say the biggest surprise was clicking on the ocean without thought (since I was mindlessly clicking at everything), and was left a bit disappointed that it ended. Lesson learned: Read everything carefully before clicking.
Noooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!! I dragged it down and it refreshed the page.
I thought my head was going to explode by the end... At some point during the game (right at the very end) I couldn’t even find my cursor on the screen anymore hahaha
I needed the ocean at the end. It's a very good game. The variable reward and quick repeatability captured me... It showcases what we are exposed to in a condensed manner.
Its such a contrast between this game and the Doom gallery experience that reached the top earlier.
Neal.. screw you. Youve robbed me of 15 mins. So far....
It was 50 mins to finish for me. But I had to look at my browser history to tell. I would have guessed 20-30 mins.
The best strategy is to write a helper function in the console to click for you. Then invest heavily in the DVDs, DVD bounce rate, stimulation per bounce, and general SPS increases.
I reached several quintillion stimulation, at which point I was offered to purchase "go to the beach" for 2 million. This ends the game and plays a relaxing beach video.
You too can get to the beach in just 5 minutes.
The sad but funny part of this is: If I sent this to my computer science class of 12-13 year olds, 50% would not even get the joke and just go and play it like their usual brainrot cookie clicker.
I really enjoyed the animation for seeing how much each button press was worth
setInterval(() => { document.querySelector('.main-btn-wrapper button').click() }, 10)
helped have me save my trackpad
I found a cool cheat. Get a few DVDs going then resize the window quickly in a bunch of directions. It'll group them all together and you'll get a ton of stim all at once every time you resize the window. It also makes the sound effect sound like a Geiger counter.
Just did 2+ hours of fascinated clicking as if I found a new part of Wikipedia, mainly because I assumed the "one way trip" to the ocean was a euphemism for what happened to the Titan submersible.
Anyone else find the combination of rain sounds and lofi strangely soothing. I feel less distracted with both playing.
I thought I recognized that name. Neal.Fun made the password game.
Woah that was intense and totally unhinged. At the same time fantastic.
Beware – this is crack! I clicked it and 20-min has passed.
https://imgur.com/JJHXccN
const button = document.querySelector(".main-btn");
if (button) { const clickButtonMultipleTimes = async () => { while (true) { const userInput = prompt("Enter the number of times to click the button (or type 'exit' to stop):");
} else { alert("The button with class 'main-btn' was not found on this page."); }My takeaway from this is to get in the right side of interest.
Once you start making money with the crypto, it goes fast. One could say this applies to real life (stock market or crypto). But at the start, it is slow.
Unfortunately, at some point (while I was getting 5-10k SPS), there was this blue droplet(?) (for a lack of a better word) passing down my screen. Tapping it crashed the game for me on Firefox for Android in the sense that pretty much everything turned non-responsive after that. :\
EDIT: Almost crashed Chromium on Android / Vanadium, too.
My favorite part was my iPhone struggling to run this thing once it got busy, and me desperate to not lose the game. Took me back to the old days!
Yall, this was freaking great. I took a break from coding to play it, really scratch the itch. Yes I have ADHD.
What a unique little site, I love all those little experiments. I feel weirdly proud of my 95.5% perfect circle: https://neal.fun/perfect-circle/
Cow Clicker 2025, Professional Edition. So good.
More people need to know the story of Cow Clicker.
Oh man that is wild. As soon as I added subway surfer, it became so much easier to keep clicking the simulation button. I was watching that random video and don’t even notice I keep clicking.
This is like Universal Paperclips.
This had a really nice length (~1 hour). I was able to wrap up the game quite quickly once I unlocked crypto trading
In case you are wondering this actually beats the game:
After around level 40 things get very very slow.This game is truly a work of art. I literally got a migraine playing this game though and couldn't finish it unfortunately. This is the second piece of media to do this to me behind Koyaanisqatsi... now that I think of it, this seems like a modern interpretation of the film Koyaanisqatsi.
This is so toxic, I love it! Great work, love that it has an ending. Donated a bit to you as well.
This is a Black Mirror level hellscape. It really does capture the overstimulation of the modern world without filters. I found myself simultaneously anxious and inclined to keep clicking so I can unlock the next tier. It's over the top but not by much.
I really wanted the pillow.
What have we done! This is a great piece of art, reflecting on current state of society
This was so much fun and yet so awful at the same time, I was laughing out loud at some of the escalations.
At the end I was losing track of my mouse cursor and fatigue was setting in, the final ending scene was such a calming sense of relief!
Pro tip - shrink your window to a tiny box and the dvds really bounce like crazy.
It's nice that you can speed up the game by just reducing the viewport to an absolute minimum and have the DVD bouncers do all the work.
By un-disabling the stock market buy and sell buttons, I was able to buy even when I didn't have enough money (stimulation), and I was also able to short-sell shares. So funny!
"Impressive. Very nice" Finished without cheating. But halfway disabled sounds. It is too much. You can easily finish the game by buying stocks, especially bitcoin. No cheating needed, was super simple. But great nonetheless.
I must not be the target audience for this kind of thing, but I really don't get it. The few times I've opened HN today I've seen this at the top, and the number of points has been higher. I've opened it 3 times, and clicked the button, and some other icons showed up below. The first time I didn't open even bother to mouse over the icons, so I didn't know you'd be buying things. I closed before I got to 50 stimulations. The second time, I did hover over the icons showing up, and clicked a couple, and nothing seemed to happen other than spending stimulation, so I closed before 100. I just did this a third time as it's now over 1200 points, and I really just don't understand what is going on. What am I missing?
I think this is a scenario where if you have to ask, you'll never know. Perhaps, ironically, there just wasn't enough immediate stimulation for you to continue...
I don't even know what a clicker game is or why one would be stimulating.
How do you not kill the Chicken? I was sad when it died :(
There is a lesson in here... I can recommend playing to the end. The contrast to the frenetic pace of the game is like an epiphany.
I not only enjoyed it as a satire on the overstimulation problem but also learned that my compulsive-obsessive syndrome has a high correlation with overstimulation.
If you manually decrease window.innerWidth and window.innerHeight to low values (i.e. 50 and 50) then the bouncing dvd gets triggered ceaselessly. I enjoyed this unironically :D
I accidentally refreshed it while checking simulation email and the app doesn't store state in local storage:(
This is also a good example of how horrible the web has become and how inefficient JavaScript programmers are.
Even if you hit the "end" none of the elements are cleaned up so will continue to use cycles in the background. If it's supposed to be a permanent end, then you should remove all elements besides the serenity media.
for people that don't want to click a lot,
paste in "setInterval(() => document.querySelector('.main-btn').click(), 20)" into the browser console, clicks 50x per second for you :)
that's just early game strategy. mid game you need apple late game you need crypto
This game has the same old bug of "Left click + Enter key" to get money faster.
This was my first time visiting the website, and Neal has truly mastered the art of bringing fun to seemingly boring things.
I know this is a take on the internet but it's a bit on the nose to also have it request to send your data to over a hundred different companies.
I actually thought it very subtle, considering it's usually thousands
Major Cookie Clicker / Upgrade Complete vibes with this with a touch of social critique, love the descent into absolute chaos. Fun game and incredible artwork!
I don't want to read comments, but I can’t be the only one who wrote a script to click forever and turned the page into a chaotic, laggy nightmare. Pure art honestly
Wonderful comment on our noisy world. Highly recommend some sort of warning for users, particularly the subway surfer wormhole. I'm not light sensitive but even I now have a headache.
I feel drained, and sad that I forgot to feed the chicken.
Reminds me of a modern version of The Entertainment from Infinite Jest.
Is this Frog Fractions 3?
I got so drawn into it that only an accidental page refresh got me out of it. Well done. Also the banner texts are really funny :D
Only complaint is the sound implementation causes my background audio (audiobook and music) to pause. Maybe Neal could add a mute button?
This reminds me of the early days of Facebook. All silly click games.
This is the greatest thing I've seen in a few years. Perfectly encapsulates the simulacrum we find ourselves in the modern world.
I really don't know if I could survive nowadays internet without uBlock. The picker functionality just changes the internet for me. I can make most of the noise disappear.
I think I'd get addicted to a fake crypto trading game
The skywriter VPN ads are one of the few real links, apparently.
A wonderful mirror for todays society and a great tool for education purposes!
This is so in good in a way that is truly hard to describe
Replayed it to get a lower time, got 16m 35s.
such sites isn't fun anymore since I've discovered after the first click you have to just press enter key and do not release it
Thanks for burning my phone
Oh gosh, just what I needed, another clicker game. This is excellent!
Tip: On Firefox at least, you can right-click the videos (slime, mukbang, etc) and mute them.
Unfortunately you can't mute the podcast in the same way -- that's what finally forced me to close the tab
I clicked the audio icon on the tab -- it muted the entire thing :)
I went back to this on a desktop and discovered the bitcoin stims… got to the ocean soon after
I could feel my blood pressure going up...
Resizing your browser window to be very small with the DVD bouncer is a pretty good cheat.
I’m blown away. Literally laughed out loud when the lo-fi beat kicked in. Neal has outdone himself here.
idk what i am doing but i am hooked on it. it's like as if it's directly interacting with dopamine of my brain.
DVD emblems don't appear for me... the don't appear in stats either
This is perfect!
Just one request, can we get dual or more subway surfers!
The stimulation from this fewer experience was so intense that my phone started to freeze up, lol.
I had to stop my lofi Spotify playlist and my Pomodoro timer to play this game... This is a work of art!
Quit at lvl 30. It was actually very satisfying to enjoy the quiet after the experience.
This is awesome. Subway surfers immediately made my attention span increase for how long I could tap the button.
My pulse is still higher than usual. We just spent an hour on this. This is an art game. :D Thank you!
I reached the end.
Not sure that will help me end by stock market addiction. nice game.
This was fun lol. There's something calming about being inundated with stimulation.
Resize vertically to break all limits.
I found the ultimate upgrade.
If you run it in portrait on a cellphone, there's not enough room for any upgrade button! 8)
Never felt so attacked yet catered too at the same time.
A masterpiece.
Very fun, but also, it froze a couple times when I was doing well :(
On mobile I can just touch and drag my thumb around the button and it trigger several clicks.
1) wow, what a great piece of art.
2) Buy as many DVDs as possible and shrink the size of your window. Instant win.
i finished the game in 20mins, got a headache now. very creative, i like it.
what happens after you buy the trip to the ocean? the game hung up at this point on my phone, seemed to use a lot of RAM. lots of animations were lagging from quite early on.
Ha! Level 32 bitches! Mmmm... I'm now sitting on the beach, enjoying the quiet...
I have accidentally refeshed the page while checking simulation email and the app doesn't store state in localstorage:(
I clicked once and closed the page because you can't tell me what to do (more than once).
This site + Neal's other stuff is pretty cool. I wonder if he makes it in vanilla JS.
As a 5 Time World Universal Paperclip Champion, I think this game is garbage.
I was having a pretty bad day at work and this brightened me up. Thanks!
Why does this feel like the most productive thing I've done all day?
the muckbang video, I wish I could get rid of. ended up just muting the entire tab.
Finally, Universal Paperclips for the brainrot era.
I'm embarrassed to admit it but I found out this game has an ending.
Twice I accidentally pull-refreshed on mobile and lost all my progress :(
I love the jab at duolingo sending you threatening e-mails.
Windows 12 sneak preview
How do I get out of "serene mode"? Booooooo
I WENT TO THE OCEAN
Hold Enter, click the reward from the hydraulic press, profit!
This slowly increases your blood pressure and heart rate.
That was an enjoyable half-hour. Well done.
Best way - Click "Click Me" then hold down enter.
Fantastic. Such a relief to turn that thing off!
Love the idea, but after a couple minutes this just gave me a headache with all the different videos, sounds and animations going on. I don't think I'm cut out for new age dopamine generation.
It took some effort to escape this trap. :D Great!
Behind such simplicity at first lies incredible work.
OMG. I wanted to get the end, but I was doing it on mobile. I upswiped once, and leftswiped once, so it took THREE tries. The first two tries were each more than 10 minutes in. When I was finally, done, I realized I had skipped my planned workout.
Then it hit me: Point. made. dammit.
I have a lot of fun with incremental games recently
I feel personally attacked by some of the upgrades.
Why should it collect data for hundreds of partners?
Can't say anything but I FRIGGING LOVED THIS
Very sad, well done.
Great website!
xdotool click --repeat 1000 --delay 10 1
"Another great neal.fun joint. It made me miserable!"
'allow pasting' let boom = $ setInterval(() => { boom('#__layout > div > div > div.main-area > div > div.main-btn-wrapper > div > button').click() }, 100);
This is insane. We are wired so strangely.
whelp this is making this meeting go way faster
I'm going way too hard on this. Help.
So much stimulation it nearly melted my phone down, it actually froze after a while. What a work of art.
I accidentally refreshed the screen, fuuuuuck
while(1) document.querySelector('.main-btn').click();
Warning: in Android Firefox, shop UI goes off screen and the game breaks, have to reload to start over.
I hated that I loved this - great concept.
Worth every minute, and every cell brain.
Game of the year so far!
This was entertaining as all hell.
classic neal.fun
Well, this escalated quickly.
Helpful for cold hands too
Wow. Too much fun. My eyes/head hurts. Finally went to the ocean in the game.
My game froze up when I bought that upgrade. Not sure if that's by design or it might have been an internet hiccup. What happens when you go to the ocean?
It’s just the end credits with a soothing ocean video in the background https://imgur.com/a/eNwfBO6
It was too addictive. My eyes still hurt !!!
thank you for having an end. i think i was going to play forever.
I was sucked in it for 1 hour
Anyone get to Zombocom level?
That was fun, can't wait for more content!
Until then I'm returning to http://trimps.github.io/.
window.$nuxt.$children[1].$children[0].$children[0].stimulation = 999999
Why ... does that feel so good
Pretty good! Like it
I have ADHD. This is absolutely a health and safety hazard.
fantastic, interactive and artistic
TIHI
Im lying ILI
Release the HypnoDrones.
Carpel Tunnel here I come.
Nice.
Emails are so funny... :)
Can someone explain me the point?
It's a form of digital art meant to highlight the absurdity of the modern internet. Being overwhelmed by all of the forms of multimedia stimulation to finally escape to the ocean and appreciating simplicity is the point
It falls under the category of "incremental games" that are generally simple but addicting due to the dopamine release from watching those numbers go up
For me, it causes headaches after a while due to the huge amount of animations running in parallel.
Yeah, that's on purpose. It's meant to overstimulate you quickly
It's a parody.
The whole genre of clicker games is a parody to start with, but this is more parody than most.
The genre exists in a weird place. Progress Quest is maybe the start, and then you get Cow Clicker, which was definitely a parody but took off because everyone thought it was funny, and then Wikipedia tells me AdVenture Capitalist started as a parody but then became a popular and profitable game. And that's kind of the problem with the genre: it's kind of artistically meant as a parody or a joke, but people keep liking them and wanting more, and now it's a real genre, and a few of the games (like Paperclips) have a lot of artistic value far beyond the initial "haha it's not much of a game" joke.
1 upvote point from me!
el
That was delightful.
Needs a URL preview btw
setInterval(()=>{$0.click()}, 1); and weeeeeee
possibly the first good website of this decade
my new idle clicker
well I cheated and was immediately overstimulated
so cool
After a few minutes it's burning 25% of an M1 core in Chrome, lol.
I finished the game. Got to level 32 and bought the upgrade Go to the Ocean for 2,000,000 stimulation. The audio chilled out and it went to the credits.
that was wild, kudos to you.
My finger hurts
give me meaning not dopamine
I have a serious question. If I know someone who plays such type of games, should I worry about his health?
I mean games that do not require to make any decisions at all or little as possible - similar to this one. Just numbers going up
On its own it's not necessarily an issue, but I'd consider it a warning sign. The times in my life that I've obsessively played games like this have been times when my emotional health was suffering. I felt overwhelmed by life and the world, and games like this gave me a synthetic feeling of progress and accomplishment, gave me something extremely simple to do that I couldn't fail at. Games like this were a symptom of my problems at the time, not the cause, and when my life got more stable, I lost interest in playing them.
If they're playing in moderation, just to pass the time during otherwise-boring events, probably not an issue. If they're pretty much always playing, or if it's intruding on their life, or if they're not otherwise engaging with the world, consider worrying about their emotional health.
Thank you! I noticed too I played much more games when in low mood seasons. Especially Minecraft (inb4: yes, I'm 40yo but play Minecraft) has a lot of small quests I could achieve. Also, the old Diablo I play on my phone (DevilutionX) allows me to kill time (and beasts) but I find it repeatable, yet still satisfying.
I enjoyed the humor and the ending, it reminds me of some DOS games I grew up with. Nice work Neal :)
Clicker games can be considered banal, but when there is an interesting unexpected story or comedy behind the progressions, they are fun little pieces of art.
Two games I have played in the past of this ilk are Spaceplan [0] and Nodebuster [1], both of which only take around an hour or so to progress through. Fun and interesting like Neal's game.
[0] http://www.spaceplan.click/ [1] https://store.steampowered.com/app/3107330/Nodebuster/
The next thing this thing needs is a leaderboard.
that's very fun! good job!
they should use this to create jobs
Magical!
0 DVD speedrun in 5m42s (using the manual auto hydraulic press glitch), but you can probably get better with good RNG.
dopamineeeee come to meeeeee
haha i love this
more fun at https://ncase.me/
Thank for the stimulation!
It is very scary for me because I... actually enjoyed it.
I know the point the game was making. And that's why it scares me even more.
Brilliant!!
Thank you!
I crashed it by giving the button an ID and running this:
Is this an adderall thing?
reminds me of cookie clicker!
this is so meta i love it
Art
Genius
Ah, a simulation of hell.
2025 off for a good start in dystopian scinfi tech
This is a great piece of art, it has a message and it capture you. When you get the final message you feel dumb. Thanks for this original piece!
the whispering/eating guy is so tilting lol
el skibbidy
el skibbidi
See also: Antimatter Dimensions, Universal Paperclips, and Candy Box 1 & 2.
unbelievable. he's cracked the code in a few areas. what is the one thing that all of these stochastic processes implement? e.g. is there a rhythm or proportion of them to each other, or a shape?
It's not a simple bifucation process or fractal, it's something else. I use fractals in music and they are too unstable to produce this ebb and flow of consonance and dissonance the game uses in the evolution of each widget.
it's practically a hypnosis method. what is the underlying pattern in these?
I wish it didn’t reset on refresh lol…
buy couple of dvds and resize your tab to be a single pixel wide - infinite points glitch
banger
addictive
fantastic
hvbuv
Thanks I hate it
This really drives home the point eh?
Maybe I need a dumbphone, after all...
fantastic. very interactive and artistic. fun game almost.
what? that one egg was twenty eggs?
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brah i beat this game in 4.5 seconds yall dont even know about the epic skip i found el oh l