The thing I crave more and more as time goes on is simplicity and familiarity. Getting a job and traveling after the lockdowns spurred on a hyper period of trying everything, going everywhere, building everything (Caby is fond of saying that, for marfGH, in the triangle of "quick, cheap, and well put together", I picked all three). This is great, and I do have lots of great memories and feel my mind has been embiggened by the last three years of going ham, it has left me wondering if I'm rushing through things. I used to live in an album for six months in high school; now, even my favorites of the year get a lot less playtime when I'm always onto the next dud or partial success or even next favorite. I don't like that. I want to fixate, and I want to get everything I can out of the things I love and the things I do.

After the disastrous attempt to fly home, I was craving something comforting and familiar, something I could fixate on. I was actually about to keep going on my Minecraft Alpha world, only to learn I have a stale backup of it on the external hard drive I brought and didn't want to cause a conflict with the save on my computer at home. Instead, well, Cookie Clicker came back into my life.

If you're not of the generation to remember it (just the one, maybe two), Cookie Clicker wasn't the first "idle game", where occasional active play begats regular computer progress (read: it plays itself), but it codified the concept in the present day. You click a big cookie. Each click gets you a cookie. Cookies can be exchanged for buildings that automatically generate cookies and upgrades to unlock features and make cookie production progressively more absurd. You use cookies to buy grandmas and farms and factories at first, but eventually you're exploiting alternate dimensions, creating apocalypses, employing armies of kitten workers and managers, just to keep number going up. Eventually, clicking the cookie only occasionally becomes useful. Eventually, the eternal cycle of rebirth takes over, where you get back to the duodecillions of cookies ten minutes after starting a run.

Cookie Clicker is dangerous. It's a bit like a big horrific garden that you can tend to actively or check on every so often, harvesting its malignant pastry fruits for gains you only supervised into existence. I know there's meant to be commentary on the nature of capitalism in there, but it has the Spec Ops: The Line issue—if I'm a monster and that's bad, why is it so fun?

No matter. My last run circa 2018 or so, I had to nuke the save for because I was simply getting swept up in the dimensional cookie vortex when I should have been focusing on life, but I needed to get swept up and swept up I sure did! I burned a whole day where I had Art Fight attacks I wanted to work on because I was too busy playing Cookie Clicker. I now have a parallel save on my phone going largely because I wanted to give Orteil some money for all of my time he's wasted, but also because it is another number to watch go up! I'm pretty close to 90% of the achievements just over two weeks in, and I think we can finally 100% Cookie Clicker for good now (or at least until Orteil adds another minigame).

Let's talk some of how I play. I am intentionally writing this to be as obtuse as possible if you've never played Cookie Clicker because it amuses me. It's free and runs in your browser. You have no excuse not to join me in pastry purgatory (not that one).

• I am using guides, less so the real freaky sexy ones for abusing Gambler's Fever Dream skips and RNG manipulation to stack three ideal Golden Cookie buffs. More just like the the ascension guide to let me know what the most ideal Heavenly Upgrades to buy when are, or the Krumblor guide to know what the most beneficial Dragon Auras are for what my aims are (which is raw CpS at the moment).
• I am at the point where 500 You is possible but not immediate. The last building I have the "get 700 of them" achievement for is Antimatter Condensers.
• My current highest Unshackled building is Time Machines. My current highest Unshackled upgrade tier is alabascream.
• I can buy 75% of all the upgrades in the game in the first hour of each run. This amuses me greatly.
• I think it was about eight days in where I was ascending literally every half hour on loop because the boon to cookie production was that massive (hence Art Fight being a wash for that day). I think now I'm ascending every 2-3 days, playing semi-actively still (when I'm at Caby's computer, and when I'm away, the Golden Switch and Shimmering Veil go back on to boost idle CpS).
• I'm missing a lot of the minigame achievements. The garden, I have a little under a third of the seeds for, the stock market I fucking suck at, and the grimoire I'm about halfway to 999 spells cast. These are the likely the most plentiful category of achievements I'm missing.
• Yes, I did Hardcore and Neverclick yesterday. It takes about five hours of active play, keeping an eye on the Golden Cookie you get every eight minutes or so. Yes, it sucked. Yes, I'm glad I did it. You should plan to do it overnight or over a 24 hour span if you go for it, and remember to do it before ascending first at the start of your legacy or during a Born Again run.
• Every run starts with me buying hundreds of buildings to immediately sacrifice to Krumblor for all Auras/dual Auras, and in that CpS lull, I turn on the Golden Switch, swap to Valentine's for the unlock biscuits, then Christmas to upgrade Santa to Final Claus (all the Christmas upgrades massively boost CpS, so never forget to do it), and then Halloween, whose upgrade cookies I get while I poke idly at Wrinklers. Eventually when I get bored or get them all, I leave them on until the next morning, usually when I'm swapping Cyclius out of the Jade slot in my Pantheon (to give you an idea of how Cookie Clicker fits into my schedule).
• I haven't yet upgraded any of my buildings to level 10 yet. I'll optimize for quick-as-possible Sugar Lump production after I'm done with the rest of the building achievements.

I think the thing that makes me happiest about playing Cookie Clicker again is seeing all the flavor text and sprites again. I still remember all the references! Every last one from the mid-2010s is still there. Yet so much of it, I've never seen either. Last time I played, Chancemakers were still the highest tier of building. I've never gotten this far. Seeing how much has been added, but how much of the original stuff is still in place, ah, it's been lovely. Like an old friend I'm catching up with, just one that's a slug made of saggy flesh that keeps gnawing on my baked goods.

Tagged under: gaming