Long ago, I heard about a little game called Cookie Clicker. For some reason, I decided to actually play it last month. I'm not saying I was addicted to it, but I'm pretty sure that after having spent around 34 hours playing it and not coming out of my house that the local police had legally declared me dead at that point. It's one of those games that are so simple and so addictive that you'll hate yourself for liking it.
It's a simple little web game on the surface. It's a game about making cookies, lots and lots of cookies... millions and billions and trillions of cookies. Seriously. It starts off simple enough. You click the cookie on screen and it makes a cookie. Once you have 15 cookies, you can get an auto-clicker that auto-clicks for you once every 10 seconds. Once you get some more cookies, you can get a grandma that bakes a cookie every second. From there you get a farm that farms cookies. From there you get a factory that makes cookies. Then you get a bank that mints you cookies. I could keep going, but this game goes on and on and on!
There's so many different things to buy and your goal is to basically take over the universe with your cookies. These must be some pretty damn good cookies!
In addition to different ways of making cookies, there's a lot of strategy involved surprisingly. There's a store where you can get power-ups (for a lack of a better term) that will increase the productivity of your clicking, grandmas, farms, mines, factories, banks... etc. The challenge comes from whether to buy more of what you already have like banks or to wait until you have a lot more to get things like temples. This is the kind of decisions you'll be making quite often throughout the game.
It's an idle game meaning that you don't have to constantly be playing it to get more cookies. The game auto-saves for you at certain points so if at anytime you're cookied out, you can come back another time basically right where you left off. I personally just keep the tab open while I'm watching youtube videos or chatting with friends online in another tab. It's almost rinse and repeat.
If you get lucky, you can get a golden cookie which will give you a huge boost in your cookie production from doubling it for a short time to just straight up giving you a cookie bonus. It's a nice touch.
I'd watched a Youtube video about this game and apparently if you get far enough, there's even a lot more to this game like little mini-games later on. For a simple web game, this gets pretty complex.
Should you play it though?
I'd say absolutely. Try it out and see if you like it. It's a great cure for boredom honestly. It's free to play and isn't pay-to-win. It's a fun game that you'll probably spend many hours playing once you get into it.
I hate to admit it, but it's a very well designed (but stupid) web game that's fairly addictive.