A warning to fellow HNers that are not familiar with universal paperclips. Please don’t click the link as it will create a black time hole that will start absorbing your time and reduce your productivity.
Be warned that this isn’t a naive lazy clicker game, it’s an instrument of destruction from the future, created by our paperclip overlords :-)
I've played through UP twice. When it comes to time sinks, it's nowhere near the ultimate death spiral that is Kittens Game. To date it has taken me about 5 times as long as a UP playthrough (and 500+ lines of JS automation which I seem to have to tweak every day to deal with the changing economy) and I don't seem to be anywhere near the end.
I'm happy to have not tried Kittens and will stay away from it. UP wasn't too bad. It was a time sink until I played all the way through it, and then wasn't too bad. The murderous game for me was 2048. I had to block the site in /etc/hosts to break out of the game. More recently, duckduckgo has embedded it as an easter egg in their search screen, so it's harder to block that way.
I also waste time on chess puzzles, lichess.org/training , but that isn't so bad since it's easier to pull away, and I felt for a while like it was helping my game, and decided to count that as improving my mind, as contrasted with 2048 which is pure inanity.
In terms of time commitment, Kittens was tops (I had the game running for close to a year in the background), but in terms of enjoyment, I have to say my favorite incremental game is Idle Loops: https://omsi6.github.io/loops/
The way I broke out of addiction to the Kittens game is by using save game editors, which I warmly recommend.
Before that, I have spent days with it piggybacking on my brainwaves. But after that, I lost interest, feeling overwhelmed with the complexity of the game.
I only broke my Diablo 2 addiction in college when I used one of those tools that drives your character on Mephisto runs to scum drops.
In the course of one night running it unattended, I got the two items I'd been looking for for weeks. Cheating at the game broke me out of the Skinner box overnight.
I had a hard time with that one. I tried leaving the CD at the office, but late at night when the withdrawal kicked in I ended up driving to the office and fetching it anyway. I truly felt like the meta-story of the game was that the CD itself was the crystal and the player was the traveler.
I like your quitting story. I quit when my very high level character died, in hardcore mode. Thinking about the hours that went into that character was horrifying.
I generally play “roguelike” games (the most important criterion of which, in my opinion, is permadeath), and I often feel the same way.. the thing is that I feel that way win or lose.
This is more or less how I play incremental games. Play until
I realize how much time I’m wasting, then switch over to figuring out how to hack the game.
By played through, do you mean you got to the top corner of the universes? Did you get also all of the artifacts or complete all of the universes? (I’m not sure what counts as played through.) I did maybe a dozen universes and got a handful of artifacts before I bailed and deleted the game.
The "universe map" with the artefacts is a mobile app only feature. [1]
The browser version just has an ending choice that lets you restart with slightly different variables (in my case it was 10% higher demand)
I don't remember anything about artifacts; I just went to the web page and there were no further buttons to click to continue playing - I'd have to reset.
Oh come on now!!!
Why did you have to mention Kittens Game, I've got actual work to do. Who has the time to gather catnip during their normal working hours...oh look a new kitten has joined my village :-)
I'm on year 37,000 of my current reset; 3k more will get me the last achievement with a star. Of course in the meantime they added some new challenges...
I've played KG for over a year IRL. Run number 18, over 19k in game years.
I want to get back in but a lot has changed and I'm struggling to recall all the details to be able to pick it back up and what I should focus on. Any tips?
Still, Kittens Game is nothing to the death spiral distilled into its true form in Antimatter Dimensions. If there was ever a piece of software which warranted getting classified as weaponry, it'd be this.
Counterpoint: Do go play Universal Paperclips. It's a long term play. You'll lose a week or so immersed in it... but it's so good that then you'll lose any taste or desire for any of the other clicker games designed for longer time spans.
I'd say it took me ~3 days to complete in my first run (a few hours of play for 3 days).
I've got it down to about 3 hours. Not speedrun worthy, but yeah, proof that the game is short enough to complete in one sitting if you know what you're doing.
Haha, what a funny thought. It's like a special productivity poison, takes some percentage of your engineers and just deactivates them. That sounds like a great premise for a sci fi short, aliens sending some nerd-snipe super stimulus to soften up Earth.
From the Wikipedia article about the multi-armed bandit problem:
>Originally considered by Allied scientists in World War II, it proved so intractable that, according to Peter Whittle, the problem was proposed to be dropped over Germany so that German scientists could also waste their time on it.[13]
"General, the Allies have dropped pamphlets containing what our top scientists are calling a memetic infohazard."
"An infohazard? Have the eggheads come up with a new term for propaganda, we've got people to handle this stuff, why are you bringing it up to me?"
"Well, sir, they say this time it's different. It's not propaganda for ordinary citizens, it's a distraction for scientists and technical personal."
"Okay ... do they have any recommendations?"
"Yes sir, they say the only thing we need to do is make sure that the eggheads don't read it."
"That's it? Well, these are men of science and discipline, that should be easy. Issue the order. I wonder why they thought it was so important that you would have to interrupt me."
"I couldn't say, sir. They seemed quite agitated."
Meanwhile, in the lab.
"So, this folder contains an enemy memetic infohazard. In order to prevent it from taking effect we've been ordered to not read it."
Several scientists give knowing glances to each other.
"A real memetic infohazard? I wonder how they accomplished that?" The scientist moves towards the folder.
"Wait, what are you doing? We're not supposed to read it."
"It's fine. I'll be the only one reading it and then I'll let you guys know what I find." The scientist opens the folder and looks at the papers within while making several 'hmm' sounds. "Hey, Frank, what do you think of this."
"No, you said you would be the only one!"
"Just me and Frank. Don't be a wet blanket."
Frank begins to look over the papers, "You know, I bet this applies to what Sarah has been working on. Let's go talk to her."
"Wait, no. You just said ..."
"Me, Frank, and Sarah, no big deal." The scientists leave the room with the folder.
Hello fellow SCP agents. We're supposed to keep our involvement with the SCP foundation hidden. This antimemetic sentence will take care of any leaks ;-)
This is the plot of an Alastair MacLean novel involving a mysterious electronic device that was supposed to be "lost" to the Soviets (the guy they choose to lose it wasn't told about that bit and turned out to be pretty good at the job he thought he had).
Reminds me of a term I came up with years ago: Engineer Critical Mass. As soon as you get X or more engineers standing around looking at something, you will start increasingly attracting more engineers at a rate proportional to the current size of the group. Kind of like a lower level "stiction" for inquisitive gravity.
At my last job X=3 and we had around 40 engineers on-site so it was pretty dangerous.
At my current job X~5 maybe but we only have 2 engineers on-site, so it's safe.
Well, I just spent 7 hours on it before reading this warning, thanks for nothing you sick bastard!
Just kidding! I just genocided a whole universe into paperclips. I've never BEEN more productive! OR MORE SELF LOATHING! SHRIEKS THE 'THRENODY FOR THE HEROES OF THE BATTLE OF SHA"DUIN'
It gets interesting once you see that hypno drones are something that you can save up for and buy. You're an AI, so the ability to influence the humans around you is useful.
You'll need somewhat more than 30 paperclips to get the full story.
The first interesting thing happens when you have $5 of available funds. (Specifically, autoclippers become available to purchase.)
When precisely you hit that point depends on how well you are managing the price to balance ensuring that your unsold inventory is getting purchased reasonably quickly against getting a reasonable amount of money per unit sold, but it will probably be less than a minute.
I don't know. I'm at 16,285 and stuff is happening.
If you optimize your price and invest in auto clippers it shouldn't take too long to really get rolling.
If the available inventory is bouncing off of 0 your price is too low, if it's growing, it's too high, so you (as an AI) are learning about market clearing price right now. Later, you'll learn other things.
Be warned that this isn’t a naive lazy clicker game, it’s an instrument of destruction from the future, created by our paperclip overlords :-)