Cookie Clicker

orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker

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The original idle/incremental game — click a cookie to produce cookies, spend cookies on upgrades that produce more cookies automatically, expand to absurd cosmic scales. Created in 2013 and still actively updated.

Why it is useful

Cookie Clicker invented a genre of game (the idle/incremental game) that has spawned thousands of successors and been studied academically for what it reveals about compulsion loops. The original is still the best expression of the form — the escalation from clicking cookies to summoning grandmapocalypses to ascending through time is genuinely surprising if you've never played it. Runs in any browser, free forever.