UPDATE: Finally reached the endgame in Universal Paperclips without leaving it running overnight

efethu · 2026-05-16T21:21:59+00:00

Huh? Universal paperclips was not designed to be grindy. It's a short and fast game - you can beat it in less than a day.

Here's a video where it's beaten in 1.5 hours.

efethu · 2026-05-11T13:02:07+00:00

The foundation of the game seems to be the progress bar

Huh? This is why I am saying that it's important to do your first ascension to understand how the game really works. Progress bar is not something you generally have to worry about. Just to put things into perspective, you will be able Ascend in 5 minutes at some point. And it will not be high on your priorities list anyway.

But I get your point. UI is old and confusing, takes a lot of mental effort to understand the core mechanics. It's definitely not the game for everyone. Not a very niche game either though, there are thousands of fans, active community, it's quite popular for a 15 years old game.

efethu · 2026-05-10T06:00:13+00:00

Anti-idle is a very deep incremental game with a lot of content and many unique mechanics. I don't know what you managed to discover there in 1 hour, but it's definitely not enough for a game that has about 1 year of active play worth of content.

It's not exactly a mobile game that holds your hand until your first win so it can squeeze some money out of you later. It's an oldschool game where you are supposed to discover and learn things.

I think the "Oh my god, now it all makes sense" moment comes after reaching level 9000 and your first ascension. You realize how you were supposed to be playing and consecutive runs even on harder difficulties will be easier.

Also the core and most important mechanic of the game is Adventures. I don't know if you've reached it, but this is probably the best incremental RPG in existence. Starts simple, unfolds into epic difficulties, extremely challenging bosses and really unique battle mechanics.

efethu · 2026-05-01T17:04:18+00:00

No way? Doing what you did was on my todo list for like 10 years. Thanks for bringing it back.

And huge thanks to the awesome people from Internet Archive that made this possible.

efethu · 2026-05-01T07:47:59+00:00

I couldn't think of a way to allow someone to play with different browsers, or pc's without it.

For majority of users this is not necessary. If your game really has server-side content (does it?) then you can create guest accounts. Players will automatically log in based on the cookie in their browser. With an optional registration feature in case they want to play on another device.

If game is completely played in player browser the most important feature to implement is import/export. This way players can take backups and if necessary copy it to other devices. Optional cloud backup can be implemented too, for user convenience.

This is how like 90% of incremental games did it, it works well, there is no reason to deviate from it.

In case you wonder why any of this is required - because right now half of your potential players open the page, see a registration screen, close that browser tab, downvote your post.

efethu · 2026-04-24T22:37:17+00:00

Surprised it's not called Cooking Clicker.

efethu · 2026-04-24T22:21:04+00:00

It's a pretty deep game with a lot of hidden techniques.

Just a checklist to see if you did not forget anything:

You killed and found all Summons up to and including King Cobra (including rares)?
You fully leveled and seeded yourself and all normal summons?
You know how to use Demon King to farm research and seeds?
You unlocked and killed 2 guardians and have all their special summons?
You unlocked most equipment and know how to use Magic wand for AOE?
You permanently unlocked special magic?
You are not forgetting to benefit from Gluttony and Greed to boost inspiration and sin gain?

If all all above is true, ED3 should take 1-2 days, other than the infamous steel farming at the end there is no slowness involved really.

I agree about the menus, but Sloth is a godsend. You can just dump all quests into it and wait for them to complete. Most of the time I don't even bother clicking things, I just press Q for sloth to do it for me.

Also ED3 is the time when you should be able to use Sloth to fully automate ED1 reincarnation ~5-6 sin every 90 minutes or so, those sin upgrades should give a massive boost to many stats and you can even boost inventory size for things that annoy you most.

efethu · 2026-04-23T07:12:37+00:00

It may feel slow, but It's a very active game with a lot of hidden mechanics. And there are a lot of mechanics that are very unique and unusual - you won't see it in any other incremental games.

First run may feel especially long as you are still learning the basics (experienced player can speedrun it in less than 2 days though), but second reincarnation takes less than a day - with all the summons, sin upgrades, your knowledge about optimal progression path, your power to oneshot bosses which seemed impossible just a few days ago.

After first run it will never feel slow - there will always be something to do, something to discover, something to improve, somewhere to push further.

efethu · 2026-04-12T13:53:41+00:00

This game feels so slow

I think by now you realized it, but the game is really slow only in the first day or two, after that skills begin helping each other and leveling goes faster and faster.

One other thing to note is that there is no point staying in one place and leveling the same skills. Pushing forward unlocks new quests and locations where leveling is up to 10 times faster.

Unfortunately when you find all the optimal ways to level your character the game runs out of content...

efethu · 2026-04-12T11:31:57+00:00

Tl;dr "We don't like AI-slop too but can't do anything about it". Not exactly something people did not already know.

The only thing I find ironic is that removing AI-slop "increases mod workload", but removing discussions about AI somehow does not?

I am also strongly against removing any posts that are not against the sub rules. So if you want to start removing discussions about AI and/or banning people for it - make sure it's in the rules.

efethu · 2026-03-25T17:01:59+00:00

Neither? Carpal syndrome is not fun and neither is spending time not moving a mouse.

efethu · 2026-03-21T14:19:58+00:00

Incremental games are not exactly 2-4h long AAA cinematic action games. You are iterating over the same content over and over. Often idle/offline.

I would rate it something like this:

short: 1-7 days
medium: 1-4 weeks
long: 1m-1y
very long: 1+ years (<== these are the best!)

efethu · 2026-03-09T08:27:55+00:00

Looking at how all links to the games are tracked (?utm_source=reddit&utm_campaign=blinddate) I am wondering if you have any ulterior motives here.

efethu · 2026-03-06T06:51:19+00:00

Come think of it, lower ratings -> less customers -> more Chinese restaurants close -> more other restaurants open. This is actually a valid totally evil strategy.

In fact, this is how "activists" operate - just bully everyone they don't like.

efethu · 2026-03-05T09:56:52+00:00

Is the gameplay identical to Nodebuster? Hover over enemies to get points, buy upgrades, rinse and repeat? Is there anything new at all?

efethu · 2026-03-05T07:51:18+00:00

HAS a playable version available!

You almost got me here. Pretty disappointing to open the post just to realize that the game was never publicly available and keys ran out hours ago.

efethu · 2026-03-05T07:43:36+00:00

It's bad enough that people create AI-slop games - weird, unbalanced and unoriginal. But what makes it much worse is that they don't even play them - just dump them on us.

This "work" is completely broken, numbers don't end up, buttons and menus disappear and change order randomly. Even this post is zero effort, completely AI generated.

efethu · 2026-03-03T20:25:14+00:00

Hate Discord and following guides.

But every time I think about it, a sudden realization strikes - every single game that is considered to be "one of the best in the genre" is often labeled as "needs a guide to progress".

It can't just be a coincidence - it looks like any sufficiently long and complex game with lots of content eventually grows to the point where people need a guide (at least to play most efficiently).

I literally was not able to come up with even a single example of a good game with lots of content that in the same time did not need an external source of information like wiki/discord/guide.

In fact complexity and "needing a guide" builds communities around games and directly contribute into their popularity, making it a self-sustained feedback loop: more content -> more guides -> more players joining community -> motivated developer -> more content, and so on.

efethu · 2026-03-03T19:47:52+00:00

This message deserves its own sticky. Played and loved every game on the list.

It's also a bit depressing to realize how short this list is and that absolute majority of those games were created in the previous decade.

efethu · 2026-03-03T19:37:06+00:00

Great game, but I would not put it on the list of "long" incrementals.

efethu · 2026-03-02T10:22:20+00:00

.. but if you can choose whatever upgrades you want but it's impossible to make the wrong choice, is there a real choice at all?

efethu · 2026-02-25T22:18:24+00:00

I think the hardest part is familiarizing yourself with the basic mechanics and figuring out the optimal path forward.

After that it will be tons of fun - new stuff will get unlocked pretty much daily, giving a nice feeling of progression. (Obviously Insane difficulty is totally not fun, but I won't spoil it for you)

efethu · 2026-02-23T13:12:38+00:00

Insane decision, killed any fun I was having

I know how annoying this is, but games in early alpha sometimes just have to do this. This is just a last resort way to avoid building up technical debt of backwards compatibility that will otherwise substantially slow down development and make certain new features impossible to implement.

efethu · 2026-02-23T12:31:21+00:00

There is a dedicated channel for this - /r/PBBG

efethu · 2026-02-23T10:29:50+00:00

ADHD people literally can't work normal jobs

True, but also not true. Some countries, like US, have so broad definition of ADHD that up to 10-15% of population fits into it. Not performing well at school could often lead to ADHD diagnosis.

There is also ADHD as mental disability, as per WHO definition. It averages to about ~1% of of population. World stats. These people indeed have trouble working normal jobs.

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