No pretensions – simple and memorable.

It matters a lot is that the game doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. It’s like a really good, campy b-grade movie. (Snakes on a Plane, anybody?)

A game like Cookie Clicker would never have been created by a “professional” team with a big budget and grand plans for world domination. It was created as a fun side-project, for laughs.

It’s Remarkable.

It’s something worth talking about. “Have you tried that game where you click cookies all day?” “That sounds ridiculous.” “No, really, you should try it.”

If you want your stuff to get shared, you want to make sure that it’s something people will tell others about. Why would they do that? That’s your job to figure out!

It (deceptively) doesn’t ask for too much.

Just as a cigarette takes only a couple of minutes to smoke, Cookie Clicker doesn’t demand hours of your time. You can leave it running inconspicuously in a tab on your browser and check on it every so often.

This has some interesting implications for all creators. If you want to compete with major productions (movies, novels, games), perhaps it’s best to start with something simple and bite-sized.

Intuitive, immediate on-boarding.

The name of the game is “Cookie Clicker”, so you already know you’re going to be clicking on a cookie.

As you click, you can see that there are powerups you can buy at the right hand of the screen. You know what you gotta do.

Clever reward structure.

Click 15 times and you buy your first Cursor, and immediately two Cursor upgrades appear. You’re curious to see what those upgrades do, and they don’t seem to ask for too much- what, 20 clicks.

You always have a pretty clear idea of what you might go for next, and it always seems just slightly out of reach. You put in a little effort and you get the reward.

Anticipates boredom.

The game knows that you’ll get bored of doing the same old thing for too long, so it incorporates a sort of “accelerating growth” model, where you keep getting more powerful. You get to see the numbers go up faster, and these numbers give you more options.

Iniitally, your main task is clicking. Later, your main task is choosing which powerups to buy, which kinda gives you a “middle management” sort of role.

Next, you start fussing about which upgrades to add to your powerups. Welcome to Corporate. It makes you feel like you’re “growing”.

Iterative development.

The first version of the game was simplistic in every sense- visuals, game mechanics, rewards. But the minimum-viable-product was there, and there was a market for it. It was enough to get lots of people clicking a fair bit.

Orteil would’ve been surprised at the amount of attention (and unsolicited feedback) his game was getting, and that would’ve compelled him to pu in more effort into refining and improving the game.

I hope that was interesting to you! I think everybody- writers, programmers, designers can learn quite a bit from observing and studying Cookie Clicker.

This Is Why Cookie Clicker Is So Addicting