[HN Gopher] Stimulation Clicker
___________________________________________________________________
Stimulation Clicker
Author : meetpateltech
Score : 2754 points
Date : 2025-01-06 15:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (neal.fun)
(TXT) w3m dump (neal.fun)
| mouse_ wrote:
| fantastic
| rallyforthesun wrote:
| addictive
| belladoreai wrote:
| classic neal.fun
| correlator wrote:
| reminds me of cookie clicker!
| dmazin wrote:
| "Another great neal.fun joint. It made me miserable!"
| higgins wrote:
| banger
| odirf wrote:
| Can someone explain me the point?
| kidfiji wrote:
| It falls under the category of "incremental games" that are
| generally simple but addicting due to the dopamine release from
| watching those numbers go up
| odirf wrote:
| For me, it causes headaches after a while due to the huge
| amount of animations running in parallel.
| zanderwohl wrote:
| Yeah, that's on purpose. It's meant to overstimulate you
| quickly
| 6SixTy wrote:
| It's a form of digital art meant to highlight the absurdity of
| the modern internet. Being overwhelmed by all of the forms of
| multimedia stimulation to finally escape to the ocean and
| appreciating simplicity is the point
| phire wrote:
| It's a parody.
|
| The whole genre of clicker games is a parody to start with, but
| this is more parody than most.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| The genre exists in a weird place. Progress Quest is maybe
| the start, and then you get Cow Clicker, which was definitely
| a parody but took off because everyone thought it was funny,
| and then Wikipedia tells me AdVenture Capitalist started as a
| parody but then became a popular and profitable game. And
| that's kind of the problem with the genre: it's kind of
| artistically meant as a parody or a joke, but people keep
| liking them and wanting more, and now it's a real genre, and
| a few of the games (like Paperclips) have a lot of artistic
| value far beyond the initial "haha it's not much of a game"
| joke.
| MR4D wrote:
| This is the stupidest thing - why am I so addicted to it?????
|
| Neal.fun has clearly hacked my brain. it is too much fun and I
| don't know why.
| gabrielcsapo wrote:
| I really enjoyed the animation for seeing how much each button
| press was worth
|
| setInterval(() => { document.querySelector('.main-btn-wrapper
| button').click() }, 10)
|
| helped have me save my trackpad
| xnx wrote:
| Fantastic encapsulation and commentary on the modern web and
| attentionspace.
|
| There's certainly better ways to do this, but here's one way to
| automate 1000 clicks from the console: for (let i
| = 0; i < 1000; i++) {
| document.querySelector('button.main-btn-pretty').click(); }
|
| Automating this art piece probably also says ... something.
| jetbalsa wrote:
| a fun way is to resize the window to be super tiny and the DVD
| Bounce really gets going into the millions
| xnx wrote:
| Good one. Sounds like a geiger counter.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| woah! great job
| yu3zhou4 wrote:
| Infinite version:
|
| let button = document.getElementsByClassName('main-btn');
|
| let clicker = setInterval(() => button[0].click(), 1);
|
| To stop, use this:
|
| window.clearInterval(clicker);
| cainxinth wrote:
| > Fantastic encapsulation and commentary on the modern web and
| attentionspace.
|
| This is why I quit Hearthstone even though I never spent a dime
| on it. I realized I had been habituated into playing it every
| day. I started feeling like a lab rat trained to push a button
| for a reward.
| malux85 wrote:
| Hahaha yeah! Me too! Good thing I escaped that!
|
| Now back to my coding job, I really have to focus and push
| enough of these buttons or I'll get fired and won't get my
| pay
| praptak wrote:
| ...now back to my hourly check of HN frontpage. Gotta be
| diligent and keep up with the industry news.
| wiseowise wrote:
| Are you me?
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Least we're getting paid for those buttons
| xnx wrote:
| That's one of the things that makes Stimulation Clicker so
| good, by being exposed to the most extreme version, it helps
| you identify other engineered attention grabbers in everyday
| life.
| 3np wrote:
| > most extreme version
|
| Well...
|
| http://ivark.github.io/
| skyyler wrote:
| I found this link on here like six months ago and my life
| hasn't been the same since.
| pests wrote:
| > I realized I had been habituated into playing it every day
|
| So like a hobby?
|
| Did you have fun playing it?
| latexr wrote:
| A hobby is something you're supposed to do for fun, not out
| of habit.
| WD-42 wrote:
| It's when you feel guilt or fomo for not playing every day
| that it becomes a problem. Many games like this.
| herghost wrote:
| Cookie Clicker taught me this about Destiny and Destiny 2 as
| well.
|
| I got a lot of enjoyment out of those games - and they were
| partly the backdrop to socialising online with IRL friends
| who didn't live close to me - but at some point the absurdity
| of them became too obvious and we stopped _.
|
| _ "moved on" - to Call of Duty.
| mtremsal wrote:
| > This is why I quit Hearthstone even though I never spent a
| dime on it.
|
| Good news, you now have time to pick up The Bazaar instead!
| (joke aside, it's quite fun, a lot more chill, and not nearly
| as exploitative as Hearthstone)
| ipsum2 wrote:
| Running it async will prevent the main screen from lagging:
| (async () => { const delay = (ms) => new
| Promise(resolve => setTimeout(resolve, ms)); for (let i
| = 0; i < 10000; i++) {
| document.getElementsByClassName('main-btn')[0].click();
| await delay(5); // 5 ms sleep } })();
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| If you're already using setTimeout, why not just use it
| directly? function clickLoop() {
| document.querySelector('.main-btn').click();
| setTimeout(clickLoop, 50) }
| jampekka wrote:
| That's an infinite loop.
| akx wrote:
| Breakable by `clickLoop = null`.
| eterm wrote:
| What's all this overengineering and waste creating
| timeouts?
|
| Why not just use setInterval? let
| interval = setInterval(() => document.querySelector('.main-
| btn').click(), 50)
|
| Then clearInterval(interval)
|
| to stop
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| How could you be so wasteful traversing the DOM tree
| every time to find .main-btn? Shame on you.
| phelipetls wrote:
| Or use requestAnimationFrame to run infinitely at ~60fps
| window.requestAnimationFrame(function clickButton() {
| document.querySelector(".main-btn").click()
| window.requestAnimationFrame(clickButton) })
| 65 wrote:
| This doesn't seem to logarithmically scale when you get the
| click percent increase upgrade, while the other code does.
| kmoser wrote:
| You could shorten it by using $('.main-btn').click()
| inglor wrote:
| Automate that bitcoin!
|
| ```
|
| setInterval(() => { let max = 100; while(max-->0) { let price =
| +document.querySelector(".last-price").textContent.trim().slice
| (1).replace(",","").split("\n")[0]; if (price > 20000) {
| document.querySelector(".stock-sell").click(); } else if (price
| < 10000) { document.querySelector(".stock-buy").click(); } else
| { break; } } })
|
| ```
| declan_roberts wrote:
| Automating it is the most fun part of these silly games. Here's
| a bash script to do it on mac (brew install clickclick first)
| while true; do cliclick c:. done
| zemo wrote:
| > Automating this art piece probably also says ... something.
|
| if you do that you're not really experiencing it
| mkoryak wrote:
| To everyone who is doing this:
|
| The only person you are cheating is yourself!!!
| taberiand wrote:
| Short-circuiting a clicker game (and all other forms of
| nullifying Skinner boxes) is self-care.
| narrator wrote:
| Just go into developer mode and just break on a line like so:
| r.sps && r.purchased && this.addStimulation(r.sps \* n, r.id)
|
| and run
| this.addStimulation(10000000000,r.id)
|
| and resume.
| karpatic wrote:
| I did the same exact thing and then wanted to post it into the
| groupchat then see this.
|
| 1000 iterations too!
|
| Why are we like this XD
| magicmicah85 wrote:
| Nice! I've been playing Star Trek Fleet Command the past few days
| and have been wanting to build a silly clicker game to mock/mimic
| some of the game's aspects and this has given me inspiration.
| Fraaaank wrote:
| I do not like how enjoyable this was.
| notJim wrote:
| Pretty troubling!
| edm0nd wrote:
| the muckbang video, I wish I could get rid of. ended up just
| muting the entire tab.
| tills13 wrote:
| well I cheated and was immediately overstimulated
| irs wrote:
| Wow. Too much fun. My eyes/head hurts. Finally went to the ocean
| in the game.
| rkagerer wrote:
| My game froze up when I bought that upgrade. Not sure if that's
| by design or it might have been an internet hiccup. What
| happens when you go to the ocean?
| irs wrote:
| It's just the end credits with a soothing ocean video in the
| background https://imgur.com/a/eNwfBO6
|
| It was too addictive. My eyes still hurt !!!
| phemartin wrote:
| Beware - this is crack! I clicked it and 20-min has passed.
|
| https://imgur.com/JJHXccN
| tines wrote:
| Very sad, well done.
| erikerikson wrote:
| For those of you loving this, a classic:
| https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/
| coldfoundry wrote:
| Cookie Clicker got me into programming back in the day! Super
| simple structure (back then) and fun way to experiment with
| coding in an interactive way with visual feedback.
| MatthiasPortzel wrote:
| Cookie Clicker has received updates almost continuously for the
| last decade. I don't have the commitment to ascend but I
| understand there's quite a bit of content to be unlocked there
| even after you've maxed out your first "run."
| albrewer wrote:
| It still peters out eventually
| mikewarot wrote:
| I found the ultimate upgrade.
|
| If you run it in portrait on a cellphone, there's not enough room
| for any upgrade button! 8)
| matt3210 wrote:
| Thanks I hate it
| matt3210 wrote:
| Crashes on mobile chrome after about 10 minutes probably for the
| best
| GenerocUsername wrote:
| Same
|
| Lost progress.
|
| It was fun and quirky, but Happy it ended though.
| spacemanspiff01 wrote:
| Same, I can't believe I spent that much time, the guided
| meditation killed me.
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| Same on samsung internet. I was happy it crashed.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Samsung has a browser?
| perryizgr8 wrote:
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sec.andro
| i...
|
| It's pretty good too.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| Crashed on desktop brave as well. I mean, it was still running
| but I couldn't click on anything.
| cruffle_duffle wrote:
| Same. iPhone 14 Pro, both safari and chrome. Eventually the
| sound stops and it gets super laggy.
|
| Almost kind of fitting.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Firefox on MacOS seems fine. I minimized the window size and
| made some soup. The GUI was a little bit laggy though. When I
| got back I had ~10million or so and bought all the upgrades
| which ended the game.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| got laggy for me, but I got frustrated by cacophony before that
| ArlenBales wrote:
| Unironically, if this was on Steam and monetized through their
| item shop, it would probably make a fortune. See banana:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/2923300/Banana/
| xnx wrote:
| There is a buymeacoffee link. I'm pretty stingy with donations,
| but thought this was worth 3 coffees.
| lazzlazzlazz wrote:
| Banana is used by bots to exploit specific in-Steam tradable
| items and rewards. It's not a real game.
| bberenberg wrote:
| Can you explain this a bit more? I know there is a lot of
| shady stuff happening with Steam tradable items, but always
| fun to learn about new ones.
| lxe wrote:
| Looks like NFT nonsense but without the blockchain
| chupasaurus wrote:
| All this "game" does is generation of different marketable
| banana items to "players" running it.
| rahidz wrote:
| Impressed with the effort. The fake crime podcast is gold.
| KMnO4 wrote:
| It's really well done. At one point the character says
| something along the lines of "but they would rather do other
| things, like play on neal.fun instead of going to the amusement
| park"
| sphars wrote:
| Oh gosh, just what I needed, another clicker game. This is
| excellent!
|
| Tip: On Firefox at least, you can right-click the videos (slime,
| mukbang, etc) and mute them.
| teach wrote:
| Unfortunately you can't mute the podcast in the same way --
| that's what finally forced me to close the tab
| mmastrac wrote:
| I clicked the audio icon on the tab -- it muted the entire
| thing :)
| JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B wrote:
| This game has the same old bug of "Left click + Enter key" to get
| money faster.
| artemonster wrote:
| buy couple of dvds and resize your tab to be a single pixel wide
| - infinite points glitch
| seletskiy wrote:
| Don't blame me. setInterval(() => {
| [...document.querySelectorAll(".upgrade,.loot-box-
| target,button")].map((e) => e.click()); }, 50)
| rglover wrote:
| I thought it was insane just hand-clicking but this
| legitimately made it overwhelming to the point where I had to
| close the tab.
| davepeck wrote:
| Cow Clicker 2025, Professional Edition. So good.
| akoboldfrying wrote:
| More people need to know the story of Cow Clicker.
| FrustratedMonky wrote:
| Release the HypnoDrones.
|
| Carpel Tunnel here I come.
|
| Nice.
| BSVogler wrote:
| Ran into a bug where a double tap zoomed the page and it broke
| the game as I could not zoom out again. Unfortunately it does not
| save the progress in a cookie.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Ditto. It was also running at about 3 fps on my iPhone 12 on
| safari.
|
| It was a nice shopping trip worth of fun though.
| latexr wrote:
| When that happened to me, a simple [?]0 reset the size.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| what device has both zoom tapping and apple's ctrl button?
| latexr wrote:
| Literally every Mac with a trackpad, which includes every
| laptop.
|
| It's not "Apple ctrl button", it's the "command" key. Macs
| have a "control" key too.
| ehsankia wrote:
| I also had an issue that restarted my computer and found the
| hard way it doesn't save. Using localStorage to store the state
| is simple enough, unfortunate that it doesn't.
| blixt wrote:
| Lovely ending, and I appreciate how short this one is. For me it
| really does induce some mixed feelings for what we did to the web
| while at the same time I really enjoyed the nostalgia.
|
| Another game I sunk way too much time into to get to the end is
| Idle Loops which ends up being kind of like programming once you
| get deeper into it: https://dmchurch.github.io/omsi-loops/ (There
| are three versions, all open source on GitHub - this one is the
| third in the chain of forks, with the most updates)
| andybp85 wrote:
| whelp this is making this meeting go way faster
| thebirk wrote:
| Hold Enter, click the reward from the hydraulic press, profit!
| hiroprot wrote:
| Best way I've found to stimulate quickly, resize your window to
| be as small as possible, and have lots of bouncing DVDs.
| hiroprot wrote:
| Level 42 was my limit
| AbraKdabra wrote:
| This is the way, two minutes and already at a million.
| behnamoh wrote:
| Also, zoom in the window!
| chrisfosterelli wrote:
| You can get a massive amount of money with the stock market
| plugin once you get the cryptocurrency and leverage upgrades.
| pplonski86 wrote:
| Why do you think that stock and crypto plugins will be very
| profitable? There are no tools to combine finance data in
| easy way?
| hx8 wrote:
| During my 20 minutes I noticed stocks and crypto seem to
| always fluctuate within a given range. So if you buy in the
| low end of the range you're guaranteed to see an
| opportunity to sell at the higher end of the range.
|
| Crypto is just stocks with a wider range and more
| volatility.
| tacostakohashi wrote:
| > seem to always fluctuate within a given range.
|
| ... except for sometimes, when they don't.
| Kiro wrote:
| Something is broken with HN because I'm also seeing this
| comment thread in the post about the Yahoo Pipes
| replacement: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42609819
|
| However, when I reply it says Stimulation Clicker at the
| top so no idea what's going on. @dang?
| ablation wrote:
| I'm seeing the same issue. In fact, the Pipes thread is
| where I'm posting this.
| msm_ wrote:
| After you get to the cryptocurrency it's basically game over,
| you can earn over a million during a few market cycles, and
| the speed you can do it it raises (almost) exponentially.
| Stocks are similar, but much slower.
| whereismyacc wrote:
| I figured like thirty seconds into using the site that resizing
| it smaller would give me more DVD bounces per second. But then
| during resizing i kinda cheated myself some points
| accidentally, and discovered that trick where they're just
| bouncing on every tick.
|
| Normally I'm a sucker for clicker games, but cheating the
| progress (even accidentally) always kills the point of it.
| justlikereddit wrote:
| Ah, a simulation of hell.
|
| 2025 off for a good start in dystopian scinfi tech
| aaroninsf wrote:
| TIHI
|
| Im lying ILI
| lbrito wrote:
| Genius
| doawoo wrote:
| Art
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I feel like a cat that's chasing a laser pointer and knows it's a
| toy but doesn't mind
| Galpa wrote:
| I already did a speedrun on it
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CTIxBBKNz8g
| anais9 wrote:
| I love it! Here's my stab at an automated speedrun:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4z8P1F-lyB8
| cscheid wrote:
| Since we're all sharing clicker games, this one by Frank Lantz is
| a real classic: https://decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
| tibbon wrote:
| I wonder if we can get a superintelligent AI to play this one!
| captaincrunch wrote:
| don't need it - just click the "click" button and then hold
| down enter.
| riccardomc wrote:
| That's exactly what a superintelligent AI would say...
| Carrok wrote:
| You haven't gotten very far if you think that's all the
| game requires.
| gms7777 wrote:
| A Dark Room (https://adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com/) is
| fantastic as well. It's not only a clicker/idle game, but it
| incorporates the mechanics in an interesting way.
|
| On the whole, I've had to adopt a policy of not even touching
| clicker games. I find them incredibly addictive, and most of
| the time I'm not even enjoying the experience or getting
| anything out of it, I just feel hooked. I'd say Universal
| Paperclips and A Dark Room were exceptions to that, in that
| they actually had some depth, strategy, discovery, or story.
| But even those two I've had to stop myself from replaycing.
| drivers99 wrote:
| I'll play Universal Paperclips once a year or so when I
| remember it exists and have nothing I need to do for the next
| 3-6 hours. So I'd add that as a warning to anyone who wants
| to check it out: make sure your next 6 hours are ok to spend
| on it, in case you get sucked in.
| otteromkram wrote:
| Not available on mobile (except by installing an app).
|
| :(
| metabagel wrote:
| For a clicker, it's pretty slow. You have to do some pretty
| significant grinding.
| skeaker wrote:
| Spoilers!
|
| There's a whole combat and map system that's hidden away
| initially. A lot of the progression really wants you to
| do that but it's hidden away at first so it's not
| obvious.
| hugs wrote:
| Toggle the "Desktop site" setting in your mobile browser.
| (Worked in Chrome on Android.)
| thispbowden wrote:
| Don't forget Kittensgame! - https://kittensgame.com/web/#
| mkoryak wrote:
| I have not forgotten it. I have been playing it every since I
| started at google (long build times, ya know?) 7 years ago...
|
| All-Time Stats
|
| Total Years Played 7.951M
|
| Run Number 24
|
| Total Paragon 23.614K
|
| Buildings Constructed 143.148K
|
| Total Clicks 2.411M
|
| Transcendence Tier 25
|
| Challenges Completed 11
|
| I have never cheated in it, or used a script to click things.
| thispbowden wrote:
| Same to no cheating - Only been playing a couple of years,
| lots of background.
|
| All-Time Stats Total Kittens 84.84K Kittens Dead 5710 Total
| Years Played 18.33M Run Number 98 Total Paragon 90.36K Rare
| Events Observed 22.31M Unicorns Sacrificed 4.20P Buildings
| Constructed 553.38K Total Clicks 712.37K Trades Completed
| 2.32G Crafting Times 501.64M Avg. Kittens Born (Per
| Century) 0.46 Transcendence Tier 27 Challenges Completed 8
| mkoryak wrote:
| what does Transcendence Tier 27 do for you? there is
| nothing else after 25 right?
|
| You seem to have done a lot better than me with less
| clicks.
| bosse wrote:
| Or Swarmsim: https://www.swarmsim.com
| 3np wrote:
| Antimatter Dimensions is another conerstone in the genre.
|
| http://ivark.github.io/
| dta5003 wrote:
| Don't click it, that's most of a year I'll never get back.
| albrewer wrote:
| No kidding - it really did take about a year for me to
| finish it. That was _with_ a guide.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| Both in the pretty rare category of clicker games that you can
| complete and get an ending.
| kristianp wrote:
| Isn't cookie clicker one of the earliest?
|
| https://orteil.dashnet.org/cookieclicker/
| chupasaurus wrote:
| Anti-Idle from 2009 says hi.
|
| http://www.kongregate.com/games/tukkun/anti-idle-the-game
| MarkSweep wrote:
| I feel like Progress Quest from 2002 is the spiritual
| predecessor of the clicker genre:
|
| http://progressquest.com/
|
| In that it distills the game mechanic of "make number go up"
| into a simplistic form. It just lakes the clicking.
|
| PS, whenever I relapse and play too much World of Warcraft, I
| play some Cookie Clicker as a cleanse to remind myself of the
| fundamental pointlessness of the whole endeavor. Great game.
| jwrallie wrote:
| Cookie Clicker is indeed eye opening.
|
| I think it is one of the few games that "changed my life"
| in the sense that by getting addicted to it for a few days,
| it made me see Cookie Clicker in every platform that tries
| to waste my time.
|
| I remember when I first heard about it and I naively
| thought that such a simple game was silly and in now way
| could not be addictive, but I let myself play it for a
| while and it really changed the way I see games.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| Well there went two hours of my day.
| TechDebtDevin wrote:
| 8 hrs
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| let me save everyone's time of writing each recommendation
| individually - by linking https://www.incrementaldb.com/ where
| all the games are listed together
| ndriscoll wrote:
| For this crowd, there is also bitburner, where you write
| programs to automate making the numbers go up:
| https://bitburner-official.github.io
|
| Want to make the numbers go up a bit? Write some for loops.
| Want them to really go up? Time to write a distributed job
| scheduler.
| Unai wrote:
| I'm sadly into the incremental game genre. Universal Paperclips
| is still my favourite, and I replay it often. A Dark Room is
| another really good one with some storytelling and an ending,
| which is not all that common in incremental games.
|
| But if anyone wants to get deep into it, Dodecadragons is
| probably the best implementation of the incremental mechanics,
| but it's extremely addictive, so be careful with it.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Needs a URL preview btw
| daRealDodo wrote:
| I accidentally refreshed the screen, fuuuuuck
| Version467 wrote:
| I spent an embarrassing amount of time playing this. Eventually
| it became overwhelming, but for a while it was (un)surprisingly
| engaging.
| akaike wrote:
| Same, the true crime podcast is hilarious :D
| duskwuff wrote:
| Yep. A+ for effort - the "podcast" is nearly 40 minutes long,
| and gets progressively sillier as it goes.
|
| In case you want to listen to it without the accompaniment of
| mukbang, slime ASMR, lofi beats, and hydraulic press noises,
| the source audio is at:
|
| https://stimulation-clicker.neal.fun/sounds/true-crime.mp3
| emidoots wrote:
| It has an ending, so play till the end :)
| vasilzhigilei wrote:
| This is awesome. Subway surfers immediately made my attention
| span increase for how long I could tap the button.
| mrmuagi wrote:
| For fans of clicker games I discovered this site [0] a while back
| and come back to it every so often to find some great ones.
|
| [0] https://www.incrementaldb.com
| bogtog wrote:
| This had a really nice length (~1 hour). I was able to wrap up
| the game quite quickly once I unlocked crypto trading
| captaincrunch wrote:
| Best way - Click "Click Me" then hold down enter.
| oytis wrote:
| Why should it collect data for hundreds of partners?
| hooo wrote:
| Why ... does that feel so good
| landtuna wrote:
| I clicked once and closed the page because you can't tell me what
| to do (more than once).
| attentionmech wrote:
| idk what i am doing but i am hooked on it. it's like as if it's
| directly interacting with dopamine of my brain.
| laurent_du wrote:
| Worth every minute, and every cell brain.
| wdfx wrote:
| Twice I accidentally pull-refreshed on mobile and lost all my
| progress :(
| vasilzhigilei wrote:
| I pulled down to reload my email for more dopamine out of habit
| and it refreshed the page.
| zdc1 wrote:
| I finished the game without cheating. I felt like a frog being
| slowly boiled (and it really does feel like you're boiling at the
| end). It's quite the journey...
|
| I love how everything here isn't even farfetched. It's just
| standard YouTube and TikTok content. The red notification bubbles
| were also a nice touch, I felt myself really drawn to those, and
| if I think back, I guess that's the earliest example I can recall
| of where these patterns all started: Facebook's little red
| notification bubble
| Petersipoi wrote:
| As far as clickers go, finishing this game without cheating is
| very easy. Only takes like 20-30 min. But nonetheless, it was
| enjoyable. Really regretted clicking the subway surfer wormhole
| button. Luckily that was right at the end.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| How much does it require to finish? I mean how many
| stimulation points?
|
| I gave up when I bought auto hydraulic press.
| SparkyMcUnicorn wrote:
| Crypto investing is where the points really start to fly,
| mass clicking buy below $10k selling above $20k. Game
| finished pretty quick after that.
|
| Edit: Just beat it in 19 minutes. Feel like you can't
| finish it much quicker than that without cheating.
| joseda-hg wrote:
| Depending of your definition of cheating, resizing the
| window is a good passive way, specially after the DVD
| upgrade
| muzani wrote:
| I wonder if this was deliberate, to give more points to
| mobile users.
| rhines wrote:
| My phone could not handle it at all, it started dropping
| widgets after the slime (like subway surfers and
| hydraulic press disappeared) and then it started to lag
| before finally my whole phone became unresponsive for a
| couple minutes even after the tab was closed. On an
| iPhone 12 mini so not the newest but still a little
| surprising that it stopped so early in the game.
| CleanRoomClub wrote:
| Same, though I'm on a iPhone 14 Pro Max.
| LorenzoGood wrote:
| Open browser console, drag over.
| bobzimuta wrote:
| excited to see speed runs of this game on tiktok, split
| screen with an 'easy diy hacks' video playing
| icedrift wrote:
| Yeah the game was fairly slow but once bitcoin daytrading
| was unlocked the rest took a few minutes
| montag wrote:
| It was hard to tell how many points I was getting from
| crypto. But it went to the top of the list on Screen Time
| boringg wrote:
| So should we all be crypto investing is the lesson :)
| tavavex wrote:
| The last, and most expensive item requires 2M stimulation,
| but I think you need to buy most of the preceding items to
| get to it.
| latexr wrote:
| You need 2,000,000 stimulation points for the last item
| which wins the game. It sounds like a lot, but by that
| point you'll be generating an insane amount of points per
| second and passive consumption is worth more than clicking.
| It does get overwhelming, at one point I had to mute the
| sound for a minute or two before resuming.
|
| If you want to know what the last item is, rot13 the next
| paragraph (https://rot13.com/ is an easy way to do it):
|
| Gur ynfg vgrz vf "tbvat gb gur bprna". Gur tnzr jneaf lbh
| gurer vf ab tbvat onpx nsgre gung. Vg fjvgpurf gb n pnyzvat
| ivqrb bs jnirf ba gur ornpu, jvgu perqvgf.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Or tr 'A-Za-z' 'N-ZA-Mn-za-m'
|
| If one is on computer or has access to shell from phone.
|
| Gunaxf!
| jakeydus wrote:
| you can see the credits by paying 2m points so depending on
| your definition of winning -\\_(tsu)_/-
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| It hung when I had 100k but I guess I will run it on PC
| next time.
| Applejinx wrote:
| I had to restart because I unwittingly clicked the mukbang
| guy too early: can't handle him unless he is drowned out by
| everything else. By contrast I enjoyed the wormhole button.
| Kind of the whole point of the experience, liked it way
| better than certain noises :)
| UltraSane wrote:
| Is shrinking the window down to make the DVD logos hit the
| edge more often considered cheating?
| eleveriven wrote:
| I think this is considered smart thinking (from my point of
| view).
| titusjohnson wrote:
| Spam DVD logo upgrades as fast as you can. Open your
| browser as big as it will go. When the DVD logo gets
| close to the top, start shrinking the browser slowly. I
| think the DVD positioning is calculated from the bottom
| of the page, there's a bug where the logo(s) will get
| stuck near the top as you shrink the page and will
| constantly re-register a bounce multiple times per
| second. Eventually all the logos you buy will get clumped
| at the top, and you can get 1MM Stimulation per "bounce".
| drivers99 wrote:
| Jonathan Blow had a great (imho) rant about those type of
| notifications that someone clipped from one of his live
| streams. (Warning: strong language.)
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L9nmCIrs7HI
| p1necone wrote:
| Jonathan Blow has good points sometimes, but he comes off as
| very "old man rants at cloud" most of the time. He's been
| stewing in his own sauce for far too long.
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| I saw that the Shadow of the Colossus remake has little
| achievement notifications when you kill colossi and that
| really burns my biscuit. You're watching this slow-motion
| scene of a colossus dying, sad music plays, you wonder if
| you're doing the right thing, and the PlayStation is like
| "yayyy!~ You're such a good gamer!~"
| echelon wrote:
| > I felt like a frog being slowly boiled
|
| This game is an excellent simulation of what ADHD feels like,
| especially if you're putting off multiple critical tasks.
| navane wrote:
| if people ask me how my weekend was, i can unironically send
| them this site; this is my weekend condensed in 30 minutes
| vasco wrote:
| MSN Messenger had addicting bubbles way before
| eleveriven wrote:
| I wanted to gouge my eyes out hahaha. The ending cutscene made
| up for it all.
| coldfoundry wrote:
| If you are interested in seeing what the depth of the game is and
| you are on desktop, unlock the hydraulic press by holding "enter"
| after clicking on the "click" button for easy currency, then
| after unlocking, do the same by clicking on the +1,000 simulation
| redemption (holding enter afterward) once you go through one
| hydraulic press animation. You will gain 100,000 simulation a
| second!
|
| Fun game, love incrementals.
| eigenvalue wrote:
| Wow, that was amazing. This is honestly a better piece of
| contemporary art (in terms of making you think about modern life
| and what is happening to our environment, the impact on
| ourselves, our kids, etc.) than most of what you might see at a
| fancy art gallery or a contemporary art museum in NYC.
| echelon wrote:
| Neal has continually outdone himself with every single release.
| Everything he makes is a labor of love and is so special and
| deserving of attention. From the factual stuff like "The Size
| of Space" and "Deep Sea", to the more amusing "Absurd Trolly
| Problems", "The Password Game", and so on. It's all so good and
| feels like a gift to the internet.
|
| Stimulation Clicker's social commentary has to the best thus
| far. I know click games are a thing, but to combine that
| mechanic with a parody of the state of the modern attention
| economy is just pure art.
|
| Neal, if you're reading HN, you rock. Please know how
| appreciative we are.
| engineer_22 wrote:
| https://buymeacoffee.com/neal
| diggan wrote:
| > This is honestly a better piece of contemporary art (in terms
| of making you think about modern life and what is happening to
| our environment, the impact on ourselves, our kids, etc.)
|
| Zooming out, I think games in general is in a much better
| position to do this, as a medium, compared to the alternatives
| TV, movies and music.
|
| I guess mainly because it's interactive, but it also feels like
| it can be broader than the other mediums, like on one hand you
| have Idle/Clicker games like these, and on the other the huge
| blockbuster AAA games.
| marifjeren wrote:
| You'll never see games at fancy art galleries or contemporary
| art museums in NYC because games are too accessible
| tomjakubowski wrote:
| I've seen and played games at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in
| NYC. Maybe I got lucky but it's one of like three museum
| visits I've ever done as a tourist in the city.
| raimondious wrote:
| Except perhaps the most well known contemporary art museum in
| the world: https://www.moma.org/magazine/articles/798
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Rather, I think they are not accessible enough. A picture on
| a wall, a movie or music can be experienced by hundreds or
| thousands of people all at once. Games in an art gallery have
| a much lower natural limit to the number of people who can
| interact with them simultaneously (at least in the same
| physical space). Sure, you can watch others do it, but that's
| not really the same thing (it's more like watching
| performance art than playing a game).
|
| I have in fact been to art galleries which had interactive
| game-like exhibits. I basically never got to interact with
| them because, lo and behold, there was a long queue.
| miltonlost wrote:
| The Smithsonian has a traveling exhibition specifically about
| Art in Video Games:
| https://americanart.si.edu/exhibitions/games
|
| Maybe actually go to an art gallery/museum sometime instead
| of assuming you know what one is
| lupire wrote:
| It's "The Art _of_ Video Games "
| aprilthird2021 wrote:
| Don't most art museums have free days for city residents,
| etc.?
|
| Almost every game requires an expensive hardware purchase and
| often a separate $60-$70 for the game itself
| The-Bus wrote:
| The Museum of the Moving Image has had video games in its
| collection since the 1980s.
| https://movingimage.org/collection/collection-
| spotlight_vide...
|
| Hauser & Wirth have had essays on video games in their
| magazine: https://www.hauserwirth.com/ursula/too-late-for-
| earth-too-so...
| alanbernstein wrote:
| For the live-action, logical conclusion of this concept, watch
| HYPER-REALITY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJg02ivYzSs
| btown wrote:
| > 8 years ago
|
| Sci-Fi Author: In my book I invented the Torment Nexus as a
| cautionary tale
|
| Tech Company: At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus
| from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus
|
| (via https://x.com/AlexBlechman/status/1457842724128833538?la
| ng=e... )
| eleveriven wrote:
| I haven't even had a chance to look at the game from that
| perspective yet. I don't know why, but this game has me so
| excited!
| benbojangles wrote:
| they should use this to create jobs
| gordondavidf wrote:
| 1) wow, what a great piece of art.
|
| 2) Buy as many DVDs as possible and shrink the size of your
| window. Instant win.
| twohaibei wrote:
| Emails are so funny... :)
| emddudley wrote:
| I'm embarrassed to admit it but I found out this game has an
| ending.
| TZubiri wrote:
| I feel personally attacked by some of the upgrades.
| raviisoccupied wrote:
| I hated that I loved this - great concept.
| yuvalr1 wrote:
| I really don't know if I could survive nowadays internet without
| uBlock. The picker functionality just changes the internet for
| me. I can make most of the noise disappear.
| buryat wrote:
| If you want to speed run it let max = 1000000;
| let btn = $('.main-btn'); function cl() {
| btn.click(); max--; if (max > 0) {
| setTimeout(cl, 1) } } cl()
| buryat wrote:
| I ended up stopping the execution using max=10 and then
| removing annoying elements using the web inspector and keep
| running. I really liked the subway surfers though
| Terr_ wrote:
| A small improvement would be to stop based on the balance,
| rather than a number of clicks, to avoid going into ludicrous
| Yes JS Numbers Are All Floats territory. let
| max_amt = 2000000000*2; // Twice most expensive item let
| btn = $('.main-btn'); function cl() {
| btn.click(); let curr = $(".main-stat-
| num").innerText.replace(/\D/g, ''); if (curr <
| max_amt) { setTimeout(cl, 1) } }
| cl()
| DearNarwhal wrote:
| This site + Neal's other stuff is pretty cool. I wonder if he
| makes it in vanilla JS.
| Terr_ wrote:
| The skywriter VPN ads are one of the few real links, apparently.
| nsypteras wrote:
| Reminds me of a modern version of The Entertainment from Infinite
| Jest.
| dachris wrote:
| It feels like this quote from "Ready Player One" (2018 film)
|
| "Once we can roll back some of Halliday's ad restrictions, we
| estimate we can sell up to 80% of an individual's visual field
| before inducing seizures"
| 01HNNWZ0MV43FF wrote:
| Ow, My Balls
| otteromkram wrote:
| > 2018 Film
|
| It was also a great book!
| floren wrote:
| Well, you're half right -- it was a book.
| stavros wrote:
| You're downvoted, but I agree. I found it basically a
| hodgepodge of 80s references over a basic story with one-
| dimensional characters (the heroes are Very Good and the
| bad guy is Very Bad). I would have assumed that it's aimed
| at young children, if the references weren't forty years
| before their time.
| tempusr wrote:
| It's not just that, but also the main protagonist is
| written terribly and never given any real faults or
| challenges to overcome. During the entire book there is
| never a challenge that is not resolved by the next
| paragraph.
|
| The Japanese friends that he makes are grossly
| stereotyped and are kept one dimensional during the
| entire book as well.
|
| The main character also strikes me as incredibly creepy,
| and to a level where he could be classified as an para-
| social stalker. Just comes off as being a terrible person
| overall.
|
| Spielberg's movie however is fantastic and one of those
| rare instances where the movie truly does outrank the
| book.
| globular-toast wrote:
| The film even has a proper ending which in itself is
| hugely thought provoking and something we definitely
| should consider. The book, if I remember correctly, just
| sets up for another book.
| stavros wrote:
| Is the movie different enough? I didn't even watch it,
| because I hated the book so much.
| pseudomode wrote:
| 1 upvote point from me!
| simpsond wrote:
| I needed the ocean at the end. It's a very good game. The
| variable reward and quick repeatability captured me... It
| showcases what we are exposed to in a condensed manner.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| I have a lot of fun with incremental games recently
| Eji1700 wrote:
| Reminds me of a story I heard as a kid.
|
| Short version, guy can't sleep. Someone tells him get a dog. Dog
| barks, still can't sleep. Well you'll also need a blah... repeat
| until the man has a small farm of loud animals going. Then
| finally "get rid of them" and suddenly it's all so quiet again.
|
| It's pretty fascinating how much more calm everything seems when
| you finish/stop this game
| furyofantares wrote:
| "A Squash and a Squeeze" by Julia Donaldson must be a take on
| that
|
| https://judaism.stackexchange.com/questions/50346/is-julia-d...
| says it's a take on an old Jewish Polish folk tale
| snarf21 wrote:
| There is a different version where a person takes drug A to
| solve problem X. But that has a side effect so they take drug B
| to solve that problem. And so on and so on and so on.
| Eventually, they decide to stop taking all the medicines and
| are finally "cured".
| DoingSomeThings wrote:
| I felt an immediate, physical relief when I hit the credits
| screen.
| simonsarris wrote:
| possibly the first good website of this decade
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| The "Meditation" one made me chuckle. "Relax your mind"...
|
| As you wage all-out war on your senses.
| duskwuff wrote:
| Not to mention the "faster meditation" upgrade, which plays the
| calming audio at 2x speed. (You know, so that you can relax
| twice as fast.)
| adamtaylor_13 wrote:
| It's all about the destination, not the journey!
| furyofantares wrote:
| lol - I actually have done guided meditations at 2x, when I
| was starting out.
| atorodius wrote:
| Can't say anything but I FRIGGING LOVED THIS
| danvoell wrote:
| My finger hurts
| hoseja wrote:
| I really wanted the pillow.
| bbno4 wrote:
| I managed to cheat this by buying a bunch of DVDs and making my
| window as small as possible, meaning they hit the edges much more
| often and gained me infinity stimulation.
| booleandilemma wrote:
| But what did you win, really?
| neuroelectron wrote:
| infinity stimulation
| rf15 wrote:
| A bad taste in my mouth how I spend my time online in general
| ludston wrote:
| The ocean.
| uludag wrote:
| This game is truly a work of art. I literally got a migraine
| playing this game though and couldn't finish it unfortunately.
| This is the second piece of media to do this to me behind
| Koyaanisqatsi... now that I think of it, this seems like a modern
| interpretation of the film Koyaanisqatsi.
| devin wrote:
| I was doing okay until the wormhole, and then I actually started
| to feel ill.
| rsyring wrote:
| This.
| aaurelions wrote:
| Behind such simplicity at first lies incredible work.
| lxe wrote:
| This slowly increases your blood pressure and heart rate.
| dangoodmanUT wrote:
| this is so meta i love it
| Geste wrote:
| Maybe I need a dumbphone, after all...
| atum47 wrote:
| On mobile I can just touch and drag my thumb around the button
| and it trigger several clicks.
| easterncalculus wrote:
| For a 20-something guy this is basically what using the internet
| is like now. Incredible.
| samjanis wrote:
| For a 40-something guy I only had ICQ/Yahoo!/MSN/AOL messager
| popups during the internet of '99, which would of been a few
| times per minute.
|
| So yeah, I guess we're actually not that different after all.
| zzzzrrrt wrote:
| I was about to scoff at this and thought "Ugh, another cookie
| clicker", but then I started playing it. I'm glad it is quick
| because my head was going to explode. It is pretty damn brilliant
| take on today's stimuli overload. I think it is more a piece of
| art than a game. I was able to win quickly once I got crypto
| because it was bouncing from $400 to $50,000, but I almost barfed
| because there was SO much going on. Well done.
| nixosbestos wrote:
| oh my god the murder podcast mentions a hydraulic press death.
|
| best thing in a while, bravo.
|
| EDIT: I really wish the still-locked achievements gave a
| hover/hint. I simply can't figure out what these missing
| achievements are, and it looks like the count is wrong. Also, I
| wish I could revive my chicken. :(
| starshadowx2 wrote:
| You can inspect element on the achievements to see what their
| unlock text is.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Is this an adderall thing?
| albus0x wrote:
| "Impressive. Very nice" Finished without cheating. But halfway
| disabled sounds. It is too much. You can easily finish the game
| by buying stocks, especially bitcoin. No cheating needed, was
| super simple. But great nonetheless.
| whalesalad wrote:
| I crashed it by giving the button an ID and running this:
| for (let i = 0; i < 100000; i++) {
| document.getElementById("foobar").click(); }
| markusw wrote:
| My pulse is still higher than usual. We just spent an hour on
| this. This is an art game. :D Thank you!
| allemagne wrote:
| This is a fun clicker game whose point seems cynical and self-
| defeating on multiple levels.
|
| Despite the HN comments complaining about it being overwhelming
| and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting the internet
| is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the front page.
| The stimulation torture wasn't really torture, but another level
| to the game.
|
| All the content creators whose inclusion at first seems like an
| indictment of the kinds of internet videos that lead to addiction
| or overstimulation also all get a pleasant shout-out which seems
| silly. Are these supposed to represent what's awful about the
| internet?
|
| EDIT: To hammer the dissonance home, at the end of the game we
| are met with a calming ocean scene that I'm guessing the average
| player appreciated for about thirty seconds before clicking away.
|
| To me, this whole exercise doesn't reflect how distorted humanity
| has become because of technology, but of how humans refuse to
| look themselves in the mirror.
|
| We want to be the kind of people who buck the mold and escape
| systems of control, so that we can properly enjoy things like
| waves of the ocean, but at any point during this game we could
| just open a new tab and watch the ocean on a YouTube livestream.
| Instead we spend an hour clicking and advancing this manic stream
| of chaos.
|
| What's more human, then: calmly watching the waves crash against
| the beach, or clicking buttons trying to win and discover what's
| at the end of a silly game?
| ertgbnm wrote:
| These trends wouldn't be trends if they didn't work. The game
| can be awful and distracting, yet still succeed at garnering
| engagement. Not just in spite of the stimulation but partially
| due to the stimulation. It's not self defeating or
| hypocritical, it's a bad thing, an indictment, and also
| engaging all at the same time.
| allemagne wrote:
| It got me to think and engage, so already I think it succeeds
| at being a great piece of art.
|
| But is "overstimulation" ... "bad", according to the overall
| message? Is this game, livestreamer Ludwig, and all the
| achievements part of the problem being highlighted? (Not to
| mention the mean-spirited Mindspace parody) If you get enough
| stimulation here, it just seems like you get to cash it in so
| that you can advance to a state of higher enlightenment
| wiseowise wrote:
| > But is "overstimulation" ... "bad", according to the
| overall message?
|
| Dozens of DVD signs jumping around, hydraulic press slowly
| pressing macaroons, infinite subway surfers, lofi girl,
| some guy eating burger, achievements popping left and
| right, hands molding some crap. All of that fit on a mobile
| screen with sounds of lofi, rain, thunder and constant
| clocking of dvd sounds. And I didn't even reach bottom of
| the pit.
|
| > But is "overstimulation" ... "bad", according to the
| overall message?
|
| Smartest HN commenter.
| rottencupcakes wrote:
| It's not self-defeating, it's a commentary.
|
| I've built up a reflex to leave any sort of overstimulatory
| atmosphere. I don't watch short form videos and leave any page
| that causes high levels of stimulation (Temu's spinner stops me
| from shopping there, for example).
|
| I quit this game after about 10 minutes when it hit a comical
| level of stimulation and still upvoted this. I loved the
| commentary because the game seemed to follow the natural
| "evolution" of the web, straight to the point where every app
| has attached mini games and multiple in-game currencies.
| Listening to the man popping his beer can and pouring it at the
| same time as a live police scanner was truly dystopian but also
| feels like a daily occurrence in modern society.
| allemagne wrote:
| I think it's great that you didn't really have a stomach for
| the absurd level of noise and flashing lights, but I just
| don't think it's a moral victory that people should
| necessarily strive for.
| wiseowise wrote:
| I do. Less people tolerate crap like this (not the
| submission, but patterns it emulates), the less we will see
| it implemented.
| aszantu wrote:
| I think I quit after the DVD sounds
| rdiddly wrote:
| I quit (the first time) after the first three totally
| unlabeled icons appeared. Not having hovered on them, I had
| no idea there was anything more. Lesson for designers of
| scroll bars and other commonly-hidden but important UI
| elements.
| indrora wrote:
| The mobile version places an explicit "upgrades" button
| to indicate that they're clickable.
|
| perhaps it's another commentary...
| nineteen999 wrote:
| You lasted 10 minutes? I lasted about 30 seconds. Life is too
| short.
| ENGNR wrote:
| There's some pretty funny commentary in there mixed into
| the absurd overstimulation
| zemo wrote:
| you're looking at it from a framework that there's a "right"
| way to interpret a given piece of art, or that a given piece of
| art has "a point" instead of "a set of ways in which people
| interpret it". You're describing one way of interpreting it and
| then leveling a charge against the piece when, in reality, that
| charge should be leveled at that interpretation.
| allemagne wrote:
| I do believe there's an intended interpretation or "point",
| and that's what I'm commenting on. Do you disagree with this?
| zemo wrote:
| are you asking about this specific piece or about art in
| general? Either way yes I disagree.
|
| I don't know the author of this work. I don't know what
| they intended, so I can't comment on their intentions. I
| don't know if there's an "intended interpretation" or not,
| I don't know what that intended interpretation is, I don't
| know if it lines up with the interpretation you described.
| If the author intended for a specific, singular
| interpretation, I would reject that; any interpretation is
| just one of many. Some interpretations make more sense than
| others, and how a piece is interpreted can easily change
| from person to person, or even over time for a single
| person. Whatever you get out of it: it's true that that's
| what you got out of it.
| klik99 wrote:
| This is actually a 100+ year old divisive point in
| literary/media criticism - the older traditional view is
| authorial intent is the only thing that matters, the post-
| modern view is authorial intent shouldn't be considered at
| all and you should only look at the text in isolation. I
| think the sensible and most common view is that authorial
| intent should be taken into account, but should not be
| considered the final word - because you can't truly know
| what the author is intending, there may be subconscious
| things even the author isn't aware of (for example the
| complete sexlessness of HP Lovecraft is probably not
| intentional but probably telling), and how the author gets
| it wrong can be interesting and should be considered part
| of the piece as well (for example, when you mention how
| people won't watch the ocean, that's interesting, and
| should be considered part of the piece because the game
| leaves room for that kind of interpretation).
|
| TLDR, there may be an intended point, but that's not the
| only thing a piece can be judged on. The best art leaves
| room for multiple interpretations, it has a life of it's
| own beyond the creator when it's experienced by people.
| Centigonal wrote:
| I think work that contemplates a social phenomenon without
| driving home any particular opinion or moral can still be
| interesting.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _at any point during this game we could just open a new tab
| and watch the ocean on a YouTube livestream._
|
| That's a great observation.
|
| I'm not sure how to phrase this exactly, but there's something
| going on for at least some people - definitely for me - that
| the thing we're seeking refuge in are given meaning by the
| things we're seeking refuge from. Like you said, at any point
| during the game - or before, or after - I could open a new tab
| and watch the ocean on YouTube, or even watch the same thing
| that was the ending of the game. Except, _obviously_ , I
| wouldn't, because _why would I_? It would be totally random and
| arbitrary, a kind of plot _non sequitur_ you 'd complain about
| if it was a piece of fiction. This ocean scene only makes sense
| as an ending of this game, as a refuge, a contrast, a
| punchline. It's the stimulation game preceding it, that gives
| meaning to the ending.
|
| I've noticed I often feel similarly about many hobbies,
| interests, tasks, - heck, even people - they rapidly stop being
| interesting once I don't have any stressing obligation I should
| be working on instead.
|
| (My HN comment history, too, is strongly and positively
| correlated with amount of stuff I should be doing instead in my
| life, but not necessarily want to.)
| firebaze wrote:
| This is so German
| jal278 wrote:
| > Despite the HN comments complaining about it being
| overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting
| the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the
| front page.
|
| Is this like a massive HN wooosh -- how can this be the top-
| voted comment?
|
| From Neil Postman's 1985 "Amusing Ourselves to Death":
|
| > "With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous,
| incoherent present."
|
| > "Spiritual devastation is more likely to come from an enemy
| with a smiling face."
|
| It's less about whether we "enjoy" the stimulation, more about
| what kind of people we become when we lose ourselves in this
| bizarre sea of superstimuli. We're like reinforcement agents
| creating adversarial examples for each other, drawing ourselves
| further out of any sort of meaningful life, into a fever dream
| where the most desirable job for the next generation is to be
| famous for being famous [1] rather than do anything for any
| kind of deeper purpose.
|
| [1] https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/what-is-gen-zs-
| no...
| afpx wrote:
| I like your description. I sometimes wonder if the final
| equilibrium state will be most people working on addictive
| products and the rest working on addiction treatment.
| throw83288 wrote:
| I'd say with the current state of things it's more like two
| singularities in which either:
|
| - A landian-stephensian accelerationist timeline occurs
| where the majority of the urban population becomes some
| flavor of AGI-tuned VR junkie
|
| - An extreme naturalistic counterculture movement occurs
| that causes majority of the civilized world to willingly
| roll themselves back 1 or 2 centuries technologically in
| order to feel something again
| taikahessu wrote:
| Why not both?
|
| - And there has to be the third, hyperminmaxers yearning
| forever more control and power trying to be(at) the
| machine. Thus becoming a reflection of the first.
|
| - Fourth must be some sort of hybrid between denialist
| and creationist, whom I don't even want to envision
| through. Which would be a reflection of the second, but
| instead of withdrawing, they would bubble themselves into
| something terrifying version of the Amish.
| adriand wrote:
| I personally believe that at some point, many people will
| realize that the majority of the people with economic
| means are the people who are able to concentrate and
| don't waste all their time. Note that I don't mean the
| super wealthy, I'm referring to people who are solidly
| middle class and have means. I know a lot of successful
| people who aren't glued to their phones. I think there
| will be enough good and bad examples out there for people
| to start catching on.
| Loughla wrote:
| The most successful people I know absolutely are glued to
| their phones. They're networking and messaging and
| reading and planning on their phones.
|
| But from the outside it looks very similar to candy
| crush. . .
| eru wrote:
| Perhaps the current obsession will just go the way of
| heavy drinking or smoking? Ie the population will
| eventually develop some partial immunity to the allure,
| but it won't even go away completely.
| patcon wrote:
| See: Walkaway by Cory Doctorow (2017)
| ilikegreen wrote:
| Been reading their latest on interoperability.
| Interesting stuff, and a possible avenue for tech sanity
| in the upcoming years.
| bookofjoe wrote:
| "Dune: Prophecy"
|
| https://youtu.be/CzVHWNosS2o?si=NtT7P8SX3LebjIuf
| _Algernon_ wrote:
| Can't wait for the Butlerian Jihad
| cluckindan wrote:
| We are already there.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| >> Despite the HN comments complaining about it being
| overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and
| distracting the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it
| to get to the front page.
|
| > Is this like a massive HN wooosh -- how can this be the
| top-voted comment?
|
| 100% agree. I had to read that sentence and surrounding parts
| like 5 times to check if I was missing a satirical nod
| somewhere. It's like writing a review of Franz Kafka's books
| and saying "Despite what we may say about bureaucracy,
| clearly lots of people enjoy it because his books were best
| sellers!"
|
| Lots of art is there to make you think, not to "enjoy" it.
| locallost wrote:
| I think it's kind of necessary to be exposed to ideas and
| views of people like Postman to even think of them when you
| play a game like this. The top comment is disappointing, but
| so it goes.
|
| I enjoyed the game, for the attention to detail and making a
| mockery out of so many things in our daily lives that are in
| essence absurd, in such a brilliant yet simple way. The
| frowning Duolingo owl. The pillow delivery tracking made me
| chuckle. The only thing I missed was booking a an apartment
| on booking.com with a billion reminders to hurry up as the
| place might be gone any second, or doing an online check in.
| Although maybe it happened, I refreshed the game accidentally
| and never came back.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| If HNer's were as enlightened as they think they are, this
| would have been flagged and buried.
| taneq wrote:
| Spoiler warning OMG. :P
| klik99 wrote:
| Doesn't seem self-defeating if it aroused that level of
| analysis, seems like good art! Art can bring up questions that
| author didn't intend so it's often best not to bring the
| authors viewpoint into the discussion, or at least not make
| authorial intent the authority.
|
| I've heard someone say good art isn't about saying new things,
| but saying known truths in new ways and I found this very
| effective. Your question about who really stays to watch the
| ocean is interesting, and I don't think diminishes the game.
| Glyptodon wrote:
| lol, my browser crashed (low power limited memory living room
| PC) well before any ending.
| hug wrote:
| We're taking part in boiling a frog. The game starts off blank
| and peaceful with a single button inviting you to push it. It
| adds the DVD bounce, which is a nice little charming and
| nostalgic hit of dopamine. Then you get another DVD logo, which
| is a nice touch, double the points! Then you get a hydraulic
| press. Hydraulic press automation. Level ups. Audio. Oh no. Now
| it's the kind of unending audiovisual nightmare that browsing
| the modern web without adblock is, and it evolved in much the
| same way.
|
| If you keep playing it -- either to find out what the whole
| _point_ of this game is or because you are trapped in the game
| loop by your stimulation-seeking brain -- and you just keep
| building and building in overstimulating nonsense versions of
| real-world content until you are presented with the calmness of
| _it doesn 't have to be this way_.
|
| That first wave in the calm after the storm gave me literal
| physical relaxation: I felt the tenseness of my back &
| shoulders ease into a slump once the incessant babble of the
| attention-seeking components of the game went away. I felt
| _better_ than I had a moment ago. It was nice. And it was,
| counter to your point, _exactly_ a look in the mirror. Why do I
| put myself through the wringer on modern social media when I
| don 't have to?
|
| All of that to say I don't feel like the message is self-
| defeating _at all_. The dissonance is the point. Condition
| yourself as much as you like to the way things are by
| continuing to play the game, the peaceful beach is almost
| certainly nicer. Even just for 30 seconds.
|
| Why not get out in nature? Touch grass, maybe, as the kids say
| these days.
| noduerme wrote:
| I didn't find it enjoyable or soothing... I played it for about
| 30 seconds, got the point, chuckled because it was a mildly
| clever poke at the stupid engagement tactics used to addict
| people to otherwise boring and pointless actions - sort of a
| demo of how we're all dumber than lab mice, who at least get
| food for pressing a button - and then came back here to see
| that some people actually kept playing it to some sort of end.
| Which is crazy.
| 56756756756756 wrote:
| Neither the most human thing you can do is not think that deep
| on it.
| anal_reactor wrote:
| I never understood the appeal of being calm. It's fucking
| boring. Since early childhood I needed extra stimulation: first
| I'd listen to mom reading stories while I was playing with
| toys, then at school I'd listen to the teacher while playing
| games on my PSP. That allowed my brain to stay engaged. Now I
| just finished an exhausting day - I lay on the sofa, put on
| some music, have a slideshow on my computer screen, play this
| game. After finishing it, I'm feeling relaxed and tired in a
| way "now I'm ready to go to sleep". A friend of mine jokes that
| I have a motor in my ass because I can't sit still, whenever we
| meet I want to keep walking around, just for the sake of not
| sitting in one place.
|
| I honestly think that high-stimulation is a great thing, as
| long as we use it to our advantage, instead of being hindered
| by it. The essence of life is doing things against the natural
| forces of inanimate physics, rather than sitting and doing
| nothing. The more you do, the more you live. The absolutely
| worst feeling in my life that I battle as an adult is being
| tired, when my mind and body refuse to do high-stimulation
| activities, and I end up just laying in bed the entire day.
| atoav wrote:
| Having a "aha" moment while _playing_ a game is enjoyable. That
| does not mean it can 't be critical at the same time.
|
| One of most popular misconceptions in art is that art that
| deals with serious topics has to be hard to consume and no fun
| is allowed to make it good art. Your reflection alone is a
| testament to what thoughts the game produced by making you do a
| thing. Of course the stimulation has to be somewhat enjoyable,
| wouldn't be realistic otherwise - in reality this is how they
| get you.
| miltonlost wrote:
| > Despite the HN comments complaining about it being
| overwhelming and a dark reflection of how awful and distracting
| the internet is, clearly enough people enjoyed it to get to the
| front page. The stimulation torture wasn't really torture, but
| another level to the game. All the content creators whose
| inclusion at first seems like an indictment of the kinds of
| internet videos that lead to addiction or overstimulation also
| all get a pleasant shout-out which seems silly. Are these
| supposed to represent what's awful about the internet?
|
| There's a literary/artistic technique called "irony" where the
| depiction isn't meant to be taken at face-value and instead is
| actually being shown because the opposite is intended. The
| whole game is an ironic application of Stimulation techniques,
| and in order to show its negative impact, one must use them
| ironically.
| dachris wrote:
| Windows 12 sneak preview
| simpaticoder wrote:
| Wonderful comment on our noisy world. Highly recommend some sort
| of warning for users, particularly the subway surfer wormhole.
| I'm not light sensitive but even I now have a headache.
| ic4l wrote:
| In case you are wondering this actually beats the game:
| setInterval(() => Array.from(document.querySelectorAll('.main-
| btn, .upgrade-icon, .press-collect, .press-btn,
| .collect')).forEach(item => item.click()), 50);
|
| After around level 40 things get very very slow.
| kkarpkkarp wrote:
| such sites isn't fun anymore since I've discovered after the
| first click you have to just press enter key and do not release
| it
| navane wrote:
| I'm going way too hard on this. Help.
| itissid wrote:
| more fun at https://ncase.me/
| sprokolopolis wrote:
| This is reminding me of an ascii art game called Candy Box. It
| begins very minimal like this, but unfolds into a wonderfully
| imaginative RPG game.
|
| https://candybox2.github.io/candybox/
| blueaquilae wrote:
| This is a great piece of art, it has a message and it capture
| you. When you get the final message you feel dumb. Thanks for
| this original piece!
| uptownfunk wrote:
| This is insane. We are wired so strangely.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| I have a serious question. If I know someone who plays such type
| of games, should I worry about his health?
|
| I mean games that do not require to make any decisions at all or
| little as possible - similar to this one. Just numbers going up
| tene wrote:
| On its own it's not necessarily an issue, but I'd consider it a
| warning sign. The times in my life that I've obsessively played
| games like this have been times when my emotional health was
| suffering. I felt overwhelmed by life and the world, and games
| like this gave me a synthetic feeling of progress and
| accomplishment, gave me something extremely simple to do that I
| couldn't fail at. Games like this were a symptom of my problems
| at the time, not the cause, and when my life got more stable, I
| lost interest in playing them.
|
| If they're playing in moderation, just to pass the time during
| otherwise-boring events, probably not an issue. If they're
| pretty much always playing, or if it's intruding on their life,
| or if they're not otherwise engaging with the world, consider
| worrying about their emotional health.
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Thank you! I noticed too I played much more games when in low
| mood seasons. Especially Minecraft (inb4: yes, I'm 40yo but
| play Minecraft) has a lot of small quests I could achieve.
| Also, the old Diablo I play on my phone (DevilutionX) allows
| me to kill time (and beasts) but I find it repeatable, yet
| still satisfying.
| NoboruWataya wrote:
| Why does this feel like the most productive thing I've done all
| day?
| 4b11b4 wrote:
| This really drives home the point eh?
| johnneville wrote:
| i went into this expecting a quick, shallow, PoC game to make a
| fast point. i was rewarded as the game continued to add
| incredible depth, showing real care and thought. if there's one
| thing i can recommend, it's to read all the emails. they are
| hilarious and gave me the most joy. i burst out laughing while
| reading some which took me over my stimulation threshold and
| allowed me to fully embrace the absurdity of the entire thing
| (which i was initially playing somewhat competitively).
| OpFour wrote:
| Ha! Level 32 bitches! Mmmm... I'm now sitting on the beach,
| enjoying the quiet...
| sharkweek wrote:
| Neal.fun keeping weird internet alive, one micro game at a time.
|
| Other favorites:
|
| * Absurd Trolley Problem: https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-
| problems/
|
| * Password game: https://neal.fun/password-game/
| ewhanley wrote:
| This is a Black Mirror level hellscape. It really does capture
| the overstimulation of the modern world without filters. I found
| myself simultaneously anxious and inclined to keep clicking so I
| can unlock the next tier. It's over the top but not by much.
| utopcell wrote:
| Oh no. Last time [1] I wasted half a day clicking on buttons.
| There were some aliens, some AI stuff, then something happened to
| (this) universe. Never again!
|
| Many years back, someone had made a clicker parody game
| internally at Google (go/swe-simulator-game). You clicked to
| write CLs, DDs, build a team, get into committees, get promoted.
| I wish that was made available externally, it was hilarious and
| painful at the same time.
|
| [1] https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
| ayaros wrote:
| See also: Antimatter Dimensions, Universal Paperclips, and Candy
| Box 1 & 2.
| 31337Logic wrote:
| Brilliant!!
|
| Thank you!
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| As a 5 Time World Universal Paperclip Champion, I think this game
| is garbage.
| wcfrobert wrote:
| I had to stop my lofi Spotify playlist and my Pomodoro timer to
| play this game... This is a work of art!
| Nekorosu wrote:
| It took some effort to escape this trap. :D Great!
| nidnogg wrote:
| I was having a pretty bad day at work and this brightened me up.
| Thanks!
| StefanBatory wrote:
| It is very scary for me because I... actually enjoyed it.
|
| I know the point the game was making. And that's why it scares me
| even more.
| anonyonoor wrote:
| I accidentally got addicted to crypto trading and made 34 million
| stimulation before I realized there was a "win game" button.
|
| I guess this game is more representative than we'd like to think.
| stavros wrote:
| "I accidentally got addicted" is such a wonderful phrase.
| windowshopping wrote:
| What is the win game button? I also got up to a pretty high
| stimulation and never saw any such button.
| noonething wrote:
| It's the icon of water waves.
| spopejoy wrote:
| Hahaha I thought my mobile browser finally crashed after I
| clicked that
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| Yeah, mobile devices struggle with this game, mine
| crashed as well after clicking on this button.
|
| normally you would be shown a video of calming waves and
| the credits of the game, with all the other noise and
| distractions disappearing.
| navane wrote:
| Luckily the first time I finished it on PC and got the
| ending right. My phone also crashed the browser upon
| ending button.
| pprunty wrote:
| dopamineeeee come to meeeeee
| timzaman wrote:
| fantastic. very interactive and artistic. fun game almost.
| snake42 wrote:
| I finished the game and immediately went to pick up my phone to
| check Instagram. Before I started I had just been thinking about
| how my lack of capacity to focus has been causing me to get
| nothing done. Not sure how to escape/re-train myself.
| bijant wrote:
| window.$nuxt.$children[1].$children[0].$children[0].stimulation =
| 999999
| codethief wrote:
| Unfortunately, at some point (while I was getting 5-10k SPS),
| there was this blue droplet(?) (for a lack of a better word)
| passing down my screen. Tapping it crashed the game for me on
| Firefox for Android in the sense that pretty much everything
| turned non-responsive after that. :\
|
| EDIT: Almost crashed Chromium on Android / Vanadium, too.
| cess11 wrote:
| That was fun, can't wait for more content!
|
| Until then I'm returning to http://trimps.github.io/.
| emidoots wrote:
| This is so toxic, I love it! Great work, love that it has an
| ending. Donated a bit to you as well.
| EcommerceFlow wrote:
| I think I'd get addicted to a fake crypto trading game
| Aeolun wrote:
| My 6 year old son was entertained for about 2 minutes. Not enough
| stimulation in this one.
| 4ggr0 wrote:
| i finished the game in 20mins, got a headache now. very creative,
| i like it.
|
| what happens after you buy the trip to the ocean? the game hung
| up at this point on my phone, seemed to use a lot of RAM. lots of
| animations were lagging from quite early on.
| StevenNunez wrote:
| That was delightful.
| mansilladev wrote:
| Anyone get to Zombocom level?
| sergiotapia wrote:
| Thank for the stimulation!
| rwesty wrote:
| I was able to find a bug to get lots of clicks. Buy at least one
| bouncing DVD, open dev tools into responsive mode and make the
| screen width 52pixels (the lowest allowed). The DVDs will then
| bounce with each frame, racking up a bunch of points.
| joshchernoff wrote:
| setInterval(()=>{$0.click()}, 1); and weeeeeee
| kernelguardian wrote:
| const button = document.querySelector(".main-btn");
|
| if (button) { const clickButtonMultipleTimes = async () => {
| while (true) { const userInput = prompt("Enter the number of
| times to click the button (or type 'exit' to stop):");
| if (userInput === null || userInput.toLowerCase() === 'exit') {
| alert("Exiting the click process."); break;
| } const clicks = parseInt(userInput, 10);
| if (isNaN(clicks) || clicks < 0) { alert("Please
| enter a valid non-negative number."); continue;
| } for (let i = 0; i < clicks; i++) {
| button.click(); } alert(`Clicked the
| button ${clicks} time(s)!`); } };
| clickButtonMultipleTimes();
|
| } else { alert("The button with class 'main-btn' was not found on
| this page."); }
| t0wk wrote:
| Well done Neal and team. I clicked around and chuckled at the
| obvious stimulation "memes", but quickly felt a compulsion to
| "win". Ended up scoring huge with the crypto mini game and
| unlocked everything. I'd say the biggest surprise was clicking on
| the ocean without thought (since I was mindlessly clicking at
| everything), and was left a bit disappointed that it ended.
| Lesson learned: Read everything carefully before clicking.
| SebastianSosa wrote:
| Neal.. screw you. Youve robbed me of 15 mins. So far....
| rsyring wrote:
| It was 50 mins to finish for me. But I had to look at my
| browser history to tell. I would have guessed 20-30 mins.
| nexoft wrote:
| I was sucked in it for 1 hour
| dandigangi wrote:
| This was entertaining as all hell.
| AirMax98 wrote:
| I'm blown away. Literally laughed out loud when the lo-fi beat
| kicked in. Neal has outdone himself here.
| klik99 wrote:
| Really wonderful, worth playing towards the end!
|
| I remember cookie clicker taking days to finish when it first
| released, I like this is a self-contained experience that ends,
| and really generates the kind of anxiety it's trying to comment
| on by the end, and then gracefully steps away at the right time.
| fl1pper wrote:
| that's very fun! good job!
| dogman123 wrote:
| Did anyone else get the seemingly _actual_ NordVPN that clicked
| through to NordVPN? Wondering if they sponsored this.
| itishappy wrote:
| With the affiliate link!
| crubier wrote:
| What have we done! This is a great piece of art, reflecting on
| current state of society
| sigmonsays wrote:
| xdotool click --repeat 1000 --delay 10 1
| vardump wrote:
| Fantastic. Such a relief to turn that thing off!
| SaggyDoomSr wrote:
| OMG. I wanted to get the end, but I was doing it on mobile. I
| upswiped once, and leftswiped once, so it took THREE tries. The
| first two tries were each more than 10 minutes in. When I was
| finally, done, I realized I had skipped my planned workout.
|
| Then it hit me: Point. made. dammit.
| shaneprrlt wrote:
| This was fun lol. There's something calming about being inundated
| with stimulation.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| I'm surprised it does actually work very well.
|
| The whole earn coins to purchase faster ways to earn coins is
| objectively stupid, I'm not going to do anything with them but I
| still feel like I need to earn more and feel good when I unlocked
| new stuff.
|
| Is that Pavlov conditioning ? Used to buy new stuff and always
| make more money.
| randomcatuser wrote:
| haha true, the ultimate meta. why do we feel the need to earn
| more coins? the game prescriptively doesn't say how it _should_
| be played - a player could well be content with rain sounds....
| tonymet wrote:
| s/coins/dollars
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| > I'm surprised it does actually work very well.
|
| probably you got lucky with having correct browser or smth...
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| Firefox Android. Usually that's the first one to break
| website, that and safari.
| lilbonaparte wrote:
| Yall, this was freaking great. I took a break from coding to play
| it, really scratch the itch. Yes I have ADHD.
| parpfish wrote:
| what? that one egg was twenty eggs?
| alex201 wrote:
| I don't want to read comments, but I can't be the only one who
| wrote a script to click forever and turned the page into a
| chaotic, laggy nightmare. Pure art honestly
| btown wrote:
| The real hidden gem here is the hilarious 40 minute mermaid-
| themed true crime podcast parody that you'll only hear a portion
| of if you progress quickly. As far as I can tell, it's fully
| custom-made for this game? Can't find any references to the
| characters online.
|
| https://stimulation-clicker.neal.fun/ sounds/true-crime.mp3 -
| it's hosted on Cloudflare, but even so I don't want to cost OP
| significant bandwidth, so join the two strings above for the
| direct link.
|
| "Aww, he was all cat 'n tonic when he first saw her." An absolute
| classic. I would do anything to know more about how this came to
| exist.
| gradus_ad wrote:
| Likely a ChatGPT masterpiece
| btown wrote:
| I say this as someone who's tried all the state-of-the-art
| voice generation systems: so far, _nobody_ has trained an AI
| to "chew the scenery" nearly as effectively and effusively
| as these voice actors having the time of their lives playing
| southern belles and bean company owners who are blisteringly
| envious that a dead mermaid is stealing their spotlight by
| dying from a megalodon attack.
| withinboredom wrote:
| Haha, the problem is: we still haven't gotten AI to
| generate voices! "State of the art" just uses regular TTS
| engines and then adds extra inflection as "special sauce"
| or stretches it out, etc. At least, that is how it works
| for these AI generators that need to do it "at scale." When
| you can spend more on classic speech models, you can go
| well beyond that (see Siri, Google, Alexa, etc).
| 383toast wrote:
| for people that don't want to click a lot,
|
| paste in "setInterval(() => document.querySelector('.main-
| btn').click(), 20)" into the browser console, clicks 50x per
| second for you :)
| ccvannorman wrote:
| Speed-ran the game using this (well, I injected jquery first
| to select the element using $() because I'm an absolute
| Baboon) in about 45 seconds, spam clicking all the upgrades,
| and clicks stopped going up after hitting
| "342,044,125,797,992,850,000,000,000,000 stimulation" with
| 10k clicks per second.
|
| What a ride. Love the implied commentary on our over-
| stimulated lives!
| anais9 wrote:
| I envy your rig - mine glitched a lot to get it in <3min.
| Might not be doing myself a service by actually answering
| the Duolingo questions via LLM...
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-J0ppP-H9s
| rkagerer wrote:
| Ah, a new yardstick for browser performance :-P
| p0w3n3d wrote:
| Sir that's true evil! That's evil you know?
| stanmancan wrote:
| I wonder what the limiting factor is here; I'm currently at
|
| 332,446,225,163,762,970,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
| ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00
| 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0
| 00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
| 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
| ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00
| 0,000,000 stimulation
|
| 131,903,042,042,866,960,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
| ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00
| 0,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0
| 00,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,
| 000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
| ,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,00
| 0,000,000 stimulation per second
|
| And there doesn't seem to be an end in sight.
| lightedman wrote:
| going to the ocean is the end, I got there with only a
| couple dozen million stim
| SamSkjord wrote:
| My brain has never been happier to see a credits screen
| bambax wrote:
| > _I injected jquery first to select the element using $()_
|
| In Chrome and Firefox, $ and $$ are available in the
| console as replacements for document.querySelector and
| document.querySelectorAll, respectively.
|
| This doesn't work in scripts though; only in the console.
| In a script you can use this: const $ =
| document.querySelector.bind(document);
| myfonj wrote:
| Fun fact: browsers' devtools consoles have de-facto
| standardized convenience aliases for querying the DOM,
| similar to jQuery [0][1][2][3][4]. This means you could do
| something as simple as:
| setInterval(()=>$('.main-btn')?.click(), 0)
| setInterval(()=>$$('.upgrade')?.forEach(_=>_.click()),
| 1000)
|
| to create the simplest dependency-free cheat speed runner.
| (And, as mentioned earlier, shrinking -- or logically also
| zooming in -- the page results in more DVD bounces.)
|
| [0] https://devtoolstips.org/tips/en/query-dom-from-
| console/ [1] https://firefox-source-
| docs.mozilla.org/devtools-user/web_co... [2] https://develo
| per.chrome.com/docs/devtools/console/utilities... [3]
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/devtools-
| gu... [4] https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/docum
| entation/Ap...
| r14n wrote:
| I get a reference error when I try this (chrome stable on
| linux)
| myfonj wrote:
| Ah, thanks for the heads-up, apparently there is
| something borked in Chromium wrt $ / $$ encapsulation, as
| it seems they are nor reachable from the (global) context
| setInterval so doing `window.$ = $; window.$$ = $$;`
| fixes that in Chrome. Not sure why. (Yet again
| embarrassed myself by trying a snippet that "simply must
| work (r) according all documentations (tm)" in single a
| browser only before posting. Sigh.)
| d6e wrote:
| The real answer to the web 2.0 appified social media hell
| hole is automation :D
| UltraSane wrote:
| If you shrink the window down as small as possible the DVD
| logos collide super fast and earn a ton of stimulation.
| qiine wrote:
| ah ! clever
| kinderjaje wrote:
| thanks, u saved me few clicks ^^
| jml7c5 wrote:
| Reminds me a bit of The Onion's "A Very Fatal Murder" podcast.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Very_Fatal_Murder
| ehsankia wrote:
| Was the mukbang also custom?
| syncsynchalt wrote:
| Yes, the actor has a credit at the end.
| anon7000 wrote:
| I noticed the podcast at one point mentions neal.fun, so
| definitely custom made!
| duskwuff wrote:
| The podcast makes a couple of winking references to other
| bits of the game, including a mention of "that time that poor
| boy was pushed into that hydraulic press".
| silisili wrote:
| Absolutely. Reminded me of all the effort GTA spent on radio,
| to much fanfare.
|
| The entire production value is fantastic. Glad to see Neal
| expanding. This is only a half step away from something less
| jokey, and more marketable.
|
| If that's the path he chooses, of course. But judging by his
| smiling face in the center of it all wearing a poor fitting
| crown, I think he's just in it for the lulz. And I may respect
| that even more.
| synctext wrote:
| Less jokey?
|
| This great packaging has a critical social media tone for me.
| Absolutely amazing fun and addictive showing almost dark
| patterns. For a deep dive: "Ethics of the attention economy:
| The problem of social media addiction", [1]
|
| [1] https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-
| core/c...
| joseda-hg wrote:
| It's weird, it seems like it's the only custom made thing on
| the game, why only that one?
| londons_explore wrote:
| Loads of other stuff is custom made... All those emails for
| example.
|
| Maybe someone made the podcast for some other reason and
| never released it?
| soneca wrote:
| Reaction streamer seems custom made as well
| Twisol wrote:
| If I'm not mistaken, that's Ludwig! A friend of mine is a
| big fan; I was surprised to see him in this game("").
| rzzzt wrote:
| It's him, the name also appears in the credit roll at the
| end.
| eleveriven wrote:
| I started listening to the podcast at first, but then it just
| became impossible. Really awesome!
| kregasaurusrex wrote:
| Thanks for the direct link- this makes understimulated
| listening much easier & it was easy to miss within the
| cacophony of everything else.
| djhworld wrote:
| This was so much fun and yet so awful at the same time, I was
| laughing out loud at some of the escalations.
|
| At the end I was losing track of my mouse cursor and fatigue was
| setting in, the final ending scene was such a calming sense of
| relief!
| re wrote:
| Can't seem to get a few of the achievements:
|
| * Roaring Kitty (Definitely made over 100k on bitcoin trades)
|
| * Polyglot (Duolingo no longer appears -- did I need to never
| answer any incorrectly? It seemed like incorrectly answered
| questions re-appeared later)
| Sniffnoy wrote:
| Yeah Polyglot requires not making any mistakes; mess up and
| you'll have to restart to get it. I can't seem to get Roaring
| Kitty either -- and I should note, you can check how much
| you've made in the stock market with the "Screen Time" button,
| so I can say I've made over 4 million... probably it's not
| working...
| dsego wrote:
| I love the jab at duolingo sending you threatening e-mails.
| tyfighter wrote:
| I must not be the target audience for this kind of thing, but I
| really don't get it. The few times I've opened HN today I've seen
| this at the top, and the number of points has been higher. I've
| opened it 3 times, and clicked the button, and some other icons
| showed up below. The first time I didn't open even bother to
| mouse over the icons, so I didn't know you'd be buying things. I
| closed before I got to 50 stimulations. The second time, I did
| hover over the icons showing up, and clicked a couple, and
| nothing seemed to happen other than spending stimulation, so I
| closed before 100. I just did this a third time as it's now over
| 1200 points, and I really just don't understand what is going on.
| What am I missing?
| risenshinetech wrote:
| I think this is a scenario where if you have to ask, you'll
| never know. Perhaps, ironically, there just wasn't enough
| immediate stimulation for you to continue...
| tyfighter wrote:
| I don't even know what a clicker game is or why one would be
| stimulating.
| 383toast wrote:
| for people that don't want to click a lot,
|
| paste in "setInterval(() => document.querySelector('.main-
| btn').click(), 20)" into the browser console, clicks 50x per
| second for you :)
| tonymet wrote:
| that's just early game strategy. mid game you need apple late
| game you need crypto
| youtubeuser wrote:
| I WENT TO THE OCEAN
| jcovik wrote:
| The stimulation from this fewer experience was so intense that my
| phone started to freeze up, lol.
| tdfirth wrote:
| The best strategy is to write a helper function in the console to
| click for you. Then invest heavily in the DVDs, DVD bounce rate,
| stimulation per bounce, and general SPS increases.
|
| I reached several quintillion stimulation, at which point I was
| offered to purchase "go to the beach" for 2 million. This ends
| the game and plays a relaxing beach video.
|
| You too can get to the beach in just 5 minutes.
| oraphalous wrote:
| Pro tip - shrink your window to a tiny box and the dvds really
| bounce like crazy.
| BigParm wrote:
| How do I get out of "serene mode"? Booooooo
| radioxoma wrote:
| Well, this escalated quickly.
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| 0 DVD speedrun in 5m42s (using the manual auto hydraulic press
| glitch), but you can probably get better with good RNG.
| nicetryguy wrote:
| Major Cookie Clicker / Upgrade Complete vibes with this with a
| touch of social critique, love the descent into absolute chaos.
| Fun game and incredible artwork!
| defart wrote:
| Quit at lvl 30. It was actually very satisfying to enjoy the
| quiet after the experience.
| phkahler wrote:
| I came here after checking in on my Cookie Clicker tab and this
| was number 1 on HN. It couldn't be.... it is.
| nomilk wrote:
| Anyone else find the combination of rain sounds and lofi
| strangely soothing. I feel less distracted with both playing.
| glitchc wrote:
| Magical!
| super_normal wrote:
| brah i beat this game in 4.5 seconds yall dont even know about
| the epic skip i found el oh l
| tempestn wrote:
| Helpful for cold hands too
| loeg wrote:
| After a few minutes it's burning 25% of an M1 core in Chrome,
| lol.
| Drblessing wrote:
| This is the greatest thing I've seen in a few years. Perfectly
| encapsulates the simulacrum we find ourselves in the modern
| world.
| darepublic wrote:
| If you manually decrease window.innerWidth and window.innerHeight
| to low values (i.e. 50 and 50) then the bouncing dvd gets
| triggered ceaselessly. I enjoyed this unironically :D
| geuis wrote:
| Only complaint is the sound implementation causes my background
| audio (audiobook and music) to pause. Maybe Neal could add a mute
| button?
| Jeremy1026 wrote:
| That was an enjoyable half-hour. Well done.
| motohagiography wrote:
| unbelievable. he's cracked the code in a few areas. what is the
| one thing that all of these stochastic processes implement? e.g.
| is there a rhythm or proportion of them to each other, or a
| shape?
|
| It's not a simple bifucation process or fractal, it's something
| else. I use fractals in music and they are too unstable to
| produce this ebb and flow of consonance and dissonance the game
| uses in the evolution of each widget.
|
| it's practically a hypnosis method. what is the underlying
| pattern in these?
| deeviant wrote:
| Never felt so attacked yet catered too at the same time.
|
| A masterpiece.
| wkjagt wrote:
| First thought: this is just silly. Then 5 minutes later: let me
| just get the ASMR slime video for 4000 stimulations before
| closing this. Now 10 minutes in I added the Listen to a Murder
| True Crime podcast for 10,000 stimulations, upgraded my hydraulic
| press, and now waiting for one of my 13 (technicolor upgraded)
| DVD logos to hit a corner so I can multiply my points by 10.
| uptownhr wrote:
| thank you for having an end. i think i was going to play forever.
| resonious wrote:
| Resizing your browser window to be very small with the DVD
| bouncer is a pretty good cheat.
| danielvaughn wrote:
| What a unique little site, I love all those little experiments. I
| feel weirdly proud of my 95.5% perfect circle:
| https://neal.fun/perfect-circle/
| deadbabe wrote:
| The next thing this thing needs is a leaderboard.
| tangjurine wrote:
| give me meaning not dopamine
| IanCal wrote:
| I know this is a take on the internet but it's a bit on the nose
| to also have it request to send your data to over a hundred
| different companies.
| rf15 wrote:
| I actually thought it very subtle, considering it's usually
| thousands
| ryan-allen wrote:
| I enjoyed the humor and the ending, it reminds me of some DOS
| games I grew up with. Nice work Neal :)
|
| Clicker games can be considered banal, but when there is an
| interesting unexpected story or comedy behind the progressions,
| they are fun little pieces of art.
|
| Two games I have played in the past of this ilk are Spaceplan [0]
| and Nodebuster [1], both of which only take around an hour or so
| to progress through. Fun and interesting like Neal's game.
|
| [0] http://www.spaceplan.click/ [1]
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/3107330/Nodebuster/
| darod wrote:
| that was wild, kudos to you.
| _def wrote:
| I got so drawn into it that only an accidental page refresh got
| me out of it. Well done. Also the banner texts are really funny
| :D
| matt3210 wrote:
| I went back to this on a desktop and discovered the bitcoin
| stims... got to the ocean soon after
| imperialdrive wrote:
| Very fun, but also, it froze a couple times when I was doing well
| :(
| nayuki wrote:
| By un-disabling the stock market buy and sell buttons, I was able
| to buy even when I didn't have enough money (stimulation), and I
| was also able to short-sell shares. So funny!
| fastball wrote:
| Finally, Universal Paperclips for the brainrot era.
| BohdanPetryshyn wrote:
| I not only enjoyed it as a satire on the overstimulation problem
| but also learned that my compulsive-obsessive syndrome has a high
| correlation with overstimulation.
| jaykoronivo wrote:
| Pretty good! Like it
| verelo wrote:
| I wish it didn't reset on refresh lol...
| epigramx wrote:
| I reached the end.
|
| Not sure that will help me end by stock market addiction. nice
| game.
| mproud wrote:
| The same person behind the Absurd Trolley Problems:
| https://neal.fun/absurd-trolley-problems/
| jliptzin wrote:
| I found a cool cheat. Get a few DVDs going then resize the window
| quickly in a bunch of directions. It'll group them all together
| and you'll get a ton of stim all at once every time you resize
| the window. It also makes the sound effect sound like a Geiger
| counter.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| DVD emblems don't appear for me... the don't appear in stats
| either
| pks016 wrote:
| How do you not kill the Chicken? I was sad when it died :(
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I finished the game. Got to level 32 and bought the upgrade Go to
| the Ocean for 2,000,000 stimulation. The audio chilled out and it
| went to the credits.
| HiPHInch wrote:
| I find it frustrating that after purchasing an item, the email
| notifications are endless. They include every minor update, like
| the delivery person stopping for a bagel. It feels like my phone
| is constantly bombarded with unnecessary information these days.
| smj-edison wrote:
| This. Just send me one email with a receipt and a link to the
| tracker. I'll open it if I want to know.
| beachandbytes wrote:
| Game of the year so far!
| xivzgrev wrote:
| Oh man that is wild. As soon as I added subway surfer, it became
| so much easier to keep clicking the simulation button. I was
| watching that random video and don't even notice I keep clicking.
| Tokkemon wrote:
| Holy moly that was an incredible experience. Well done!
|
| The increasingly-dark Duolingo bird has to be my favorite part.
| Maybe I didn't get all the easter eggs there, but I almost wish
| the whole game just turned into an elaborate plot for vengeance
| for the owls.
| m00dy wrote:
| 'allow pasting' let boom = $ setInterval(() => { boom('#__layout
| > div > div > div.main-area > div > div.main-btn-wrapper > div >
| button').click() }, 100);
| LincolnedList wrote:
| Its such a contrast between this game and the Doom gallery
| experience that reached the top earlier.
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| This was my first time visiting the website, and Neal has truly
| mastered the art of bringing fun to seemingly boring things.
| crsv wrote:
| This was an incredible piece of art, and I say this unironically.
| Absolutely incredible.
| fouronnes3 wrote:
| You can cheese the start by making the window really small, which
| makes the dvd logo bounces happen really fast!
| awanderingmind wrote:
| There is a lesson in here... I can recommend playing to the end.
| The contrast to the frenetic pace of the game is like an
| epiphany.
| justinl33 wrote:
| while(1) document.querySelector('.main-btn').click();
| __mharrison__ wrote:
| My takeaway from this is to get in the right side of interest.
|
| Once you start making money with the crypto, it goes fast. One
| could say this applies to real life (stock market or crypto). But
| at the start, it is slow.
| patrock wrote:
| It's nice that you can speed up the game by just reducing the
| viewport to an absolute minimum and have the DVD bouncers do all
| the work.
| Bulbasaur2015 wrote:
| haha i love this
| _kidlike wrote:
| There should be a warning for people with ADHD... also for
| epilepsy...
|
| other than that, one of the most creative clickers.
| mandalorianer wrote:
| A wonderful mirror for todays society and a great tool for
| education purposes!
| lovegrenoble wrote:
| fantastic, interactive and artistic
| cantalopes wrote:
| I accidentally refreshed it while checking simulation email and
| the app doesn't store state in local storage:(
| cantalopes wrote:
| I have accidentally refeshed the page while checking simulation
| email and the app doesn't store state in localstorage:(
| samjanis wrote:
| Just did 2+ hours of fascinated clicking as if I found a new part
| of Wikipedia, mainly because I assumed the "one way trip" to the
| ocean was a euphemism for what happened to the Titan submersible.
| test21311111 wrote:
| hvbuv
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| This is perfect!
|
| Just one request, can we get dual or more subway surfers!
| maltris wrote:
| The sad but funny part of this is: If I sent this to my computer
| science class of 12-13 year olds, 50% would not even get the joke
| and just go and play it like their usual brainrot cookie clicker.
| pikseladam wrote:
| If you like this kind of games, please give
| https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/index2.html a try
| kallistisoft wrote:
| Found a weird bug... I've got a 3 monitor setup and the
| background animations (rain + pinwheel) only appears on 2 of the
| monitors... If the window straddles two of the monitors the
| animations only play on one half of the window!
| dschuetz wrote:
| my new idle clicker
| devonsolomon wrote:
| My favorite part was my iPhone struggling to run this thing once
| it got busy, and me desperate to not lose the game. Took me back
| to the old days!
| siraben wrote:
| The crypto prices were so unrealistic. I was able to just keep
| buying Bitcoin with 2x leverage when it was low and make millions
| when it subsequently went up after. I barely paid attention to
| any other ways to make stimulation. Please implement liquidation
| mechanisms and more volatility.
| panstromek wrote:
| This is so in good in a way that is truly hard to describe
| albert_e wrote:
| Somewhat on same lines as this "challenge" and its responses ...
|
| https://x.com/hobdaydesign/status/1634525287403728897
| Adachi91 wrote:
| This is also a good example of how horrible the web has become
| and how inefficient JavaScript programmers are.
|
| Even if you hit the "end" none of the elements are cleaned up so
| will continue to use cycles in the background. If it's supposed
| to be a permanent end, then you should remove all elements
| besides the serenity media.
| harywilke wrote:
| This reminds me of the early days of Facebook. All silly click
| games.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Resize vertically to break all limits.
| milgrim wrote:
| Is this Frog Fractions 3?
| ngcazz wrote:
| I have ADHD. This is absolutely a health and safety hazard.
| eleveriven wrote:
| I thought my head was going to explode by the end... At some
| point during the game (right at the very end) I couldn't even
| find my cursor on the screen anymore hahaha
| febin wrote:
| Enjoy
|
| let button = document.querySelector('.main-btn');
| document.querySelector('.main-btn'); if (button) { let clickCount
| = 0; const interval = setInterval(() => { button.click();
| clickCount++; if (clickCount >= 10000000) {
| clearInterval(interval); console.log('Clicked 1000 times!'); } },
| 10); // Adjust the interval (10ms) if necessary } else {
| console.log('Button not found!'); }
| agnishom wrote:
| I could feel my blood pressure going up...
| Aissen wrote:
| At first, I thought it was just a clicker; then it reminded me of
| the game "Don't Move"
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/334350/Dont_Move/ which is a
| very short experiment on what is a game. Finally, I realized it's
| something else entirely, and even more annoying.
| kaues wrote:
| This worked for me to go all the way to the end of the game:
|
| setInterval(function() { document.querySelectorAll('button,
| .upgrade-icon').forEach((button) => button.click()) }, 1)
| siraben wrote:
| Replayed it to get a lower time, got 16m 35s.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| What browser are you using?
|
| This is great but I can't make it work reliably. It crashed both
| on Android Chrome (a while after buying on-screen banners) and on
| Opera dekstop (earlier, before reaching crypto).
| vinc wrote:
| I feel drained, and sad that I forgot to feed the chicken.
| aizk wrote:
| Great website!
| Artoooooor wrote:
| My phone became overstimulated and hot :o It is actually
| addictive even when I know it's totally stupid. Good to know I am
| not resistant to these "games". Nice experiment, thanks for
| sharing!
| lupire wrote:
| Warning: in Android Firefox, shop UI goes off screen and the game
| breaks, have to reload to start over.
| detectivestory wrote:
| so cool
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| So much stimulation it nearly melted my phone down, it actually
| froze after a while. What a work of art.
| RandyOrion wrote:
| Haha. Nice little idle game. Buy and sell Bitcoin for what win.
| airstrike wrote:
| My most efficient hack without JS: get the hydraulic press, start
| it, and click once to collect 1,000 stimulation. Then spam the
| space bar repeatedly to get another 1,000 for every key press
| kinderjaje wrote:
| Thanks for burning my phone
| bheadmaster wrote:
| I had a great run and accidentally reloaded my page :(
|
| Feature request: save current state in local storage so I can
| resume when I open it back again.
| waltbosz wrote:
| You have to obtain the Item Shop upgrade, then buy the "Sign in
| with Google" item from shop, then sign in, then you can save
| your state to your Google Drive by pressing Ctrl+/S.
| boringg wrote:
| Woah that was intense and totally unhinged. At the same time
| fantastic.
| devmor wrote:
| Love the idea, but after a couple minutes this just gave me a
| headache with all the different videos, sounds and animations
| going on. I don't think I'm cut out for new age dopamine
| generation.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| I thought I recognized that name. Neal.Fun made the password
| game.
| GNOMES wrote:
| the whispering/eating guy is so tilting lol
| qwertox wrote:
| Noooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!! I dragged it down and it refreshed the
| page.
| amingilani wrote:
| This is like Universal Paperclips.
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