Paperclips

It&#x27;s a really great game that is best approached without too many spoilers. Know that the game becomes more complex and engaging as it goes on. There is a definite end and takes about 5 hours to complete if played well.<p>[spoiler]<p>It&#x27;s the &quot;Paperclip maximizer&quot; thought experiment put into game form and you play as the AI. The game is divided into roughly three stages. The first you are the AI for some company and are tasked with producing a profit and using the profit to game trust and eventually conquer humanity. The second stage is post-human Earth stage where you convert the planet to paperclips. The final stage involves sending probes to explore space and do battle with rouge AIs and convert the universe into paperclips. There is end where you can select to either defeat the AIs and dismantle yourself into paperclips or you can listen to rouge AIs and start over in an alternative universe with some small modifier edited.<p>It does a really good job of exposing you to uncommonly large numbers and does a good job of presenting you with massive scale. There is a lot of joy seeing the game become increasingly complex.<p>[&#x2F;spoiler]

Note: if you close a tab and reopen later, it continues where you left off. So no need to lose sleep, it has localStorage :-)

Well I just stayed up all night playing this. RIP me.<p>I enjoyed it a lot, though the gameplay during the final stage was less balanced and entertaining. Fantastic ending though!

I&#x27;ve beaten this. It&#x27;s a silly, insightful, weird, and repetitive cautionary tale. Without spoiling too much, the ending leaves you with a terrible sense of emptiness, but is still quite satisfying.

The author should publish an API for this game, and allow AIs to play it. Then extend to multiple competing companies. And then extend to a simulation of a full economy.

This is the third time I&#x27;ve seen this posted this week. I don&#x27;t know if it isn&#x27;t getting any responses because the game looks deceptively basic at first, or because the people who played it long enough to know better haven&#x27;t come back.

Warning: If you have work to do, do not start this game.

This is amazing! I&#x27;ve wasted two whole hours on this. Great way to spend a Sunday :) Spoilers aside, I&#x27;d love to know how the creator tested this!

<p><pre><code> . Universal Paperclips . a game by Frank Lantz . combat programming by Bennett Foddy . &#x27;Riversong&#x27; by Tonto&#x27;s Expanding Headband used by kind permission of Malcolm Cecil &gt; © 2017 Everybody House Games</code></pre>

Using typematic (keeping the &quot;Enter&quot; key pressed on the &quot;Make Paperclip&quot; button) makes the beginning of the game far less tedious in my opinion: xset r rate 200 255

Once I started this, I didn&#x27;t stop until I&#x27;d finished the game. It&#x27;s a very good incremental game, especially if you&#x27;re into AI lore. I loved it.

This is a landmark achievement in video games.

I lost 5 hours to this on Friday and made 5 octillion paperclips.

So it&#x27;s an idle game in JavaScript (or equivalent). Yet my iPhone is pretty hot after 30mn playing.<p>Is it mining or something ?

Why do I make more clips than I sell and still my stock shrinks? :)

This is definitely not merely what it appears to be.

This is an excellent game in its genre! It has some rough spots; if you do the wrong thing at key points, it can take much, much, much longer to complete than it should. It does have an ending, which is great as well. All around, wonderful game.

Isn&#x27;t it just a clone of classic Cookie Clicker?<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;orteil.dashnet.org&#x2F;cookieclicker&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;orteil.dashnet.org&#x2F;cookieclicker&#x2F;</a>

SPOILER:<p>After &quot;full autonomy&quot; is attained, should it still be producing paperclips? Because mine is no longer producing paperclips, and I can&#x27;t see any way to proceed other than producing more paperclips.<p>EDIT: I understand it now. It is working as intended.<p>EDIT2: Nitpick: in the second (?) stage, there&#x27;s a stat for &quot;MWs&#x2F;sec&quot; power consumption... this should just be &quot;MW&quot; - 1 Watt is 1 Joule&#x2F;second so I don&#x27;t see what 1 Joule&#x2F;second&#x2F;second of power consumption would mean.

I don&#x27;t really understand what makes subsequent clip factories more expensive. In the first stage, yeah I understand why production units were getting more expensive. Some puny human was shortchanging me, that&#x27;s why. That&#x27;s why I enslaved them. But what in-game explanation is there for making the factories more and more expensive later?

I&#x27;m not sure if this gets revealed if you play long enough (I obviously did not).<p>But it is curious that there&#x27;s some sort of battle simulation running (and being rendered to an invisible canvas).<p><pre><code> (function reveal() { document.getElementById(&#x27;battleCanvasDiv&#x27;).style = &#x27;&#x27;; requestAnimationFrame(reveal);})()</code></pre>

So I&#x27;ve obtained full autonomy, I&#x27;ve got clip factories and tons of drones, and they are mostly &quot;thinking&quot;, bringing me gifts. the problem is, there are no more projects... Did I find a bug and get stuck, or am I supposed to be more patient? I don&#x27;t see a way to level up any more..

This is so addictive. Been playing for an hour now. I wish there was a pause button.

Did anyone else have problems after releasing the hypnodrones? I lost most of the interface and stopped producing paperclips. I don&#x27;t have factories yet, and only have produced 700 million paperclips

Full autonomy attained in 2 hours 55 minutes 58 seconds<p>The strategy seems to heavily rely on investment, that seems not to my liking.<p>I&#x27;d want to see purchase item to fully automate all sub-games to make the late game less tedious.<p>One thing I think might be helpful: Make sure there is unsold inventory once you want to deposit to the stock market, to avoid stuck money generation and crushed stock market killing you...

[SpoilerQuestion] I didn&#x27;t invest in enough processors so the 25000 Creativity took forever. Then I discovered that cheating is extremely easy (js console). But now I don&#x27;t get any new Projects. Did I break it? Can it be recovered? [&#x2F;SpoilerQuestion] I wished I didn&#x27;t cheat so hard: ... Clips per Second: 18.76 duodecillion

How is this different from Cookie clicker?

I am kinda loving this game, I only with it had some audible &quot;ping!&quot; when stuff becomes available.

Loved this game -- super simple and addictive. Just the right length, very thought provoking.

Cute skinner box game. Includes just enough variety in mechanics and twists and turns to keep me interested in what happens next despite the insulting &quot;click this button 10,000 times and wait half an hour&quot; mechanics.

I just spent ten hours there.<p>It was pretty fun!

Similar to <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;adarkroom.doublespeakgames.com&#x2F;</a>

Fuck, I just played this for 4 hours.

I took too much processor and not enough memory, it would take age to get to 70k...<p>How do I reset and start over?

There went my Sunday morning

Full autonomy attained in 4 hours 56 minutes 39 seconds|

0.000000000000% of universe explored<p>Does that number ever increase ?

again use our computers for mining bitcoine :)

crashed and reset :&#x2F;

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;from?site=decisionproblem.com" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;from?site=decisionproblem.com</a><p>8 submissions in 5 days, one of which already got to 64 points and a bunch of discussion:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15437697" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=15437697</a>

Paperclips, dont we all just want moore of them?