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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

I feel like they took off with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cow_Clicker , which was a satire that people unironically found hugely enjoyable. But that was much later in 2010. Everything has to start somewhere; maybe Progress Quest was the first idle game?

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Cow Clicker and Cookie Clicker are not idle games. You have to interact with them constantly and the less you do the slower you progress.

Idlerpg for IRC is the opposite. If you act you are punished.

Progress Quest is totally idle. It has a bunch of internals that just increment numbers and pretend things happen. It’s an app you start and then don’t do anything at all with.

All the clicker games, and the weird unfolding games like A Dark Room, Candy Box, Paperclips, are kinda fun but not in the spirit of Progress Quest.

Yep, while you often do a lot of idling in the latter games, they're not really idle games. That's why the newer term, Incremental games, fits better.

I'm not sure how much to trust the Wikipedia dates for these - it claims Cookie Clicker was 2013, but I'm sure there was a flash version of it before 2007, while I was in highschool.

You must misremember, because it was really released in 2013. Maybe you remember a different game?

I feel like the _release_ of cookie clicker might only be because it was a webpage before?

Edit: Never mind, that release was only a few years ago. Apparently memory gets wonky as you get older.

My best guess is a copy or remake, like how Angry Birds was basically a reskin of the really common cannon-firing flash games.

https://cookieclicker.fandom.com/wiki/Cookie_Clicker_Wiki

> Cookie Clicker is a Javascript game released by Orteil on August 8, 2013.

And as for not an idle game, yep.

> It is an "incrementer" game, as proclaimed by Orteil.

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