
Universal Paperclips - Malfunction92
https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/
======
mcint
It _is_ a fantastic game.

Speed runners have done it in 1:40:05, first runs can take 8 - 12 hours or
more. A first run report, with advice but no spoilers
[https://fogknife.com/2017-10-11-i-played-universal-
paperclip...](https://fogknife.com/2017-10-11-i-played-universal-
paperclips.html)

Some interviews with the designer, and previous postings:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...](https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=paperclips&sort=byPopularity&type=story)

Other great idle/clicker/growth games include:

* Drowning in Problems: [http://game.notch.net/drowning/#](http://game.notch.net/drowning/#)

* Derivative Clicker: [https://gzgreg.github.io/DerivativeClicker/](https://gzgreg.github.io/DerivativeClicker/)

* 2nd Derivative Clicker: [https://jamuspsi.github.io/second/](https://jamuspsi.github.io/second/)

~~~
llamataboot
My personal favorite with a /gigantic/ tech tree:

Kittens:
[https://bloodrizer.ru/games/kittens/](https://bloodrizer.ru/games/kittens/)

~~~
degif
My favourite - Trimps [https://trimps.github.io](https://trimps.github.io).
Playing the same game almost daily for more than two years and no plot end in
sight.

------
dang
If curious see also (but note: here be spoilers)

2019
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19513089](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19513089)

2017
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15474055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15474055)

2017
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15437697](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15437697)

2017 (a bit):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15439569](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15439569)

A bit from 6 months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22394560](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22394560)

------
endlessvoid94
Oh god. Just clicked this and remembered the first time I discovered this game
a couple years ago. It was a Sunday morning and I'd just had a cup of strong
coffee.

Before I knew it, I spent literally the entire day playing the game. I
eventually got to the end after an entire day of playing.

Incredibly addictive.

------
klodolph
Anyone reading this from Google, look up the “SWE Simulator”. It’s internal,
so you have to play it from your work computer.

~~~
csours
Can you describe it for non-googlers?

~~~
klodolph
It’s a simpler game in the same genre where you play a SWE. For example,
instead of building “auto clippers” you can get interns and be promoted to
management.

------
Benjammer
If you want to try a different way to play through this game, most of the
functionality is pretty accessible as js functions. You can try to automate
stuff in various ways with a tampermonkey script or whatever. For example,
click(N) is equivalent to pressing the main paper clip button N times.

~~~
fit2rule
That's pretty cool! Do you see any way to easily add/inject graphs to the game
- so we could plot each variable over time? Because that's the one recurring
thought I had after 20 minutes of play: I wish I could see the stats.

~~~
matt_kantor
I think you'd just sample the values from globals.js on some interval.

[0]:
[https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/globals.js](https://www.decisionproblem.com/paperclips/globals.js)

------
mr-ron
Big influence in my own idle, skynet simulator: skynetsimulator.com

~~~
devenblake
Very fun! I've spent about an hour playing and I've been deactivated twice
after ping spiking EONS. Anyone have any tips?

Edit: Figured it out, just needed to force absorb moar

~~~
stevenwliao
I got stuck in this game and got unstuck after noticing some labels were
clickable.

------
herman_toothrot
Made me remember

[http://jhollands.co.uk/spaceplan/](http://jhollands.co.uk/spaceplan/)

(It's been released as a paid mobile app but you can play the original web
version by clicking past the message)

------
function_seven
I have the Kittens Game open in another tab. A few hundred years in on my 6th
reset. Yet, for some self-destructive reason, I clicked this.

I played this a few years ago and I think I "beat" it? I don't remember having
any path forward after I did all the things (I won't spoil it here), but I
maybe just felt like I went as far as I wanted to.

I guess I'll find out this week...

~~~
ralusek
You know when you beat it, there is a definitive end.

~~~
function_seven
Yeah, I seem to remember reaching that end, then having the option to do a new
"sequel run" or something?

~~~
neltnerb
If you don't do a sequel run you get to just convert the whole universe to
paperclips. It's great.

~~~
function_seven
Yeah, I did that! I remember it taking hours to convert half the universe, and
a couple minutes or something to convert the other half :)

~~~
neltnerb
I did it once on my phone and no joke it took multiple days of actual playtime
because the phone wasn't fast enough. I assume it's mining bitcoin in the
background, which is beautifully appropriate.

Then did it again on the computer out of curiosity if it'd be faster. Boy was
it ever, finished in hours instead of days. But I also remembered to remember
that the size of an exponent is most important almost always so I always just
made everything focus on growth rates and it went... fast. Exponential growth
is a harsh mistress, which I assume is the point of such a game ;-)

------
crazygringo
_Wow_.

"Universal Paperclips achieved in 5 hours 25 minutes 8 seconds"

I did _not_ have those extra 5+ hours to "waste"... but this has got to be one
of the single most compelling activities I've ever done.

Seriously one of the simplest yet cleverest things I've seen in a long time.

~~~
euoia
5 hours 23 minutes 49 seconds. Good game.

What was the significance of the music?

------
7373737373
I've been wondering about if there is an algorithm that gives an
(approximately) optimal sequence of decisions that are optimal:
[https://github.com/void4/notes/issues/66](https://github.com/void4/notes/issues/66)

And created a site with a number of deterministic games with a limited number
of steps: [https://qewasd.com/](https://qewasd.com/)

What is the highest/lowest value that can be reached? Which scores can be
reached and which cannot? It seems to be equivalent to the halting problem.

If anyone knows of a better solution than brute force, let me know!

------
linsomniac
This is a really, really good game. I found out about it from HN comments to
some article around a year ago, and then over Thanksgiving family gathering we
had probably 5-6 people having a blast with it at a family gathering.

------
rkagerer
This is a fantastic game, but I wish it were a native app or ran in
WebAssembly or something.

 _spoiler alert_

I took my time on Stage 1, and running in the browser it began to stutter a
lot toward the end when lots of activity was going on at once (2B paperclips,
price $400ea, 290K clips/sec, WireBuyer, AutoTourney, stock market, full
quantum chips, etc). I assume it's due to garbage collection or some kind of
Chrome constraints (but that's just a guess).

~~~
war1025
> price $400ea

I'm pretty sure I had mine priced at about a nickel for the majority of it.
Did you really get them up to $400?

~~~
bentcorner
IIRC I had to jack the price up because my demand was way outstripping supply.
Once you get the mega auto clippers it brought my price back down to around 20
cents.

It was _annoying_ clicking the raise/lower price button that many times, as
you can make this mistake without realizing the source of your problem
(raising the price feels like the right thing to do). There should be a +/\-
10 added at some point.

~~~
rkagerer
Agreed. Once you hit it once, you can hold ENTER to keep clicking it, but that
can still take a long time.

~~~
war1025
This trick came in very handy when I came back to the game last night.

I had figured I could trigger the button somehow from the keyboard, but for
whatever reason I never picked up that it was the Enter key that did it.

I'm sure I tried it. I think maybe it was because hitting enter doesn't
trigger the button animation.

------
zachrose
One thing that's funny to me about this game is that it the classic "hello
world" for the Elm architecture is a button that increments a number[1]. It's
not hard to imagine that something like this could've started with that and
just kept running with it.

[1] [https://guide.elm-lang.org/architecture/buttons.html](https://guide.elm-
lang.org/architecture/buttons.html)

------
a5withtrrs
Well dang. I wasn't expecting to be so compelled by paperclip production
but... > Full autonomy attained in 2 hours 32 minutes 5 seconds|

Awesome game. Thanks creator!

~~~
fastball
That's only Stage 1!

~~~
a5withtrrs
Hello. It's me, the parent comment. I'm back after completing all stages in 6
hours and 18 minutes. Universal paperclips achieved. I definitely spent too
long with the probe design using bad values.

I swear time just evaporated into that game. Most compelling thing i've played
in forever. Amazing.

------
Treblemaker
Phase 3 from another perspective:

[https://qntm.org/gorge](https://qntm.org/gorge)

------
okennedy
This is a fantastic game. If you haven't tried it already, don't be put-off by
the somewhat slow start.

~~~
mrob
You can make it go faster by setting your keyboard autorepeat rate as high as
it will go and pressing buttons by holding down the enter key. This is only
useful in the early game. There's no standard autorepeat rate so I don't
consider it cheating.

------
matbilodeau
What's your longest paperclips run ? I think I made it almost to 2 months but
had to restart my browser...

~~~
peter-m80
In few days you can finish the game

~~~
matbilodeau
You can also decide to let it run

~~~
neltnerb
It's pretty satisfying to just convert the entire universe to paperclips and
call it a day (having beat it twice). I really like having to make the last
twenty or something by hand after disassembling the paperclip making machine
back into paperclips.

~~~
dane-pgp
If we're going into spoiler territory, I'll say that when I played the game I
wished it was possible to do a pacifist run, where there are no HypnoDrones
and the AI settles for only turning the non-interesting parts of the universe
into paperclips.

~~~
neltnerb
You can absolutely put your entire budget into exploration and speed and none
into drones for harvesting or manufacturing. It's kind of hard to get the
timing right but I definitely had a large fraction of the universe "available"
but I had the swarm on "think" so there wasn't any actual activity. You can
just do that indefinitely if you like, which I suppose is what it'd feel like
to a real AI.

~~~
dane-pgp
That sounds like a nice way to play it, but in practice you can't unlock Stage
2 of the game without triggering the "Release the HypnoDrones" event:

[https://universalpaperclips.gamepedia.com/Release_the_HypnoD...](https://universalpaperclips.gamepedia.com/Release_the_HypnoDrones)

------
devalnor
ALERT! Idle Game High Addiction

------
war1025
After wasting far too much of my evening, it looks like I made it to the
beginning of Stage 3.

Ran out of patience.

This game keeps going and going...

Edit:

Apparently it saves your state when you close the tab.

May have to go back another time and keep on going.

~~~
garmaine
Oh my, stage 3 is the best part. You’re in for a treat.

~~~
jordanwallwork
Stage 3 has totally confused me. I feel like there's more to it because
everyone here keeps saying "you'll know for sure when you get to the end" but
nothing has happened for a _really_ long time. I've launched maxed out my
probe designs (20/20 max trust), launched 13mil (got a loop running just
continuously launching them) but I'm still at 0% universe explored and no new
projects in a while. Got a random limerick because my creativity built up to
half a mil, but it didn't actually do anything. I'm just leaving it running in
the background in case something eventually happens because right now I don't
know what to do next. I'm about 6 hours into this bloody game so I don't want
to just call it quits now lol

~~~
garmaine
Dump as much as you can into self-replication as your goal here is more
probes. And be careful letting it run in the background... you need to keep
the drifters at bay, and they get progressively harder. Until you get over 20
max trust, you’ll probably have to be moving points back and forth between
combat and replication. If they overpower you it can be a long slog to recover
your numbers.

~~~
jordanwallwork
Oh brilliant thanks, I didn't understand what drifters were and their numbers
were just steadily growing. Took me about 10 mins after reading your comment
to get the next project unlocked and increase my max trust a few times.
Fortunately the game had been streadily grinding in the background so I had
more than enough creativity / yomi etc. Phew!

~~~
garmaine
If you let the drifters get out of control they will just keep destroying you
before you can build your numbers up. If that happens, invest 1:1 in speed and
self-replication. Their problem is that they can’t replicate, so at least the
number of drifters won’t increase. You’ll be able to dodge them in combat
until your numbers surpass theirs, then go back to the regular strategy of a
balanced but replication-heavy profile.

With 30+ points you should be fine though.

------
Cyphase
After accidentally losing my first run state 57 minutes in, I finished my
second run in 5 hours of game time, +- a minute.

------
Cyphase
I just spent ~57 minutes playing, then somehow navigated away from the page.
Now I have to start over. :(

EDIT: TURN ON COOKIES!!

~~~
zanecraw
I've done the same thing by accident and it's frustrating lol

------
Waterluvian
If you enjoyed this you might really like Spaceplan found on the app stores.

------
choffee
Well that wasted more than a few hours. :)

------
mikewarot
Universe: 50 / Sim Level: 13 Paperclips: 153,625

------
easton_s
I have no idea what is going on, but I LOVE it.

~~~
easton_s
30 septendecillion!

------
cjsawyer
Just stayed up until 3 am. Worth it.

------
tomcat27
wowowowowowow!

