I actually 100% completed the mobile version (requires replaying the game 100 times). It sounds like a lot, but you pick up artifacts that modify the gameplay and they significantly speed it up, to the point where you can finish the game in under an hour and a half if you collect enough of them. The game actually feels a bit stale without them.
Beware: this game cane be seriously addictive. I’ve played it till completion 3 or 4 times i think. I cannot start playing and not complete it it seems. Luckily, it’s not too long (especially if your sorta try-harding it hehe).
But it’s a beautiful game, and i totally recommend it. There’s some amazing and subtle(*) “story” details in the way you develop your capabilities as an AI :)
(*): Or maybe not so subtle. If you’ve been around LessWrong or similar circles, this game has a ton of references to those ideas.
So it’s Cookie Clicker with a SF/rationalist spin. Same loop of gathering resources, hitting a bottleneck, getting an option to gather another resource to help with the previous, etc.
I had never heard of this game until today. Started it and a few (maybe more) nice hours later, I’m left feeling a sense of accomplishment. A beautiful game.
It’s a real shame it isn’t open source. I’m near the end of my second play through and there are a lot of small UI irritations that would be easy to fix. I’d love to just raise a PR.
I have not played it yet, but the screenshots and the iOS download size of 168MB are a jarring dissonance. And yes, I am familiar with the modern web and phone dev ecosystem. Just saying, on its face, that simple webforms and b&w graphics thus equal a 168MB app makes me sigh. Feel free to reply with “oh, you have no idea, a simple web mobile-friendly web version (as opposed to packaged android and iOS apps) would make no sense due to things beyond what you see in the screenshots” and an explanation.
You could make a tiny iOS app out of it, I’m sure, with little more than a WKWebView and some controller logic wrapped around the web assets.
They probably just grabbed some easy-to-use framework that’s massive overkill for this use case, or else didn’t pay attention to customizing the build to strip out the unnecessary features.
Plus, who knows how big the total size of the website is? Maybe there are inefficiencies there too.
Plus, who knows how big the total size of the website is? Maybe there are inefficiencies there too.
Not that big; you can see all the HTML on the page to begin with, and there’s three unminified JS inclusions at the end. It’s written in a very straightforward manner, which is a bit nice.
As far as I can tell the mobile side of it is somewhat unfortunate at this point. I did buy the Android version yesterday (only $1.99!) but I can confirm that while it’s actually remarkably playable, and only 24MB, the review comments on the Play Store are unfortunately accurate: it crashes literally constantly on modern Android phones.
I ended up playing through to the end because I enjoy the game, but I think it crashed at least once every two minutes on average over the course of a few hours. It appears to journal state into local web storage somehow, but only every 5-10 seconds, so your progress is broadly saved but occasionally you have to redo some actions. The most infuriating part is that in the mid to late game the “strategy modeling” engine takes about a minute to shuffle through 64 rounds before giving you the payoff, and that part of the data is not journaled, only the final output (if it gets that far). There also appears to be a bug with the “Auto-Tourney” upgrade where it won’t automatically kick one off after you restart.
Probably minor bug fixes, but I have no idea how to get them fixed. I suspect it’s for the best, though, because I would then need some kind of rehab facility to be honest as it’s very addictive!
This is one of my favorite games.
I actually 100% completed the mobile version (requires replaying the game 100 times). It sounds like a lot, but you pick up artifacts that modify the gameplay and they significantly speed it up, to the point where you can finish the game in under an hour and a half if you collect enough of them. The game actually feels a bit stale without them.
Note: Artefacts are available only in the mobile version, not the web version.
Beware: this game cane be seriously addictive. I’ve played it till completion 3 or 4 times i think. I cannot start playing and not complete it it seems. Luckily, it’s not too long (especially if your sorta try-harding it hehe).
But it’s a beautiful game, and i totally recommend it. There’s some amazing and subtle(*) “story” details in the way you develop your capabilities as an AI :)
(*): Or maybe not so subtle. If you’ve been around LessWrong or similar circles, this game has a ton of references to those ideas.
So it’s Cookie Clicker with a SF/rationalist spin. Same loop of gathering resources, hitting a bottleneck, getting an option to gather another resource to help with the previous, etc.
V jnf nzhfrq gung phevat znyr cnggrea onyqarff tnir lbh zber Gehfg guna phevat pnapre.
As to whether it teaches me about AI alignment, playing Doom taught me to not open a portal to literal Hell. This is on the same level.
I think you
quit the gamecommented before the fun stuff happens.I never said I quit the game.
I had never heard of this game until today. Started it and a few (maybe more) nice hours later, I’m left feeling a sense of accomplishment. A beautiful game.
A classic
It’s a real shame it isn’t open source. I’m near the end of my second play through and there are a lot of small UI irritations that would be easy to fix. I’d love to just raise a PR.
That was a nice rabbit hole..
partial spoilers (and hello floats)
I have not played it yet, but the screenshots and the iOS download size of 168MB are a jarring dissonance. And yes, I am familiar with the modern web and phone dev ecosystem. Just saying, on its face, that simple webforms and b&w graphics thus equal a 168MB app makes me sigh. Feel free to reply with “oh, you have no idea, a simple web mobile-friendly web version (as opposed to packaged android and iOS apps) would make no sense due to things beyond what you see in the screenshots” and an explanation.
You could make a tiny iOS app out of it, I’m sure, with little more than a WKWebView and some controller logic wrapped around the web assets.
They probably just grabbed some easy-to-use framework that’s massive overkill for this use case, or else didn’t pay attention to customizing the build to strip out the unnecessary features.
Plus, who knows how big the total size of the website is? Maybe there are inefficiencies there too.
Not that big; you can see all the HTML on the page to begin with, and there’s three unminified JS inclusions at the end. It’s written in a very straightforward manner, which is a bit nice.
As far as I can tell the mobile side of it is somewhat unfortunate at this point. I did buy the Android version yesterday (only $1.99!) but I can confirm that while it’s actually remarkably playable, and only 24MB, the review comments on the Play Store are unfortunately accurate: it crashes literally constantly on modern Android phones.
I ended up playing through to the end because I enjoy the game, but I think it crashed at least once every two minutes on average over the course of a few hours. It appears to journal state into local web storage somehow, but only every 5-10 seconds, so your progress is broadly saved but occasionally you have to redo some actions. The most infuriating part is that in the mid to late game the “strategy modeling” engine takes about a minute to shuffle through 64 rounds before giving you the payoff, and that part of the data is not journaled, only the final output (if it gets that far). There also appears to be a bug with the “Auto-Tourney” upgrade where it won’t automatically kick one off after you restart.
Probably minor bug fixes, but I have no idea how to get them fixed. I suspect it’s for the best, though, because I would then need some kind of rehab facility to be honest as it’s very addictive!