A unique clicker game where the player controls an artificial intelligence whose only task is to produce paperclips. In the early stages, you have to set prices... Read more
Articles Universal Paperclips
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Why Millions of People Click on Bananas, Cookies, and Cows: How Idle Games Have Hacked Our Brains
In the spring of 2024, an absurdly simple game called Banana was released on Steam. The objective was to click on a banana to increase a counter and earn skins of varying rarities—some of which were worth hundreds of thousands of rubles—and the game’s peak concurrent players exceeded 900,000. This project clearly demonstrates how an element of absurdity and the simple mechanics of idle games can hold the attention of millions of players, a phenomenon explained by the psychological triggers underlying the genre. In this article, we’ll trace the evolution of idle games and explore the psychological mechanisms they employ.
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August 9, 2026