Want a great way to pass the time? Maybe a new addiction? Well, then, Cookie Clicker is the perfect game for you!

At a first glance, Cookie Clicker is an idle game. You sit down, grab your mouse, and continually click a giant cookie on your screen. Every click produces a cookie. As you click more and more, in the store, you can buy items to make the job easier for you. The more you play, the more things you can buy in the shop. As you buy more items, the amount of cookies made per second on it’s own, increases, the value of each item increases as well as the messages that appear on the top of your screen. In addition to this, there are also upgrades available, sugar lumps that can be grown grown, changing milks overtime, Golden Cookies, which give you power ups for a short period of time, seasonal specials, which are additions that come around holidays, levels and various growable crops.

The game may seem simple, but there is much more to it than meets the eyes. Similarly to every other idle game, it’s addicting. There’s no real point to click the screen, but you want to. And as soon as you start, you can’t stop. After a while, you make so many cookies per second that you don’t even have to click anymore. But you can’t help but look at the screen every five seconds in fear you’ll miss a Golden Cookie. Then, when you say you’re done, another one appears, and you can’t just ignore it. Nor can you exit out of the tab, because then your cookies won’t be made while you’re gone.

Not only is this bad, but there’s parts to the game you can only reveal later on as you progress. At the beginning of the game, one of the first things you can buy are grandmas. They are the face of the game. Their names, ages, different outfits and consistent , yet suspicious, messages that appear on the top of the screen make it hard for you not to notice them. This is explained mid-game when the, “One Mind,” upgrade is available. Once again, this upgrade stands out, being in its own section and having a note claiming, “the grandmothers are growing restless. Do not encourage them,” followed by the quote, “We are one. We are many.” Although this is suspicious enough, the upgrade also gives you a warning screen, telling you that everything is “downhill from here,” giving you a chance to rethink your decision. However, if you press yes, you have begun the Grandmapocalypse.

As stupid as it sounds, this is an extremely creepy, mid-game event, hidden within a “simple,” game. After buying this upgrade, as well as others in the same area, some changes start occuring in your game. You’d notice how the grandma’s icon in the shop will get creepier slowly and slowly.

Eventually, the kind-hearted grandmas could even become evil monsters. In addition to this, Wrath Cookies will appear, which are basically Golden Cookies but have both a positive and negative outcome, although this outcome is random. Then, wrinkers, giant monsters that eat at your cookies before being popped, will also appear but disappear after constantly tapping them. This hidden addition to Cookie Clicker is something that makes it different from most idle games.

Another difference from most idle games is that you can start from scratch with novel possibilities. In the top right corner of the middle section of the screen, is a bar called “Legacy.” The more and more cookies you earn, the farther this bar goes up. When you’re tired of your current save, you can press the bar, followed by a warning, similar to the one in the Grandmapocalypse, asking if you wish to proceed. If you press yes, you’ll watch as your cookie explodes, and you’re brought into outer space with nothing but a bunch of invisible circles and lines. The number beside the bar counts as your legacy chips, which you can use to buy permanent upgrades. Then, when you’re ready, you can press Reincarnate and “start from scratch.” You’ll see that all of your items and the cookies you make per second are gone, but you keep your upgrades, as well as the new perks you bought in space that provide the ability to skip over a bunch of stuff that originally took you forever.

So, Cookie Clicker is a game that seems simple – like every other idle game out there –  but there is so much more that lies behind that ginormous, lightly cracked cookie.