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February 19, 2015 1:29 PM

Have you ever wanted your own teeming swarm of vermin? Do you enjoy compulsively clicking on buttons and watching numbers go up? Then Swarm Simulator is the game for you!
posted by escape from the potato planet (19 comments total)

I know I'm going to regret clicking this link.. Idle games are too addictive and unrewarding.
posted by FallowKing at 1:32 PM on February 19, 2015 [5 favorites]

Not this again. While I was gone, my swarm produced 626.528 sextillion meat, so I got that going for me.
posted by michaelh at 1:33 PM on February 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

Why can't they just make an idle game with the same framework and increments, but for which you can endlessly switch skins? So instead of this being about raising a swarm, it could equally be about selling ice cream, terraforming Mars, or cornering the iron ore market in the late Roman Republic? You just choose whichever setting takes your fancy and spend the next few hours cursing that you can't afford the next ice cream stand upgrade/interplanetary probe/waterwheel improvement level.

It would be the idle game to end all idle games. Forever.
posted by Thing at 1:40 PM on February 19, 2015 [6 favorites]

this is becoming too complicated for my little brain ... all i wanted to do was mindlessly click and produce cookies ..

now there is meat and territory and larvae and queens and what nots ... what is the optimum route .. why do i have to choose between producing queens or getting swarmlings or stingers or stuff ... what should i do? what should i do?

AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH

I might as well just fire up rail road tycoon or eve online and use excel as it is meant to.
posted by TheLittlePrince at 1:48 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

Have you ever wanted your own teeming swarm of vermin?

No, I've always said I would rather write code than be promoted into management.
posted by Foosnark at 1:55 PM on February 19, 2015 [7 favorites]

man, keep feeling bugs in my hair
posted by angrycat at 2:03 PM on February 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

I've never more wanted one of these incremental games to come with graphics. And sound. Particularly sound.
posted by Nelson at 2:05 PM on February 19, 2015 [4 favorites]

Am I the only one chanting "Swarm is the master! I work for Swarm! SWARM! SWARM!" (Thank you, Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends for that little earworm)
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 2:54 PM on February 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm just clicking things and waiting, it's just like SimCity Buildit except it doesn't want me to spend $99 to buy 50 more drones.
posted by Elmore at 3:57 PM on February 19, 2015

If only there were a way to feed these little fuckers on all my goddamn tangerines.
posted by Myca at 4:14 PM on February 19, 2015 [2 favorites]

man, keep feeling bugs in my hair

man/woman, if you're sure that's what you want, I will.
posted by Elmore at 4:26 PM on February 19, 2015 [1 favorite]

I've been playing this for a few days (It topped the incremental games subreddit earlier this week), and in case you're wondering about how long this game goes... be warned, there is easily several weeks worth of obsessive clicking in this, especially with the reset/prestige mechanism and the upgrades that come along with that.

Mods, can we have a mandatory "NSFL" warning on all incremental games please? Thanks.
posted by BuddhaInABucket at 5:05 PM on February 19, 2015

Yessssss I was just thinking recently that I've been missing a good incremental game since I lost interest in Clicker Heroes. I'm not so big on bugs, but hey, I'll take it.
posted by Hold your seahorses at 7:29 PM on February 19, 2015

There went my night.
posted by pleem at 8:02 PM on February 19, 2015

I think I'm getting the hang of this!

-- caption for poorly understood New Yorker cartoon.
posted by oceanjesse at 9:08 PM on February 19, 2015

I've only tried 4 or so of these, and this is my fav since the Breaking Bad click game.

Swarms away! I have billions of greater queens!
posted by isthmus at 11:05 PM on February 19, 2015

I think Incremental Games are potentially a real problem. (Well for me at least) It sort of feels like achieving something, but only a little bit. It totally hooks into the reward section of the brain in tiny drips, but not actually the fun section. Well, fun at first, but only at first.
Addiction researchers should study them alongside heroin.
There needs to be one which reminds you how much of you r life you are wasting "playing" it.



(And yes, I will play this one. Of course I will how can I not!)
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:53 AM on February 20, 2015 [3 favorites]

The first incremental browser games were sort of jokes about the stupid and addictive nature of this kind of game, boiling down the "gameplay" of things like Mafia Wars and Farmville into their awful, most simplistic skinner boxes. That's why these games don't have graphics; the hideousness of them is supposed to be more obvious without flashing lights and sounds dressing them up. It's interesting that even something so spare can still seem so compelling.

What's missing from the browser incrementals is a social feature, where you're sharing your cookies/swarms/drugs with your friends in a way that creates social ties and obligations. Once someone figures that out, we're doomed.
posted by Nelson at 7:54 AM on February 20, 2015 [4 favorites]

My new band name is going to be "Constrained by Larva".
posted by boo_radley at 9:42 AM on February 26, 2015 [1 favorite]