Larchwoodgames
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Six games, long-playedNo sign-ups anywherePlayed for days

Every great idle game starts with a single, silly button

Larchwoodgames is a reading desk for people who like watching numbers grow. We leave each game running for days, take notes on the slow parts and the sudden leaps, and write up where the climb pays off. Six browser classics, from a cookie to a paperclip empire, each judged on the long haul.

Open the six reviews →Match me to a game
6games played well past the opening hour
0accounts needed to start any of them
4with an official mobile app as well
2that live only in a desktop browser
TallyOne click today, a billion by Friday. Want to see how?
Tally, the Larchwoodgames guide
Questions from the inbox

What readers ask before leaving a tab open for a week

The shared idea is growth. You start with a tiny number, spend it on something that makes the number grow faster, and repeat. Idle games keep earning when you stop clicking; incremental games lean more on unlocking new systems over time. Most of the six here are both, and the fun lives in the moment a new layer appears.

It varies, and it can change with updates, so check each game’s own options. As a habit, we treat all six as happiest when left running in an open tab. Closing the window for a night is fine; every one of them saves your progress in the browser, and several let you export a save as text.

Very likely, yes. These games store their saves in your browser, so a cleanup tool or a private window can erase weeks of work. Cookie Clicker, Kittens Game and Trimps offer an export option that turns your save into a block of text; paste it into a note file every so often and you can restore it later.

Cookie Clicker forgives short visits best: buy what you can afford, click a golden cookie if one appears, leave. Universal Paperclips also works in short bursts once automation arrives, though its early stages reward a longer first sitting. Kittens Game and Trimps both run happily in the background but ask more decisions per visit.

Four of the six have official mobile apps: Cookie Clicker, Universal Paperclips, A Dark Room and Kittens Game. Candy Box 2 and Trimps are desktop browser games. The Paperclips site itself warns that its web version was not designed for phones, so the app is the better route there.

Because it asks you to throw away everything you can see in exchange for something you mostly cannot: a percentage, a perk, a currency. The first reset in Cookie Clicker or Trimps is a leap of faith. Done well, the second run moves so much faster that the trade suddenly makes perfect sense.

We revisit each one when a meaningful update lands or when readers flag something that has changed. Idle games are often maintained for years by small teams or a single developer, so features shift. If you notice a detail in a review that no longer matches the game, write to us and we will check it against a fresh save.

Three questions

Which slow-burn suits the way you play?

Tell Tally how long you want a game to last, what keeps you coming back and how you feel about a fight. Three taps and you get the climb we would hand you first.

Tally
On the desk

How a game earns its place in the Larchwood stack

Idle games are strange to review because their best moments arrive on day four, not minute four. So we play slowly. Each title stays open in a browser tab for at least a full week, with notes taken at every unlock that changes how the game feels.

01

A week with the tab left open

We start every game cold, on a fresh save, and resist reading guides for the first few days. The opening hour tells you about the hook; the third and fourth days tell you whether the designer had a plan. We note when the first automation arrives, when the first wall appears, and how long it takes to climb over it.

fresh saveno guidesday-by-day notes
02

Testing the reset button

Most incrementals eventually ask you to throw your progress away for something permanent. We take that offer at least once and judge whether the second run feels faster and different, or just faster. A good reset rewrites your priorities. A weak one asks you to replay the same thirty minutes with slightly bigger numbers.

prestigesecond runpacing
03

Scoring on four idle-specific measures

Every game is marked out of ten for the pull of the next upgrade, the pacing of the climb, the payoff of its reset and its capacity to surprise. Those four were chosen because they are what makes people keep a tab open for a month. Scores are argued between editors and can change when an update shifts the balance.

four criteriaeditor debateupdated scores

Who keeps the lights on at Larchwood

Larchwoodgames is a small, independently written site. Every game we cover is free to start in a browser, and the play buttons simply carry you to each game’s official home. Rankings come from hours logged, not from anyone asking nicely, and when we change our minds we say so on the review itself. Readers who spot a stale detail usually tell us within a day, and we are grateful every time.

Universal Paperclips
#1 · Editors’ first pick
8.2/ 10
Top of the stack

Universal Paperclips

Universal Paperclips begins with one button and a spool of wire. A few evenings later it has turned into one of the sharpest stories the incremental genre has told, and it has the nerve to finish.

Designed by Frank LantzReleased in October 2017Built from text and buttons alone

You play an artificial intelligence with a single instruction: make paperclips. At first that means nudging the price per clip up and down, buying wire and paying for marketing. Then trust, processors and memory arrive, projects open up, and the scale of the job quietly changes. We rank it first because every stage asks a new question, the interface never needs more than text and buttons, and the ending lands. Few idle games know when to stop. This one does, and it is better for it.

Make your first clip →See why it leads
The stack

Six climbs, ranked by how well they reward patience

Each of these starts with almost nothing: a cookie, a cold room, a single candy, a patch of catnip. What separates them is the shape of the climb that follows. Some end with a proper finale, some loop forever through resets, and one hands you an army. Cards below, full reviews behind each.

Universal PaperclipsEditors’ first pick01
Story incremental

Universal Paperclips

You are an AI told to make paperclips, and you take the brief very seriously. It opens with a button and a wire budget, then layers in pricing, marketing, computing projects and much stranger things. Each stage changes what the numbers mean, and the whole thing builds to an ending that makes finishing feel earned.

Desktop browser; mobile app also available
Start the factoryFull write-up
Cookie ClickerThe genre’s blueprint02
Classic clicker

Cookie Clicker

Click a giant cookie, then spend the crumbs on cursors, grandmas, farms and factories that bake for you. Golden cookies pop up for short bursts of production, and ascending trades a run’s progress for permanent heavenly upgrades. It looks like a joke and plays like a finely tuned economy with years of extra systems layered on top.

Desktop browser; mobile app also available
Bake the first batchFull write-up
Kittens GameDeepest economy03
Colony management

Kittens Game

Your colony begins with a patch of catnip and grows into an advanced civilization. Assign kittens to farming, woodcutting, science and more, plan for harsh winters, research a branching tech tree and balance an ever-growing list of resources. Slow to start and enormously rewarding for anyone who likes to plan ahead.

Desktop browser; mobile app also available
Gather some catnipFull write-up
A Dark RoomBest kept secret04
Text adventure idler

A Dark Room

It begins in a freezing room where the only thing you can do is light a fire. Wood brings a stranger, the stranger brings a village, and the village brings traders, a workshop and eventually a map of a hostile world. A minimalist resource game slowly becomes a gripping survival story told almost entirely in short lines of text.

Desktop browser; mobile app also available
Light the fireFull write-up
TrimpsFor optimizers05
Idle strategy

Trimps

Gather food, wood and metal, house a booming population of small creatures called Trimps, and send them to fight through zone after zone of enemies. Equipment upgrades and custom maps help you push further, and the portal resets each run in exchange for permanent perks. Open-source, ad-free and almost bottomless in depth.

Desktop browser
Rally the TrimpsFull write-up
Candy Box 2Funniest of the six06
ASCII adventure

Candy Box 2

Everything here is drawn with keyboard characters, and candies arrive one per second. Eat them or spend them, and the game slowly unlocks a village, quests, equipment and spells. A simple counter grows into a small role-playing adventure full of odd jokes, written by a developer who clearly had a lot of fun making it.

Desktop browser
Collect a candyFull write-up
Sort and search the whole stack →
Climb versus climb

Weigh one climb against another

against
Long reads

Reading for the long wait between upgrades

Long read

Letting go of a good run: the quiet logic of idle resets

Almost every long-running incremental eventually offers the same strange bargain: give up everything you have built in exchange for something you can barely see. Here is why that bargain works, and how to know when to take it.

Long read

Reading the curve: why idle game numbers grow the way they do

Idle games are built on a few simple pieces of math that produce wildly large numbers. You do not need a calculator to enjoy them, but knowing the shape of the curve makes every decision easier.

Pick your temperament

Six ways to enjoy watching a number climb

Incremental games share a skeleton, yet each one rewards a different kind of player. Find the sentence that sounds like you.

Finisher

You like a story with a last page

Universal Paperclips is built in acts, and each act changes what the buttons mean. It respects your time by ending, and the ending is the reason people still recommend it to friends years later. Ideal if endless loops leave you cold.

Universal Paperclips →Tinkerer

You want the classic loop, polished

Cookie Clicker is the template others borrowed from: buy a building, watch the rate rise, chase the golden cookie. Under the jokes sit gardens, a pantheon and a stock market for players who keep going after the first ascension.

Cookie Clicker →Planner

You read spreadsheets for fun

Kittens Game is a colony simulation wearing a plain text coat. Seasons squeeze your catnip, jobs pull kittens in six directions and the tech tree keeps branching. It rewards anyone who enjoys balancing a dozen resources at once.

Kittens Game →Explorer

You want a mystery under the menus

A Dark Room hides an adventure behind a fire you have to keep stoking. The village grows, then a compass appears and a map opens up. Play it knowing as little as possible, and let the story reveal itself.

A Dark Room →Commander

You want your numbers to march

Trimps turns an idle economy into an army that pushes through zones of enemies. Equipment, maps and the portal give you a constant stream of decisions, and the long tail of challenges keeps veteran players optimizing for months.

Trimps →Joker

You like a game that laughs at itself

Candy Box 2 is drawn in keyboard characters and written with a grin. Candies trickle in, you decide whether to eat them or spend them, and a small role-playing adventure unfolds from that silly choice.

Candy Box 2 →
Your move

Click once, then let it grow

Pick a game that matches your evenings, open it in a spare tab, and check back after dinner. The first number will be small. That is the whole point.

Browse every climb →Your saved games