Cookie Clicker

It starts with a single, oversized chocolate chip cookie and a mouse button. Cookie Clicker, created by French developer Julien "Orteil" Thiennot in 2013, turned that humble premise into one of the most influential idle games ever made. Every click bakes a cookie, and every cookie can be spent on cursors, grandmas, farms, mines, and stranger things that keep baking long after your finger gets tired. Before long, you are measuring output in quintillions per second.

Part of the charm is how weird it gets. The news ticker grows unsettling, grandmas start behaving oddly, and the upgrade tree hides secrets that reward curious players. Whether you want a relaxed background game or an optimization puzzle to min-max, this browser classic delivers both, and your bakery keeps growing between sessions.

Your goal is simple: bake as many cookies as possible. Click the big cookie to earn your first batch, then spend them on buildings that generate cookies automatically, from cursors and grandmas up to factories, banks, temples, and portals. Upgrades multiply the output of each building type, so the core loop is always the same: earn, reinvest, and grow your cookies per second. Golden cookies pop up at random and grant huge temporary boosts when clicked. Eventually you can ascend, resetting your bakery in exchange for heavenly chips and prestige levels that permanently speed up every future run.