Clickers are better than people give credit. Thinking about growth curves is an uncommon challenge. Pretty much nothing else commonly involves things expanding faster than exponentially. You don’t actually just click mindlessly. You typically need an understanding of the system otherwise you’re just waiting for infeasible amounts of time.

As far as I'm concerned, the clicker genre reached its zenith, its purest expression, in Universal Paperclips. In no other game has the "automate exponential growth" mechanic been used to tell a story more poignantly, or make philosophical points so eloquently. Other clicker games use flashy graphics and sound effects to disguise their essential emptiness; not Universal Paperclips. Its austere plaintext webpage offers only hints and fragments of the world the numbers are meant to represent, its minimalism a baleful commentary on the subject matter itself.

I played it twice, and do not regret it.