//------------------------------// // Episode 4: Muffin Clicker on PC // Story: The Adorable/Awesome Video Game Colt // by Matthais Unidostres //------------------------------// Button Mash jumped onto his bed and started playing his Joy Boy. He's gonna play some games from past And also recent games while they last Sweetie Belle lay on the bed beside Button Mash and continued singing. He'd rather have. . . An evil juice box. . . Call him a looser, than play a bad game! Button roars at a game cartridge and throws against the wall. Button uses the "This! Is! Sparta!" kick on Diamond Tiara. He'd rather drink. . . A freezing milkshake. . . And get brain freeze for an entire day! Button Mash screams in brain as he gets a bad brain freeze. Button cheers as he beats Gamer Luna at Loopty Hooping. He's just the cutest gamer you'll ever behold He's the adorable Nintendo Colt Button pull out a Nintendo Zapper and squirts water out of it at Diamond Tiara. He's the adorable Joy Boy/Sega Colt He's The Adorable Video Game Colt! Button Mash held up his Joy Boy high like Link after finding an item. The Adorable Video Game Colt Episode 4: Muffin Clicker on PC Button looks very displeased. He has a large grouchy frown on his face. "This is a joke, right?" . . . . "I mean, am I being punked? What the hay is this?" Button grabbed his juice box and took a long drink to calm down. He sighed and but the box down and continued. "Muffin Clicker has to be the stupidest, most pointless game I have ever played. And what makes me really mad is how everypony, everypony thinks it's the greatest game ever. 'Ooooh! It's so addicting!' they say, well you know what? Just because something is addicting doesn't mean it's good! Good games have stories, clever game mechanics, good characters, and a specific goal you have to get to that make you feel as though you've accomplished something. Whether it's saving a Princess or stopping the Dark Lord from conquering all of Middle Equestria, good games make you feel like you're actually doing something." Button looked away and gestured wildly with his hooves, "But Muffin Clicker. . .Muffin Clicker. . .it's. . .it's a game about NOTHING!" Button took a few breaths to calm himself, then he went over to his laptop. "Here. Let me show you what I mean." Button opened his laptop and went to the Muffin Clicker website. The game started as soon as he got there. "Okay, so here's Muffin Clicker. And on the left side you see a big muffin. And you click on it. And every time you click it, you make a muffin." Button tapped on his laptop's touchpad rapidly. This earned him the "Uncanny Clicker" achievement for his fast clicking. "But wait, you're all probably thinking, 'Come on Button, there's gotta be more to it than that.' And well, yeah, you're right. There is more to it. On the right side of the screen, you have the store, which sells things that help make muffins for you so you don't have to click. Now, how do you purchase these things? Do you use money you make from selling your muffins? No, you buy things with the muffins!" Button blinked in confusion and looked around in shock, "Okay, there are so many things wrong with that. First of all. . .muffins are money? I don't care how good your muffins are, I'm not gonna let you pay me in muffins instead of Bits. Second of all, if you can buy things to make muffins for you without having to click, then that ruins the whole point of the game! What is the point of calling a game 'Muffin Clicker' if you do not click the muffin? And third of all, this means that you're spending muffins just to make more muffins! In other words, there's no point! You're not accomplishing anything!" "Look, don't get me wrong. I own the Zoo Tycoon Complete Collection. The one that has the dragons and seaponies in it. And that game was fantastic. It was awesome." Button gained a faraway look in his eye, as if he was getting nostalgic. "That's because as I made money, I used the money my zoo earned to add more food, more exhibits, more animals, rides, restaurants, aquariums, all kinds of stuff in order to get everypony who visited my zoo to have a good time. In other words, there was a point to making money. There was actual progress," Button forwned and looked back at his laptop, "But in a bad game like Muffin Clicker, the progress is. . .I don't even know what to call it! No there? Fake? Meaningless? In your head? There's no point to it. The money you spend in Zoo Tycoon can be used to make anything, but here all it does is make more muffins! There's no point!" Muffin sighed and grabbed his juice box, quenching the massive thirst he created during his monologue. "Okay. So, what exactly can you buy with your muffins? Well, they all have a base price which goes up a bit every time you buy one. There'd also upgrades you can buy for all the buildings to increase the amount of muffins they make. For 15 muffins you can buy Cursors that click the muffin for you. For 100 muffins you can get a Granny that bakes cookies for you." Button bought a couple of Grannies. He smiled as they appeared on the screen. "Heh. They kinda look like Applebloom's Granny. It's like that time all those Pinkie Pie clones invaded, only it's Granny Smith!" "Alright, what was I talking about? Oh yeah. For 500 muffins you can buy a Farm. Wait, what? Muffins don't grow on trees! Ugh, whatever. For 3,000 you can buy a Factory. For 10,000 you can buy a . . .Mine? Okay, first Farms, then Mines. What are we making here, muffins or rocks? Whatever. So, for 40,000 we can get- oh no, it's the phone booth from Doctor and Derpy's Excellent Adventure! Well, here it's called the Shipment, and it says it brings muffins from the Muffin Planet." Button just shrugged nonchalantly. "Sure, why not." Button set his rump down hard on the floor as he read the next building. "Okay, get ready for this. For 200,000 muffins, you can buy an Alchemy Land that turns gold into muffins!" Button's jaw dropped. "WHY WOULD ANYPONY WANNA DO THAT?! Imagine if you were playing Minecraft, you die like 50 times, you loose a ton of your stuff, and then you finally find some diamonds, but then you're like, 'You know, I think I'm gonna build a machine that'll turn the diamonds I just found into, I don't know, Bread!' You don't just treat the player like he's stupid like that! This is denkalith sauce! This is Doctor Sparkle and Madame Shine standards!" "There's a couple of other stupid buildings that all cost a crazy amount of muffins. Like a portal to the muffin dimension; what is this, Word Fiily? There's a Time Machine that takes muffins from the past, wait wouldn't that cause a paradox? There's also an Antimatter Condenser that turns. . . antimatter. . . into muffins- WHAT?!" Button blinked, "Uh.. .alright. . .but I don't even think Princess Twilight could explain that. Oh, and for 50 billion muffins you can buy a Prism that can turn light into muffins. Sure, whatever you say game. But you know what the sad part is? They actually expect you to play this game until you reach 50 billion muffins! . . .What the denkalith!?" "Okay, maybe if you bought a bunch of buildings and upgraded them, your muffin count will go up super fast. And sometimes a Golden Muffin will appear that gives you a bonus when you click on it. But it takes a long time to get enough muffins to buy things, and these buildings and upgrades are SO expensive, that every time you buy stuff, you pretty much go all the way back to zero! You just can't win! . . .Oh wait, you can't loose either! There's no goal or challenge or story line, you're just making muffins because you have nothing better to do, I guess! Well, how about getting a high score? Well you know what, in this game, a high score is basically pointless, because it's not like getting muffins is hard or there's anything that penalizes you. If you just sit around and wait indefinitely, your muffin count will go up forever. And since the whole thing is based on how much time the games been running, you're never gonna be able catch up anypony who started playing before you." "But wait," Button said gravely. He grabbed his juice box and drank the rest of the juice. "There's one more thing wrong with this game. And that is that it's broken!" Button put his face close to the camera. "BROKEN!" "Why is it broken? Well, first of all, you can save the game and come back to the game later. This breaks the game because now you don't have any time limit. Like, if you couldn't save, then you'd have the challenge of making as many muffins as possible in the limited time you have. But since you can save, you have no reason to even try!" Button frowned angrily. "But that's nothing compared to what has to be the biggest game breaking flaw EVER!" Button brought up Minecraft, opened up a map, and started playing. "I'm playing two games at once," Button said in complete seriousness, "Literally. I'm literally playing two games at once right now. You wanna know how?" Button minimized Minecraft, revealing Muffin Clicker running in his web browser. "SEE IT?! YOU SEE IT, DON'T YOU? DON'T YOU! The game plays itself! What kinda game is that? What kind of game requires virtually NO input from the gamer? This is an idle game! A non-game! Imagine if in Super Mareo Sisters you just pressed the A Button and Mareo ran through the game by herself! Would that even be a game? I don't think so! In a game, you can win or lose! In a game, you actually play! But this game. . .this game. . .this. . .anti-game is just a waste of time! I can't believe so many people are talking about it! I can't believe so many people are addicted to it! It's boring! It's not interesting at all! It's the worst game I've ever seen! I'd rather play an FRI game! I'd rather play the Ditzy Parable! At least that game tried to have an actual story! Muffin Clicker is completely pointless!" Button shouted angrily in Humgolian, flailing his arms angrily. "SWEET LUNA, THIS STUPID! THIS IS THE STUPIDEST GAME THAT WAS EVER MADE IN THE HISTORY OF EQUESTRIA!" Button shouted, his propeller hat spinning so fast that it actually hovered a few inches off his head, "Were you even thinking, game programmer!? Were you even thinking?!" Button pointed furiously at the camera as he breathed heavily while saying, "And we all know who's to blame, right? We all know exactly who's to blame for this pointless game-play! Derpy Hooves! She's the culprit! We all know it! It's gotta be Derpy! I mean, obviously the greatest muffin baker in Ponyville would make a game all about muffins, but there's no way she could possibly have known a single thing about video games when she borrowed a JavaScript for Dummies book from the library, and so when she sat down behind a computer to make a game that did nothing but stroke her own ego and maybe even trick Equestria into loving muffins as much as she does, she created the most boring, pointless, broken game ever! That's what happened, that's what she did, there's no other explanation! Wait, just look at it here! Just look at it here!" Button typed on the laptop, clicked a few times, and pointed at the screen. "Yeah, there you go! 'Muffin Clicker is a Javascript-based browser video game written by Time Turner, better known as 'Doctor Whooves', and 9 year old Dinky Doo-'" Button stopped dead in his tracks, a look of surprise appearing on his face. "Wha-??" Muffin Clicker is a Javascript-based browser video game written by Time Turner, better known as "Doctor Whooves", and 9 year old Dinky Doo as a special birthday gift to Ponyville's resident mailmare and muffin baker, Ditzy Doo, better known as "Derpy Hooves". It began when during a Co-op Session of Portal 2 with Doctor Whooves, Derpy mentioned in passing that it would be nice if there were a game about making muffins. Her daughter, Dinky Doo, heard her mother say this, and immediately entered her room and produced a series of crayon drawings which would become the initial plans for Muffin Clicker. Dinky then visited Doctor Whooves and asked for help in programming the game for her mother. Although Dinky's game play concepts were very simplistic, linear, and bare bones; Doctor Whooves did his best to work with her and get across the idea she had in mind. He later explained that he didn't want to take over or change Dinky's idea because it was originally hers, and he wanted the game to have that "Dinky Doo touch" that Derpy knows and loves so much, so he preserved the game's simple, straightforward, focused, easy, and one-track minded nature. But at the same time, Dinky made sure Doctor Whooves added the elements of wit and wacky sci-fi that her mother said she liked so much in him. Derpy was overjoyed with the game when they presented it to her on her birthday, and suggested they put it online for free so she could share the wonderful happiness that her loved ones had given her. Button stared long and hard at the webpage, his only movement was the occasional blinking of his eyes. "So. . . Derpy didn't make this game just to shove muffins down our throats? It was gift from the two ponies who cared about her the most? And she decided to share her own birthday gift with the world in a selfless attempt to make other ponies happy?" Button was clearly dumbfounded. "Wow. . . . The game is so blatant and to the point and repetitious, and clearly made to be focused on the simple act of making lots of muffins with nothing else to distract from that purpose. But maybe, the point of the game wasn't to bring some kind of immersive game play with high strategy or a set goal. Maybe, it was to express their love and support for someone, and their appreciation for their passion in life. To show how the simple things they do mean more than they would think. Maybe Dinky understood how a video game can truly become art better than we do." Button Mash turned to his Joy Boy, which lay on the table top next to his laptop. "Maybe. . ." Button said as memories surrounding the Joy Boy came back to him, ". . .Dinky understood how even something simple, something that doesn't look like anything special on the surface, can mean more than others could ever know." Button then turned back to the screen of his laptop, and gave the Muffin Clicker game screen a long look. Then, a small smile spread across his face. Button rapidly clicked the muffin and bought a few Cursors, Grannies, and Farms. "Well," Button said with a grin, "Back to Minecraft." And he pulled up the Minecraft window and continued his game. Credits Cookie Clicker by French programmer Julien Thiennot, better known as "Orteil" Zoo Tycoon Complete Collection (2001)- Developed by Blue Fang Games and released by Microsoft Game Studios AVGN- Little Red Hood Nostalgia Critic- A.I. Doctor and Derpy Play Portal 2 by BaldDumboRat "Joy Boy Memories" from "Gift of the Mash" by Rated Pony Star Image Credit: Muffin Clicker by nekokevin on DeviantArt