When comparing Swarm Simulator vs Cookie Clicker, the Slant community recommends Cookie Clicker for most people. In the question“What are the best browser based idle games?” Cookie Clicker is ranked 6th while Swarm Simulator is ranked 8th. The most important reason people chose Cookie Clicker is:
Each upgrade costs more and more cookies to purchase and each hidden upgrade is not made available until you reach the amount of cookies it costs, so no matter if you need 100 cookies to purchase a new Grandma or a trillion to purchase some other tool you will always be left feeling like you just need to reach that next milestone.
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Pros
Pro Good sense of scale
The game grows at a decent pace, making your new upgrades feel like a true boost.
Pro Oddly addictive
Once you start playing, you want to keep building your swarm. It's a simple enough game, but balancing your larvae and meat sources, as well as ensuring you have enough territory for upgrading your larvae spawn rate.
Pro Very basic and easy to pickup
There are a few basic categories of resources - meat, larvae, and territory. All of the units you build and upgrade add to this base resource, which makes it easy to follow. For example, drones harvest you more meat. Queens produce drones on their own, which will in turn supply you with more meat. Once you have 1000 queens and a decent chunk of meat, you can use them to upgrade to a hive which will produce 3 queens each second, which in turn makes more drones, which each gather meat. Any upgraded units trickle down the line, and produce just the basic resource.
Pro You never know what is next
Each upgrade costs more and more cookies to purchase and each hidden upgrade is not made available until you reach the amount of cookies it costs, so no matter if you need 100 cookies to purchase a new Grandma or a trillion to purchase some other tool you will always be left feeling like you just need to reach that next milestone.
Pro Addictive "gameplay"
While after 15 clicks the game can play itself, the constant goal of improving how many cookies one can click is pretty addictive in that there is always something to be improved upon.
Pro Game still runs when the browser is closed
The browser does not need to be opened for your bakery to keep earning cookies and sugar lumps, a recent form of currency added to the game. The cookie earnings will be reduced, but using the heavenly chip system, a currency earned when ascending the bakery, can be used to increase how many cookies are earned and how long the increased boost lasts for.
Cons
Con No good time to quit
The game never ends...your swarm just keeps multiplying. There aren't any good spots to say "OK, I can leave while I'm ahead", or even "There's no coming back from this - it's time to go". You get hooked, and then there goes the rest of your day.
Con Visually stale
The game is completely text-based, so there's not a lot of eye candy. The most interesting thing to look at are the blue bars, and how they slowly get bigger over time.
Con Some may see the game as not a game
Incremental or as some know them "idle" games are not always received well by those looking for something with a bit more skill needed, basically the game will play itself at some point and from that point forward which can be pretty boring. So for those that are not interacting with the game that often (no clicking, no checking in often) it can be less of an interactive title than what some are looking for.
Con Some achievements take a long time to earn
Some of the most recent achievements added into the game involve earning and spending sugar lumps. Even with the upgrades meant to speed up the earning of sugar lumps, it will still take a long time to earn the achievements involving harvesting and spending them.
Con Boring
This is boring, you don't do anything what's the point.