Universal Paperclips
So many games rely on a model where you have some score, and as you progress through the game not only does your score increase, but the rate of increases increases. This creates a great incentive to continue progressing in the game. “If I can just get that next item, I’ll be getting double points!”. In fact, this model is so compelling to the human mind, that the actual gameplay is pretty much unimportant. This gets exploited so much that there’s a whole genre of games built around it called “increment games” or “clicker games”.
Universal Paperclips is a game in this genera that also seems to be commentary of the genera itself. What’s more, it leverages the mechanic of exponentially increasing scores to tell a compelling story of exponentially increasing computing power and the artificial intelligence singularity.