HomeNewsThe Barnacle Goose Experiment
Grow a whole world from your spit, tears, and piss in this weird idle clicker gameExplore abiogenesis in The Barnacle Goose Experiment
Explore abiogenesis in The Barnacle Goose Experiment
I won’t show you screenshots of my end-game save because even the UI is a collection of mysteries to discover, but I’ll show you how it starts:
I always appreciate a UI with spaces and elements I will not see or understand for ages
From there, you create a world. We play as an expert in the abiogenesis of bees (abiogenesis being the theory of life developing from unlife, simple compounds combining and snowballing into the wild living world we have today), who’s been pressganged into isolation in a biodome for research. Just you and a sterile room. So maybe you cry a bit. Have a wee (in the corner, I hope). Then think, hey, what if combined my tears and piss? Well, dear friend, you’ll have created rain. Now see what you can create with rain.
The log showing some early experiments, discovering new recipes and re-running a known experiment to create more salt
The Barnacle Goose Experiment combines idle game and clicker game. Experiments take time to run, happily chugging away while you leave the browser tab in the background, and you’ll soon discover items which (slowly) automatically create other items. There’s also a lot of fiddling in shuffling items around and in and out of your inventory to see potential combinations, and you often need to rummage and craft for items to re-run solved experiments just to generate more items for further experiments. And those items which idly generate more items can often be interacted with in various ways (ultimately, a lot of clicking) to boost their speed. Click, wait, fiddle, wonder.
Some combinations feel alchemical, speaking to elements and processes. Some have the logic of Minecraft crafting, where sure, yeah, I get howwood x iron = hammer. My favourite recipes feel poetic, evocative combinations which capture an essence of something. Here’s one I feel I can throw out to delight you without making the game feel any more known:fire x iron x apple x dream = convertible. What a great breakdown of an American icon.
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Everest Pipkin first released The Barnacle Goose Experiment in November 2022. It only came to my attention now throughtheir announcementthat they’re planning to release an improved version on Steam and Itch in early summer.
“After watching how people play the game I’m digging back into code with a total refactor,” Pipkin said this week. “You should be able to have hundreds or thousands of times as many objects, spaces, animals, assistants, and piles of piss. General improvements to calculation, saving, and hang time … but I’m also scripting some new objects and interactions, particularly with a few new objects that have more agency and can act on the world.”
I am excited to see that. More moving parts and forces in this world sounds good to me. I didn’t discover every item (let alone every recipe) during my playthrough, so I’m up to find even more on a revisit. And sure, I won’t say no to a giant pile of piss. You might want to wait for that, though I was still very pleased with the current browser version.
For more on this and other myths of spontaneous generation (such as rotting flesh being the source of maggots), I enjoyedthis old book you can read online. You might also likethis paperwhich uses the barnacle myth to look at Darwin’s conception of the idea of species. As you might guess, I’ve had a grand old time reading about barnacle geese after wallowing in piles of piss and tears and pebbles and leaves and rivers and clocks and books and beloved childhood pets inside a biodome.
