Second Derivative Clicker

Second Derivative Clicker is jamuspsi’s 2014 fan sequel to gzgreg’s Derivative Clicker, launched on the r/incremental_games subreddit in August of that year with one twist that makes it a different game: you cannot simply buy buildings. To purchase the next level of a unit, the previous level must be sacrificed. Every step up the derivative ladder consumes the step below it, and progress compounds only for players willing to burn their own infrastructure.

What the loop feels like

The first scene is the sacrifice. Your tier of mathematicians has produced enough to afford the next tier, and buying it deletes the one that earned it, so the question is never what you can afford but what you are willing to lose.

The second scene is the recovery. The new tier reproduces the old output and then surpasses it, the calculus climbs to a higher derivative, and the next sacrifice is already cheaper than the last one felt. That’s Second Derivative Clicker.

Where it stumbles

Honest gaps first: the game has no documentation beyond its code and a launch thread, so the fine balance of late tiers is hard to reconstruct from living sources. What is plain from the record: development stopped in May 2015, the repo has been untouched since, and the game is formally abandoned. The sacrifice mechanic, clever as it is, also means mistakes are expensive; a wasted purchase sets you back an entire tier, and the game offers no undo.

Playing it today

It remains free in the browser at the official page, live despite the abandoned repo, with the source public on GitHub. If the sacrifice idea hooks you, Cookie Clicker and Universal Paperclips iterate the same compounding logic at far greater length.

The verdict

A math-sequel with real design teeth: the sacrifice mechanic turns the derivative ladder into a genuine decision tree, and the abandonment only freezes it, like a good proof.