One of the most bizarre, twisted, and freakish twists in video games comes from Cookie Clicker. If you’ve heard of Cookie Clicker, it’s because of this infamous event — the Grandmapocalypse. And now that Cookie Clicker is out on Steam, its the perfect time to revisit one of gaming’s most brain-melting moments. This isn’t a standard clicker game, this is an abomination from the old gods. Cookie Clicker has granted us eyes so that we may see.
Cookie Clicker is a legendary clicker game created by the one-man dev team Julien “Orteil” Theinnot. Originally released as a browser game way back in 2013, this memetic game about creating your own cookie empire turned dark and strange thanks to constant updates from the creator, adding bizarre new features until we now have a very fully-featured little game all about clicking a big cookie endlessly.
In Cookie Clicker, you can upgrade your grandma workforce into a fleshy mass of endless baking potential. Here’s how to trigger the grandmapocalypse.
How To Trigger The Grandmapocalypse Event
To begin the end times, you’ll need to fulfill some early steps. Before you can get started, you’ll need to unlock Grandmas — these are a building type that generates cookies automatically.
- Step #1: Purchase 7 Grandma types to unlock the “Elder” achievement.
There are many different grandma types. By upgrading and purchasing 7 different types of Grandmas (like the Farmer, or the Cosmic) you’ll get the Elder achievement, and unlock the next required building — the Bingo Hall / Research Center.
- Step #2: Build the Bingo Hall / Research Center
The Bingo Hall / Research Center upgrade unlocks with the Elder achievement, and has the ability to make your Grandmas four times more efficient. The Research Center costs 1 quadrillion cookies to purchase, so it will take a lot of saving and clicking before you’ll be able to finally purchase it.
- Step #3: Wait 30 Minutes For New Upgrades
The Research Center unlocks new upgrades after 30 minutes or so. Save up your cookies, because you’ll need 16 quadrillion cookies to purchase the upgrade required to trigger the Grandmapocalypse event.
- Step #4: Purchase These Five Upgrades
- #1: Specialized Chocolate Chips
- #2: Designer Cocoa Beans
- #3: Ritual Rolling Pins
- #4: Underworld Ovens
- #5: One Mind [Triggers Grandmapocalypse Event]
Purchase the upgrades in order as they unlock. Each time an upgrade pops up, purchase it and it will take about 30 minutes to unlock another upgrade. The final upgrade, One Mind, costs 16 quadrillion cookies. It also triggers the event, and will completely change your game, giving you disgusting new artwork and a bunch of new features.
What Is The Grandmapocalypse?
The Grandmapocalypse causes a slew of changes to the game. Not all of them are good. Some of them are disgusting. And certain changes are absolutely amazing.
- Continue to purchase Research Facility upgrades to progress from Phase 1 to Phase 3. Once you reach the final phase, you can stop the effect of the Grandmapocalypse with an upgrade temporarily or permanently.
- The background art will change. First the Grandmas become creepy, bloody and beedy eyed — then they become abominations of flesh.
- Wrinklers and Wrath Cookies will spawn. Wrath Cookies replace Gold Cookies, and can give good bonuses or damaging debuffs to your cookie production.
Wrinklers are weird, slimy monstrosities that encircle your cookie and begin syphoning 5% off your Cookies Per Second. You can pop them immediately, or you can let them fill up — once filled, you can pop them for a huge cookie payoff bonus. Basically, there’s no reason to destroy Wrinklers immediately. Let them gorge on cookies, then pop them when they’re ripe for a big reward.
This is when the game gets weird. If the Grandmapocalypse is too disgusting for you, you can turn off the weird stuff in the Settings menu on Steam.
