Clickbait Tycoon

Clickbait Tycoon is a pixel-art idle game about building a media company in a fictionalized New York, with clicker, RPG and collect-a-thon elements. You publish stories to earn Views, turn those Views into Ad Revenue, and use the money to hire staff and expand your empire.

Run the newsroom

Hire from twelve tiers of staff, from the Caffeinated Intern to the Global Media Conglomerate. Catch Trending Topics, fix typos to build combo streaks and publish Golden Articles. When Breaking News arrives, you choose whether to verify it, run it without verification or sell the tip. The Research Lab unlocks every game mechanic.

Send out your writer

Your field writer takes on 40 quests across the city, each guarded by an editor turned monster. In battles, you click enemies’ weak spots, land pen critical hits, collect gear and face bosses who remember each defeat. Quest progress carries over when you sell out.

Expand your company

Incorporate and buy a Manhattan office tower, then fill its 10-by-10 grid room by room. Rooms include break rooms, legal departments and a company gym that trains your writer around the clock. Each room adds 1% to Views permanently, and the tower remains through resets. Rooms have different rarities, including Legendary break rooms.

Bosses also drop eggs that hatch into Pocket Pals, tiny coworkers with stat bonuses, names and opinions. You can merge matching Pals, evolve them and hunt for shiny ones. They persist through every reset.

Sell out and prestige

When you bank a billion Views, you can sell out and reset the run; each website you have banked provides a permanent boost. At ten websites, a megacorp offers a buyout in exchange for your whole empire, Legacy Shares and a dynasty of writers. The game has two layers of prestige: selling out for websites, then selling the empire for Legacy Shares.

More to collect

The game includes more than 270 achievements, collectible headline archives, staff policies, scandals and strikes. Its original pixel art is accompanied by procedural synthwave chiptune music, with no two loops quite alike.