Needle in a Haystack Simulator in a Haystack of Needle in a Haystack Simulators

One original. 4,999,999 clones.

It's 23:41 and Kev won't stop texting.

pin in a pile simulator just went up on VAPOR
everyone is losing their minds over it
its only 4.99

You search VAPOR for Pin In A Pile Simulator. It finds 5,000,000 of them.

WAIT
why are there 5 million of them
ok you find it. im going to bed

Kev goes to bed. You don't.

Spot the tell, stamp the clone

Every clone gives itself away somewhere, and you click right on it: a zero where the O should be, a sequel nobody asked for ("2: Pin Harder"), Lone Pin Studio LLC, a description that opens with "Certainly! Here's a description for your game:", Overwhelmingly Positive from four reviews, any price but €4.99. Twenty tells in all. The subtle ones need tools: a magnifier to count the fingers on the cover, a Cyrillic detector for the letters that only pretend to be Latin, a reverse image search for the recycled screenshots.

Then hire some help

Sell what you dig up on the Community Market and spend it in the Toolbox. A browser extension that beeps at the obvious ones. An intern: unpaid, tireless and slightly too enthusiastic. A Readit megathread: ten thousand strangers, one spreadsheet, zero sleep. A web crawler, a server farm and, one day, a spy satellite that reads store pages from orbit. Nobody asked how.

The bots screen on their own and pass you the pages they can't settle. Settle those doubts to uncover the twelve Fragments of the original, train the bots on each one, and watch five million pages shrink to thirteen.

Meanwhile, in your room

Everything you buy turns up in your bedroom, and so do the clones: keep an eye on the plush, the posters and that bean bag. Copies of your own files sneak into Documents. And when Kev sends you an overclocker through an installer that really wants you to have a toolbar, remember where the breaker is.

If you can't beat them

Publish a clone of your own on VAPORworks: pick a title, pick a cover, collect the royalties and start the next night stronger. Your clone joins the haystack. So do the clones of your clone.

Features

• 5,000,000 procedurally generated store pages, and one original
  
• 20 ways a clone gives itself away, from typos and fake reviews to a sixth finger on the cover
  
• An incremental climb from a magnifier to a spy satellite, with bots, loot, Fragments and perks
  
• A low-poly bedroom with a PS1 look, and a whole fake PC in it: store, chat, files, task manager
  
• A lo-fi soundtrack synthesised live as you play
  
• Three endings, one of them for sensible people
  
• Steam achievements and Steam Cloud saves

No original was harmed in the making of this game.