I was mindlessly scrolling through Tik Tok one September afternoon when I came across a small video depicting a bunch of cookies, all of them with different hair and clothes fighting what appeared to be a cake. I didn’t pay any mind to it, because I didn’t know what it was. Then the same thing kept popping up on my screen. The next thing I know, my friends have it on their phones. I had no idea what this game was, until my friend Maili told me, “You should get Cookie Run: Kingdom.” So that’s what it was called. I went home that day, looked it up in my app store, and downloaded the game. Now I have over 200 hours on that game and I’m always playing it. What exactly made that game so addicting?

Cookie Run: Kingdom was released on January 21st, 2021 by a company called DevSisters. DevSisters have been creating the Cookie Run saga with games such as Ovenbreak, Jelly Pop, etc. The Kingdom installment is by far the most popular game of the Cookie Run franchise, with over one million players worldwide. The game has sparked popularity mostly on Tik Tok, with players showing off their cookie armies and their kingdoms they spent over an hour decorating. 

The game takes place in a kingdom, where previously, five cookies named Hollyberry Cookie, Pure Vanilla Cookie, Dark Cacao Cookie, Golden Cheese Cookie, and White Lily Cookie fought a very large battle with the villain, Dark Enchantress Cookie. After this, the kingdoms such as the Pure Vanilla Kingdom and the Hollyberry kingdom fell. Much time later, a young brave cookie named Gingerbrave (who is just a regular gingerbread man) finds himself in a kingdom. Accompanied by his friends Strawberry Cookie, Wizard Cookie, Chilli Pepper Cookie, and Custard Cookie III, he sets off on a quest all across the world. Throughout the game, the player can acquire diamonds, which are used to meet new cookies in the “gacha”, which is just a witch using magical cookie dough to bring new cookies to life. The player can use these new cookies to form their teams and blast through the levels. 

The Five (Left to Right): White Lily White, Dark Cacao, Pure Vanilla, Hollyberry, Golden Cheese

The cookies are in 5 categories: common, rare, epic, legendary, and ancient. Common cookies include Gingerbrave and Strawberry Cookie. Rare cookies involve Onion Cookie and Alchemist Cookie, Epics include Espresso Cookie and Almond Cookie, Legendary cookies include Sea Fairy Cookie and Frost Queen Cookie, and ancient cookies include Pure Vanilla and Hollyberry. Each cookie has their own unique ability of different effects. For example, there are cookies who “defend”, in which case they’re the ones in the team who take the hits first (Hollyberry and Moon Rabbit Cookie are the best ones). There are cookies who use magic, such as Espresso Cookie and Wizard Cookie. Some cookies’ attacks are so much more powerful than others, such as Sea Fairy’s, which is a series of giant waves that can knock out a hoard of enemies in one go. There are the weaker ones, such as Herb Cookie, who only throws plants. Yep. That’s all he does. Players attempt to get the strongest cookies they can so they can build the strongest team. Right now the ideal team seems to have Hollyberry, Pure Vanilla, and Sea Fairy, to name a few. 

Sea Fairy when she is pulled from the Gacha

While these cookies are extremely powerful, the chances of getting them are very slim. Whenever you spend diamonds, the cookies you win from the gacha are all completely random. Sometimes you may not even get cookies at all, just soulstones, which are used to summon cookies that have not yet been found. Whenever you draw a cookie, the most you can do is just cross your fingers you’ll get lucky. My ten pulls usually have some kind of epic, whether I already have them or not. Recently I managed to get Sparkling Cookie and Mint Choco Cookie. I already have Sea Fairy Cookie, Moon Rabbit, Mala Sauce, and Twizzly Gummy, and they are all really powerful. I also have obtained Pumpkin Pie cookie, who is surprisingly very powerful in my team. My goal now is to obtain Pure Vanilla at some point.

Pure Vanilla

So why is Cookie Run: Kingdom so popular? Well the answer is very surprising: the cookies themselves. People have fallen in love with the characters. People find the characters extremely lovable, with all of the characters being diverse in their own way. On Tik Tok, creators redraw the cookies as humans as the way they interpret them. These bring in millions of likes on Tik Tok. If you search up Cookie Run on Tik Tok, the first thing to come up on the page is someone redrawing Almond Cookie as a human. Other people make comics of the human cookies bickering back and forth with comedic audio. Cookie Run fanarts have sparked everywhere, and they are by far so cool and they bring out a side of the cookies that go far beyond just voice lines and animations.

Cookie Run: Kingdom has sparked worldwide hype overnight. The game brings forth story, plot, art, and all around charisma that is well worth the hype. It’s addicting and it’s a great way to pass the time. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have enough for a draw ten.