Over the last week, your Twitter friends may have said some things that raised your concern. Perhaps you heard them mutter about eating thousands of candies in one sitting, or maybe they've been spouting nonsense about the lucrative field of lollipop farming.

To ease your worries: no, your friends haven't lost their minds. Instead, they've lost their souls to indie developer aniwey's Candy Box, a free browser-based game that ensnares its players in an endless cycle of candy-trading mania.

The setup resembles a Facebook social game, but progress is rapid, and the sense of reward is great. The game is rendered entirely in ASCII graphics, and gameplay involves little more than clicking buttons and watching numbers increase.

Candy Box's addictive qualities will quickly win you over, however, if you find any sort of pleasure in grinding and stat-boosting. Your candy reserves will continue to grow even as the game sits unplayed in its own browser tab, and it's easy to check back on your hoard throughout the day. If you've lost hours to the likes of Progress Quest or The Kingdom of Loathing, you can expect to be similarly enthralled with Candy Box.