So you want this cheevo and a fading sense of accomplishment, eh? Well, you've come to the right place.

In game, Achievement #29 "Backwards" is described as "Make white mult > pink mult > purple mult, etc..."

...HUH?!

What this means is those funny, colored numbers at the top of the game screen need to be smallest on the left (red) and largest on the right (white). Each number must be larger than the one to its left, and smaller than the one to its right.

How do we accomplish this? That's why you're here! Let's go.

The set up is actually quite simple: recommendations to make it not take too long, and the distribution of color levels to hit the ascending mult order.

Quality of Life:

• Get Promotion #2 (laps speed mult) up, I like at least x3
  
• Get some prestige mult, I like at least 3e8 (300,000,000); you can definitely do more or even get some mult from Promotion #1, but I wanted to take it nice and slow

Then, make sure any and all automations are OFF, except you CAN (and SHOULD) leave the autobuyer for white ON.

Prestige to reset your color levels, and we're off!

Pay attention to your buy number so you don't blow past the targets in the table below. Red starts at 5 and we don't put any levels into that. Orange is available off the bat, and each subsequent color requires at least 5 levels in its preceding color to unlock. Start leveling to hit these targets!


I like to set my buy number to 5 for quick and easy unlocks and to get everything close, and then switch it back to 1 to click in those final levels. Do NOT ascend Pink, but you WILL need to ascend White and then keep buying more levels (again, the autobuyer on White really helps here).

Voila, now we just have to wait! I turned on Time Flux for 2x time and that also sped things up, but you don't have to. You can also put a few extra levels in cyan/blue/purple to help those get sorted faster, but it's not necessary.

Before too long, your achievement should unlock! Congratulations, and enjoy your newfound fading sense of accomplishment.

Do you ever question your life?
Do you ever wonder why?

Well, here's what's really going on and how I got to the numbers in the table above.

The colored numbers in the top of the screen in game are the result of 2 things:

• Laps/s (laps per second, or how fast it takes a given circle to complete)
  
• Mult gain

The value for Laps/s increases every time you level up the color (by the value listed in the top right of a given color's box). If you don't level it, it stays the same.

Depending on your progress and unlocks, the value for mult gain will either stay the same (for a given ascendancy level), or more likely given the timing of the achievement, will rise over time. The kicker is that there are 2 color groups with different mults:

• Red, Orange, Yellow
  
• all the others (Green, Turquoise, Cyan, Blue, Purple, Pink, White)

Let's call them Mult X and Mult Y.

This means that for a given ascendancy (e.g., if every color is on Asc. #0), Red, Orange, and Yellow will have the same mult as each other at all times (Mult X), and the rest of the colors (Green, Turquoise, Cyan, Blue, Purple, Pink, White) will also all have the same mult (Mult Y) as each other, though it will be different (lower) than the mult for Red, Orange and Yellow.

Bringing it back together, the numbers at the top of the game are the result of:
(Laps/s) x (mult)

So, for the first Red, Orange, Yellow all with the same Mult X, we just need a few additional levels to make the next color slightly faster. For Red lvl 5, Orange does this at lvl 12, and then Yellow lvl 19 is faster than Orange lvl 12. Higher Laps/s given equal mult (Mult X) means that eventually the numbers at the top of the screen will be ascending (Red < Orange < Yellow).

But now, we'll have to use a different mult to calculate! Since we know Laps/s for Yellow at lvl 19, and its Mult X, we know whatever result we get from multiplying the two together, and we know that we'll need something bigger for Green.

(Laps/s for Yellow lvl 19) x (Mult X) < (Laps/s for Green lvl ??) x (Mult Y)

We know the terms on the left, and we know what Mult Y is, so now we can just do simple maths to figure out what minimum Laps/s we need for Green to be bigger than Yellow, and add levels until we get at least that high. In this case, Green lvl 41. Since the rest of the colors all use the same mult, we just need slightly faster Laps/s to ensure a higher top number.

But...we hit a ceiling with Pink, oh no! Fortunately Pink lvl 100 is faster than Purple lvl 85, so we only need to worry about ascending and further leveling up White. Phew!

Prefix:Preamble::Suffix:Suffamble

Right?!

Ok, maybe that doesn't make sense. But I hope this guide did and helped you achieve the...erm...achievement.

Thanks to the developers for making another solid entry into the idle gaming genre, and to Valve for providing such a world-class gaming platform.