A Ragebait Game That Will Leave You With Egg On Your Face
I’d love to be able to root around in the Game Pass stats. My bet is that Egging On is the least-completed game on the service. I’d love to know the percentages: what proportion of people make it beyond the game’s henhouse? My guess is that it’s miniscule, maybe five or six percent.
In a way, that five or six percent is deliberate. Egging On might look like a happy-go-lucky family game from screenshots, and it might have a soothing soundtrack, but that’s more to soften the blow of failure after failure. Because Egging On is far from friendly. It’s a ragebait game, similar to Getting Over It, I Am Bread and Clumsy Rush. Like those games, even getting from point A to point B is a challenge.
Prepare To Have Your Brain Scrambled
The main character is an egg. Eggs aren’t very round. They’re also full of liquid which sloshes about as they roll, causing momentum in unwanted directions. Fall, and they smash. They’re not ideal characteristics for the protagonist of a precision platformer.
To Egobounds’ credit, they absolutely nail the feeling of being an egg. Sure, we don’t have any experience of actually being an egg, but Egging On did a stupendous job of convincing us that someone at Egobounds did. Heaven knows what it must have been like in their animation and engine departments as they fondled eggs to work out how they roll, stop and fall. I love that you can feel the yolk sloshing about as you attempt a heel-turn.
Egging On has a tutorial, but it doesn’t feel like it does. There’s no gradual ramp to the difficulty; you are tossed shell-first into awkward obstacles. You have to very quickly master how the egg jumps higher and further if you jump pointy-end downwards. You have to pivot quickly on small planks, mastering the art of stopping still when momentum wants to send you plunging. And you have to do all of this in a barn that is unwilling to show you the way. Even knowing which way to go is a puzzle (good grief, did it have to be this way?).
To Make An Omelette…
I’m not going to tell you how long I languished at the bottom of the hen-house, but it was far, far longer than I wanted. My emotional progression was this: confusion to realisation to hatred to despair. I was confused because I was still working out what Egging On was. I had no idea that it was an elaborate troll and ragebait game. Then was the realisation: I finally understood that I was going to have to ‘man up’ and play. But even knowing this, the hatred grew. Nobody could possibly enjoy this, could they? Half the time I felt like I was dying because of a completely unpredictable slosh or roll. Then came despair.
What saved Egging On for me was the drones. It’s bizarre to me that they’re not on by default: they act as checkpoints, scooping you up and taking you to the closest helipad that you previously reached. Implemented as they are, they’re still punishing: there are so, so few of them on the way to the top of each area, and you need to trek a decent distance to get one. But Egging On has them deactivated as standard, and I would go so far to say that they are essential for 95% of players. There is absolutely nothing worse than reaching an apex, somewhere you’ve never reached before, only to plunge to your doom.
Another note about the drones: for unhelpful reasons, Egobounds does not let you activate the drones mid-climb. If you started your profile without the drones and decided that yep, you’re going to need them, then you have to start afresh. Trolling in-game is fine, but trolling from the first choice of the game is a little harsh.
Not Taking The Ragebait
Personally, I find reviewing ragebait games to be incredibly difficult. What makes a good ragebait game is very different from what makes a conventional game satisfying. Fairness and accessibility aren’t really a thing. It’s about the tussle between the game and the player, and whether it’s possible to achieve a level of mastery that you can just about stumble through. Often, it’s more important to make people laugh and be visually ridiculous.
On all these counts, Egging On is superb. By the time I reached The Shop, I could at least predict the whims of the egg. I knew when it was best to stop and re-orient. I knew when to use the momentum and keep rolling. I wouldn’t go so far to say that I was immune to the capricious egg, but I was a little more prepared. I’d moved on from the hellscape of the bottom of The Henhouse. And I think that’s the sweetspot that ragebait games are after.
It’s not ludicrously funny in the way that Peak or Clumsy Rush can be, but it’s a gorgeous game to look at with some fun nooks and surprises. Each level has a few feats for you to attempt, snagging a stamp or egg unlock that can be used in other modes. The soundtrack also deserves special mention: the narrator is warm and calming when you most need words of warmth and calm. And the music has a similarly chilled aspect.
You Won’t Just Smash Eggs
But I say all of the above having never enjoyed Egging On. Not once. Although I reached its final level, I spat out an incredible number of expletives, tossed my controller twice, worried my wife on multiple occasions, and generally wished that I had picked another game to review. Because ragebait games are not my thing, and this was one of the more demanding of them. For one, I had taken too long to give in and activate the drones. For two, the elation of reaching a drone helipad was not equal to or greater than the pain it took to get there.
I hope that the review serves as a warning to you. We often say that games aren’t for everyone, but Egging On, most emphatically, is not for everyone. It demands that you enjoy wrestling a borderline-uncontrollable main character through simplistic hoops. It needs you to feel the glow of reaching heights you have never reached before, only to tumble to your doom afterwards. It needs you to enjoy ragebait games, and – in my case – life’s too short for that nonsense. When heads of state are ragebaiting me in the news, I don’t need the same from my games.
Important Links
From Game Jam Hit to Game Pass – Egging On is a New, Quirky Adventure – https://www.thexboxhub.com/from-game-jam-hit-to-game-pass-egging-on-is-a-new-quirky-adventure/
Download from the Xbox Store, through Game Pass if you like – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/egging-on/9PDKDBQGG2N2
