REVIEW: ‘Egging On’ Is Delightfully Patient

From developer Egobounds and publisher Alibi Games, Egging On is a challenging but patient platformer. You play as an egg that seems to have gained consciousness, despite not having yet hatched. An omnipresent narrator explains that something strange has happened to the chicken coop and the world around it and encourages you to enter the coop to find out what’s going on.

Immediately, the game offers nothing more than a narrative suggestion. There is no on-screen tutorial announcing what buttons to press to move or jump. You’re left to figure that out for yourself. It’s simple—the controls only contain a single button to jump and another to zoom the camera in and out. But figuring that out for yourself still feels like a miniature marvel.

The goal is simple, but the journey is exceptionally difficult.

Once you begin rolling, the narrator drip-feeds some story while encouraging your exploration and making subtle suggestions for navigating the world. You’ll learn that jumping just before rolling over the tip of the egg gives you more height, and that many of the game’s pathways contain shortcuts, although they may often be harder to navigate than the more obvious pathways.

The goal of the game is simply to climb the massive tower that the chicken coop has become to reach the top and find… something? The objective is clear, but the reason to complete it is left intentionally vague. This narrative structure is perfect because Egging On is an extraordinarily difficult game. Completing the climb to the top is the definition of “it’s about the journey, not the destination.”

While curiosity as to what lies above and why the world has been so turned around may abide, the frequency with which you might progress is so limited that progression itself feels like much more of a reward than any of the information the narrator provides. The game is very hard, especially if you’re playing on Egging On mode.

Egging On’s greatest source of support as you fail is the kindness and patience of the narrator.

In Egging On mode, there are no checkpoints. If you fall during your journey upwards, you have no recourse but to try again. And the falls can be truly massive if you’re unlucky. A custom mode adds checkpoints where drones can carry you up to the highest point you’ve reached so far. The game doesn’t judge you for the choice.

Some unlockables are disabled when the checkpoints are enabled, as well as special unlockable eggs that augment the gameplay. But most of the progress-based and many of the challenge-based unlockables and system achievements are still accessible, no matter the difficulty level. You’ll still accrue some different colors for your egg as you unlock in-game achievements, no matter the difficulty.

The greatest support Egging On provides for players willing to make the long journey up isn’t its checkpoints or spectacular shortcuts. It’s the calm, patient narrator. With every fall, the narrator softly and calmly encourages you to try again, even as your shell cracks and breaks with each fall. Where the voice could so easily be a frustrating presence, reminding you of your failures and chiding you for your shortcomings, instead, the narrator’s kindness in the face of constant setback is genuinely encouraging.

You can feel every bump and groove as you climb your way up.

Egging On’s graphics are reminiscent of the PlayStation/Nintendo Gamecube era of gaming. There are fairly detailed polygons, but the textures are simple, and the world isn’t particularly vast. The controls could easily be mistaken for feeling similar to the era as well. Navigation isn’t always as easy or intuitive as you might like it to be. But this is largely by design.

The shape of the egg is taken into serious consideration with regard to movement. An egg is a bizarre shape, and as such, the physics of your movement are odd as well. Rolling, jumping, and bouncing are all determined intricately by the precise angle at which your egg touches a surface. While it’s very difficult to get the hang of initially, once you’ve been rolling for a few hours, the peculiarities of the egg’s movement start to feel innate.

Likewise, the world in which you’re climbing is constructed with all kinds of tiny bumps, grooves, and hindrances. If you’re rolling on a piece of wood with a small groove in the middle, you will feel the contours of that groove as you roll through it.

Hills affect your roll differently at different angles, just as nails stick out in different directions from the wood to poke you slightly one way or another. While the world’s texture can make platforming very difficult, it feels much more satisfying to navigate because of how detailed the physics are.

Every section of Egging On is designed with fun and intricate physics in mind.

Every new set of obstacles to navigate feels distinct from the last. One level of the climb might have you jumping across wooden platforms, while the next sets the platforms at odd angles and the following layers them oddly, requiring you to move the camera in different ways to navigate it.

Different gimmicks like an activated power tool might cause a whole section of the world to shake every few seconds—sometimes you have to jump to avoid the shaking, while other times you might have to time your jumps to use the jolts to your advantage. The sections of the game are all crafted so smartly and so differently from one another.

Egging On is a delightfully challenging but patient game. Its strong level design is matched only by the kindness it shows when you fail.

Egging On is available now on Xbox Series S|X and PC, including on Xbox Game Pass.