Life has Many Doors, Egg Boy.
In 2091, Antarctica is home to civilians brought together from war-torn countries. Whether they seek shelter, asylum, or avoidance of the outside world, it brought them here. Communities like this need every person to play their role to work properly, or otherwise find your use in the jail where we can repurpose you to something better. Trying to escape? That just won’t do. In this day and age, we can remove your ability to run, remove body parts to limit your functionality, to make sure you do exactly what is needed from you. You want to leave that bad? Fine, but the fine people are hungry, so it’s time for you to cook.
The Saint of Six Stomachs lives isolated, perched high above the city of hungry folk looking to get by, do their part, and live to breathe another day. In this city, chickens are supplied in mass as the Saint yearns for a specific meal: eggs. Cooked on both sides. As always. Your job as the Poultry Prepper is to provide the Saint’s meal to the masses. But tastes are different, and this city is cold. Maybe a warm drink to compliment the meal? Maybe a slice of bacon to add a fuller breadth of range. Fuck it, throw a cigarette in there. Could taste good.
Arctic Eggs’ cooking is handled with a physics twist, referred to by the developer as “Getting Over It but with cooking eggs.” Moving the food in the pan quickens the cook time and using some flicks of your wrist will flip your food to make sure everything is cooked through. Losing any of the food will cause a restart of your cook, but most cooking is a short excursion. The palette of your patrons is…varied to say the least, so you’ll be handling not just eggs, but several edible, inedible, and liquid items that will christen your frying pan.
Despite cooking challenges being short, the main emotion I was supplied with was frustration. The physics are meant to be floaty as you handle multiple objects, but there were multiple occasions where the engine would flip out and launch my food into the stratosphere. Food won’t flip at a consistent rate, items can fall through the pan, and I found the depth perception of flipping food can cause you to overcorrect and mishandle your order. Granted there are less than 30 cooking tasks, and if done properly none really last over a minute, but the challenge of fighting the system instead of the request itself never felt too satisfying after finally completing that task. It did help presenting my frustrations to my friends while playing, who thought it was a hoot watching me flip eggs while trying to pan sear a cockroach that wasn’t in on the plan. (Editor’s note: Watching Kyle fight with this game was way more fun than he had playing it. This is absolutely streamer bait, but like, really high quality Bass Pro Shop bait.)
Outside of the gameplay, the dialogue from your co-inhabitants is hysterical. Shower-thought like musings combined with some solid comedic timing had me audibly laughing through most conversations. These city goers are equal parts tired, inquisitive, philosophical, and flat out weird. But combined together is a hilarious mess that filled the gaps in between cooking better than it had any right to. The soundtrack is full of introspective lo-fi bops and upbeat instrumental jams that fill in the desolate space of the city fantastically. The patrons may not like the Cafe’s song on loop, but I sure did.
Your egg cooking journey will only last around 2 hours, and beating the story will unlock a Sandbox mode where you can conjure up whatever crazy concoction to serve and test your mettle, or practice certain combos if you’re looking to beat the game on the Hard difficulty, which turns your frying pan into a perfectly flat griddle. Am I going to try it? I don’t believe so. The gameplay just didn’t feel fully cooked enough for me to fully enjoy Arctic Eggs, but the sights and sounds and subjects of late 21st century Antarctica were worth stumbling through.
Maybe I’ll watch someone else waste several dozen eggs in their cooking excursion.
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