We got the chance to chat with the brilliant team at Egobounds, an indie studio from Olsztyn, Poland, who are working on Egging On. It’s a playful yet punishing platformer where, yes, you play as an egg. Available to wishlist now on Steam, the game is shaping up to be as challenging as it is ridiculously fun. Lead programmer Krzysztof, level designer Szymon, 3D artist Jan, and art director Piotr gave us a look into the story behind Egging On, sharing what inspired them, how they nailed the game’s weirdly satisfying “egg physics,” and what they hope players will experience from their creation.
Hey! How are you going? Who are we talking to, and what’s your role?
Hi guys, we’re Egobounds, a small indie studio based in Olsztyn, Poland, and we are working on creating the best gaming eggsperience for the players 🙂
Krzysztof: Hey, I am the lead programmer of Egging On. I am the person responsible for egg physics.
Szymon: HI! I’m Szymon. I do level design for the project. I have a background in psychology, and I’m a big fan of souls-like and rogue-like games.
Jan: Hello! I’m Jan, and I handle 3D modelling as well as some 2D graphics and art stuff for the game—kind of an artist-generalist.
Piotr: Hi, I’m an art director and technical artist. I take care of the artistic vision for the game.
You’ve created a game where we live life on the edge as a delicate egg in a world full of hazards. How do you balance the difficulty and humour without it becoming pure frustration?
Jan: First of all, we’re still in development, so the balancing act is still goin’ on :^)
Szymon: I would say our game is 90% difficulty and 10% humour – the game itself is grounded and balanced and the humour mostly comes from the player interacting with the game, from people reacting to what happens. The game is no yolk. The frustration element is something separate from humour, in my opinion – every step of the way, we are making sure that the game is both challenging and fair. We have taken both inspirations and lessons from other games in the genre and are hoping to expand it as best as we can!
Krzysztof: I think the atmosphere and visuals also help to keep the frustration at a balanced level. There is also a narrator who, as a companion on the journey, helps to maintain that balance. But despite all this, really just prepare yourself for the frustration. It will come anyway 🙂
Are there any rough moments during development that felt like your own Egging On level?
Piotr: Yeah, for me a lot 😀 From paperwork and legal stuff to fixing weird shader bugs. But overcoming them is really rewarding and I learn a lot both in technical skills and life experience. I think players will also be able to feel the satisfaction of overcoming challenges in Egging On.
Jan: Not as much as you’d think, actually. There was a lot of paperwork and legal stuff to be done, but thankfully, I didn’t have to handle it lol. Personally, I’d say that figuring out the optimal technique for crafting a new object that fits the game’s artstyle can be challenging. It’s often a lot of trial and error, and it can be a timesink that doesn’t immediately provide satisfying results to show the team.
Szymon: For me, the roughness mostly comes from challenges that every designer faces. Every game from every genre has its natural limitations that you need to work around. For foddian games/climbers, every detail in the level matters, and making sure that the entirety of the game is up to our ambitions is an ongoing challenge. Once we established the core principles we want to follow, the process got easier, but not easy.
Krzysztof: Every day! I often think that creating Egging On is like playing Egging On. As an example, it took a lot of effort, frustration and determination to bend the egg to my will and make it move both according to physics and in a way that is interesting to the player and without major bugs. But when it finally all works as I envisioned it, it brings great satisfaction, exactly like reaching the next location in Egging On.
Out of everything you could’ve chosen, why an egg? What made you all sit down and think, “Yep, this is the one”?
Krzysztof: Eggs are cool. I always wondered what it would be like to control a realistic egg in a video game. Looking at people’s reactions, they want to know too, which makes me happy.
Piotr: We had a lot of very different ideas for games during the game jam, but the egg idea that Krzysztof came up with was the one at which everyone said – yes, this will be really great. And it was 🙂
Szymon: It actually started from the egg, and in later steps, we built the game around it. First step was the polyjam where we wanted to make a funny game (the topic was “make me laugh”) and went with an awkwardly rolling egg that is in a race with a chicken. Later steps were to establish what type of game would utilise egg properties in the best way – the fragility of the egg quickly directed us towards a dangerous climber. Next step was figuring out how to handle egg-breaking in the game. We thought about what would be the best function for that interaction, and after several ideas, we landed on the current system – an egg that breaks, and the player has to hold on to their life in a yolk form while waiting for the egg shell to regenerate. This fits really well with the tension the player feels while falling and fits the egg theme perfectly!
I love the idea of the yolk-sliding mechanic for when you crack. How tricky was it to nail that?
Krzysztof: Very tricky. This is one of those challenges resembling playing Egging On. The hard part was to make the yolk’s soft-body physics simulation in a fully interactive space. The cracking and regenerating were actually easy in comparison.
Did you ever find yourselves in the kitchen, testing egg physics with the real thing? We’re picturing some intense “research” sessions involving cracked shells and a lot of cleanup.
Szymon: It’s important for us that the game is as realistic as possible (for a game about a jumping egg, of course). Although we didn’t test the egg breaking in a kitchen specifically for this project, you could say we are using our life experience for that :D! Kitchen “research” was conducted while making the game jam version of the game. Me and Jan recorded some egg audio in my kitchen rolling, hitting, cracking… Now, a proper Egg audio is being recorded by a friend we are working with. And yes, he does use real eggs. Some of them broke.
Piotr: Sometimes I notice an egg, a plank or other objects and assess whether we have reproduced them well in the game. I’ve also rolled an egg to see if it could actually move like it does in the game and how it sounds. Also, as far as I know, our audio designer broke a lot of eggs when recording sounds 😀
Now that you’ve poured all this time into making a game about egg survival… Can you ever look at eggs the same way again? Or has every brunch turned into a minor existential crisis?
Piotr: For me, it’s more of a fascination. When I’m trying to replicate something in a game, I start to look at it more and notice the nuances. Now when I look at an egg, trees, wood, etc, I notice fascinating details, and I can look at them for a long time. I probably look quite strange then staring at a board lying on the ground or turning an egg in my hand for a while 😀
Krzysztof: I can! They taste even better when I know how great things they can be capable of 😀
Szymon: Surprisingly, no existential crisis yet! But I do experience a different side effect. I’m not sure if it’s a universally shared experience: when you looked outside a bus/car window as a kid and imagined a person running and jumping from tree to tree or between rooftops? I no longer imagine a person doing that. The person was replaced by an egg. In my head, there is an imaginary egg that jumps at everything I look at, and I can’t say I can always “turn it off.”
Jan: Seeing eggs all week makes me wanna get even more egg-y. I would love to get egg-related clothing like a poached egg beret. I saw a person wearing that once a few weeks ago, and I can’t stop thinking about it. We love games that make space for everyone.
What’s something you’re especially proud of in terms of accessibility in Egging On?
Szymon: We had many discussions about how to combine difficulty and accessibility in a solid way. That is something we are working on constantly, and some of the solutions we have already implemented – like the optional checkpoint system. This is a very broad topic and it is applied to all areas of the game. I specifically put attention to the readability of the levels so the player can progress through parts of it without having to move their camera – this makes the game potentially playable with one hand. We also want to make sure that all visual cues are represented in the audio layer and vice versa.
Krzysztof: Accessibility of the game is a very important issue for us. Although the game is aiming for a hardcore experience, we want all players to be able to feel like an egg and experience Egging On. We are constantly thinking about how to make the game more accessible while not compromising the challenge we have designed. One such feature will be the option to enable checkpoints, but we have some more ideas that we can’t share yet, and we are also open to community suggestions.
You’ve got skins, stamps, and mystery Easter eggs. It’s like customisation heaven. Which is your favourite? Any that are especially fun or weird?
Jan: My favourite is for sure the pumpkin egg skin which is actually a suspiciously egg-shaped pumpkin that you can control the same way you do with the egg. Very spooky. And I love everything spooky.
Szymon: My favourite one is not yet announced, I will gladly showcase it once it’s out!
Piotr: Probably an Easter egg with some beautiful colour composition.
The Getting Over It and Only Up! vibes are there, but Egging On feels like its own thing. How do you bring an original take on a genre that’s pretty well-established in terms of rage games?
Jan: I feel like the egg itself brings a fresh perspective to the genre. Its unique gameplay properties make for an interesting premise. And the idea of a controllable egg was a result of our brainstorming during PolyJam, where we threw around ideas that we thought would make for a fun gameplay experience. We wear our inspirations on our sleeve, but we want to make sure Egging On feels like its own thing like you said.
Piotr: When we saw the interest in the game at Game Jam and then thought about which way to develop it, it came naturally to us that the egg was just the perfect fit for this type of game. We had to make it happen.
Szymon: We believe that all genres have space to evolve, and rage games are not an eggseption. The egg itself and what we’ve done with it is pretty unique, in our opinion. We don’t look at our game purely as a “rage game.” we often think about it as a souls-like (sometimes ironically and sometimes not), and that takes us in different directions. I personally see some rogue-like elements to it as well. Who knows, maybe egg games will be their own genre in the future???
Krzysztof: I think each of the biggest rage games had a very unique controller. There’s the guy with the hammer in the pot, there’s the knight who moves almost exclusively by jumping, there’s the guy who climbs using only his hands. I think the jumping and rolling egg fits perfectly into this display of originality. What makes Egging On special in a way is that you play with an egg, and you can shatter. This is a big deal for a climbing game.
Egging On went viral with 5 million views. Pretty huge for a game about, well, an egg! Did all that social hype add any last-minute ideas or changes to the game?
Jan: Yeah, the views on that IGN roll were insane! But the “audience response” we got was pretty much what we’ve been expecting (a lot of egg puns). But lots of people asked if there was a checkpoint system, and I think that pushed us in the direction of implementing one. We’re always looking for community feedback and ideas, so we keep our eyes peeled for any suggestions!
Krzysztof: Eggs have something about them that attracts people. Before us, there was the Instagram egg, which, in its time, broke the likes record. We fully embrace the egginess of our game and take into account what people say and what they would like to see in a game about an egg. There are some things that just have to be there, such as Easter eggs or the egg cracking.
From a Polyjam hit to signing with Alibi Games, you’re on a roll. What advice would you give to other indie devs looking to turn a fun concept into a real deal?
Piotr: Try to aim for something small and simple to create (doesn’t mean it must be a simple game). I would say really plan the WHOLE game and define a clear vision. As accurately as possible, at this stage, all the systems, all the content that needs to be there. And try to cut out what is unnecessary. The more you know beforehand, the easier it is to talk to potential partners and plan the production and the less chance of something not working out. You’ll avoid the worst thing that can happen, which is that you’ll realise that you don’t know until the end what is ultimately going to be in the game or what game you’re actually making. It’s better to ask yourself these questions and answer them beforehand because you might have to come up with the answer on the spot, e.g. when pitching the game 😀
Jan: Sign up for a local GameJam so you can meet with like-minded creatives to collab with and hype each other up.
Szymon: Kill your boring babies, don’t be scared to make big decisions, try not to lie to yourself about your game, challenge your assumptions.
Just for fun: if each of you was a type of egg (scrambled, poached, sunny side up), what would you be? We need to know the egg-sonalities on this team.
Szymon: Egg sandwich with over easy fried eggs, hot sauce. Hellyeah.
Jan: I’d be a spooky deviled egg. Hellyeah.
Piotr: Scrambled here. I always have a jumble of thoughts in my head that are hard to put into words.
Krzysztof: Soft-boiled, free interpretation
Outside of gaming, what keeps you inspired? Music, art, or anything else that fuels your creativity?
Szymon: I would say nature, music, psychology and science.
Jan: I love love loooove anything horror and spooky and it fuels me and my creative juices. I love looking for small, inspiring details in any type of artistic medium that I find. It’s usually photos (especially pictorialism), scary movies and paintings/artworks that inspire me the most. If you keep your eyes peeled, you might spot some subtle references in the game.
Piotr: I sometimes find a tune, piece of art, colour composition or thought that really resonates with me, so it immediately gives me plenty of ideas.
Krzysztof: For me, it’s movies and science.
And without giving too much away, what’s one of your favourite hidden Easter eggs in the game? Give us a little something to hunt for!
Szymon: I’m walking on eggshells trying to speak about it, and I don’t want to crack and slide somewhere dark with it….
Jan: I do have a favourite one, but it really grinds my gears.
Piotr: I think it will be a surprise 🙂
Krzysztof: You will have to play it to find out 🙂
Adam Vian from SFB Games asks: What do you think are the qualities that make a game endlessly replayable? There are some games people want to replay every year – why?
Jan: I think fun, engaging gameplay is the most important part of any game that people come back to replay a lot. I come back to multiplayer or co-op games the most, but I think almost any game is more fun and replayable with friends, so I feel like that’s cheating. Even though it’s not my favourite game, I come back to Binding of Isaac a lot thanks to it’s randomly generated runs and fun synergies because it’s so fun to see new possibilities every run. Carefully implemented randomness in games makes the re-runs more engaging.
Piotr: I think coop games have a huge potential for replayability because the core of replayability is a fun core loop and content. Coop games, besides “normal” content, have content generated by the interaction between players.
Szymon: From the broader perspective, I would say “versatility of experience.” When some players focus mostly on mechanics and creating a perfect build for a character, and others are mostly engaged because of the story. Games with both different storylines and different play style options create a huge replayability potential. What I value in replayable games is skippable cutscenes and ways for advanced players to progress faster than a first-timer.
Krzysztof: A game to be replayable needs to have an engaging main game loop that doesn’t rely on one-off experiences such as surprises or learning about the story. I think this is best achieved by multiplayer games, including coop, whose content is based on interactions between players that are unique each time.
Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us here at Unruly Yolk- sorry. Unruly Folk. We can’t wait to get our hands on the game!
Jan: Thank you! It’s been a blast!
Szymon: Bayo yayo!
Egobounds asks: What are your thoughts on balancing difficulty with accessibility in games? Should difficulty be defined solely by the designers or by the players themselves, and why?
If you’re looking for a fun but tough experience (or just want to see if you can keep an egg intact under extreme conditions), Egging On should definitely be on your radar. Add it to your Steam wishlist, and keep your eyes peeled for more updates from this talented indie team. Stay unruly, folks, and happy gaming!
