A silly game about an escaped egg with arms has us cracking up
I need to reiterate: this game is absolutely silly. I pride myself in not using such loud, expressive adjectives like “silly” in reviews, but THIS GAME IS SILLY.
In a good way, obviously.
In the sea of “simulator” games that have overtaken our Steamdecks and phones and consoles, I can appreciate where developer Hardboiled took their concept of true-to-life egg physics. Sure, it could have just been an egg that shakes and rolls, but why not give that egg… ARMS? And it needs those arms to escape from an evil scientist? It’s poetry, if you ask me.
The addition of appendages is what really makes this ragdoll game stand (err, climb?) out. We control each of the arms separately, QWOP-style, so that we grip and hold onto walls, cabinets, STUFF, that we use to make our way out of our predicament. Climbing becomes second-nature, surprisingly; arms always seem to fare more easily with dual stick controls, and at some points in open areas we can climb, grip (with the trigger buttons) and let go and drop to lower areas. We can even get a good cadence going with our grips and swings that we can jettison ourselves up in a sort of boost. I don’t know if that’s a part of the design of the game, but good gravity and physics design lets us have more fun with the process.
That’s essentially it. Just climb across the levels (there are four areas, or an endless mode) and escape, avoiding hazards like ketchup bottles or flying knives or the occasional hand that wants to smack us. If we get hit enough times or fall, we explode into a messy orange-yellow pool.
Art!
The game is forgiving in respawns and check points, allowing us to keep going until we escape or the novelty wears off. But again, with a short game like this that novelty never really hits, thanks to some fun (and sometimes chaotic) level design that keeps us occupied until we realize that the game is over.
Oh, and we can decorate our eggs with costumes and decorative puns, in case we want to see a Deviled Egg fly around our screens.
Yolked is silly, it has a good amount of content, and it doesn’t get old, unlike the eggs in your fridge.
This review is based on a Steam code sent to SideQuesting by the publisher. It originally appeared on the February 15th episode of The SideQuest. Images and video courtesy Hardboiled Studios.
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