Tim Beadeau has clearly been inspired by the likes of Snuggle Truck and Getting Over It with Ben Foddy. Eggcelerate! is a wonderfully crazy game that asks you to drive around obstacle courses whilst keeping an egg inside a basket on your car roof. It’s no yolk as the challenge mounts over 30 levels of silliness which stops slightly too soon for my liking.
Eggcelerate! only requires the arrow keys to steer and drive forward or brake/reverse. It is a simple car to drive – very grippy. It looks and feels like the simplest of car racers that you’d expect to be aimed at infant school kids. Everything is chunky and colourful – inviting almost. Then you notice the egg in the basket on your car roof. Turn too quickly, it’ll fly off. Brake hard and it’ll fly off. Hit a bump awkwardly – you guessed it! This egg is as light as a feather and leaves a friend egg splat wherever it lands. Each splat will stay there until you conquer the level and move on – marking all your failures with comedic egginess. Delightfully, if the egg flies out of its basket but hits your car – it bounces. You can try and bounce the egg on your bonnet over the line if you are close enough but usually it will end up as a panicked scramble that will fail.
Initially Eggcelerate! is just about you and the road. Hairpins, camber, hills and sharp bends. This serves as a tutorial to get yourself familiar with how the car and egg physics work. Then you’ll be trying to land jumps at a constant speed, avoiding windmill spears, giant hammers and anything else you’d find in a Wipeout TV show. Some obstacles are trickier than others and I found nothing more annoying than the wind fan. It blows you off course and if you are going at anything other than full throttle, it’ll blow you into a hedge. That sudden stop will send the egg flying. Back to the beginning yet again. Indeed, of the 30 levels, it was only the ones with fans in that caused me massive headaches. Everything else seemed doable – even if I wasn’t hitting the suggested time limits. Beat the suggested time and a steam achievement unlocks in all its bragging glory.
The challenge comes in trying to chain levels of survival together. There’s an achievement for clearing everything without dropping a single egg. I do wonder if anyone will ever do it but it won’t stop many from trying. Eggcelerate! manages to straddle that line between unfair frustration and crazy challenge quite well. The last 10 levels are where the real challenge is found.
I guess my only gripe of the game is its length. With 30 levels, it feels like the game is over too soon. Lots of things are included here just a few times and the courses are short and sweet. I feel like 50 should have been the minimum. It is also a game that would be perfect for a level editor to make the game eternally replayable. Instead, I’ll be using it as a hotseat multiplayer giggle game. Eggcelerate! is a well made light distraction that will make you laugh – then rage – then retry until you rage quit. I hope it finds a dedicated audience to allow the game to grow further.
Review copy provided by developer.
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