Arctic Eggs | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | The Water Museum, cockydoody, abmarnie, Cameron Ginex |
Publisher(s) | Critical Reflex |
Engine | Godot [1] |
Platform(s) | Windows, Mac, Linux |
Release | May 16, 2024 |
Genre(s) | Cooking |
Arctic Eggs (stylized as ARCTIC EGGS) is a 2024 single-player video game developed by The Water Museum and published by Critical Reflex. In it, the player assumes the role of a "Poultry Prepper" in late 21st century Antarctica. Having been caught trying to escape, the Poultry Prepper is sentenced to feed hungry people scattered around a fog-shrouded city.
Gameplay consists of control over a frying pan into which different items are dropped to cook. Different items have different cooking properties, and the player must cook the items they're presented with to clear different challenges.
Arctic Eggs has received positive reviews.
In a standard PC setup, the player walks around with WASD, while the pan is controlled entirely with the mouse. With the exception of live ammunition that appears in some of the later challenges, everything dropped into the pan must remain there for the duration of the challenge. Different things have to be cooked in different ways — eggs and bacon have to cooked on both sides, tins of fish must be heated until they pop open and the fish pop out to then be cooked, etc. Each challenge ends when everything is cooked.
Some challenges have unique elements, such as a request to cook a whole stingray, or a request to help an aspiring chef whose pan controls are inverted from the player's own. The game also has a sandbox mode, in which the player can build custom cooking challenges and attempt to complete them.
The game begins with the player character being lectured by a guard for trying to escape. They are then made a Poultry Prepper and sent out into the unnamed city to cook things on request for its occupants. The people will also talk to the player, sharing surreal musings and occasional history details about the story's world.
The city is overseen by a mysterious entity known as the Saint of Six Stomachs, about whom the residents express a mixture of respect and fear. The Saint is responsible for a poultry ban, and armed guards stand around cages of chickens at various points around the city.
If the Poultry Prepper successfully cooks for enough people in the first level, additional areas open up, containing new people with more complex dish requests. One specific resident, the Poultry Peddler, appears in multiple locations, always asking if it's possible to fry eggs at the top of Mt. Everest. She gets conflicting, sometimes nonsensical answers from the other residents.
Once 27 people have been fed — a number the player can check by smoking an in-game cigarette, which has the number appear on the filter — the final challenge level opens up, containing the Saint of Six Stomachs. The player must cook separate meals for successive stomachs. Once successful, they are brought to the Saint's head. There, he muses on the question of cooking eggs at the top of Mt. Everest, and asks the Poultry Prepper to find out for him.
As the credits roll, a plane is shown flying over the city. There is then a cut to Mt. Everest, where the Poultry Prepper and the Poultry Peddler are standing by the wreckage of the crashed plane. The player can climb a short distance to the peak, where they find a single chicken, and can pet the chicken as the screen fades to black.
Reviews have been positive, praising both the game's atmosphere and its mechanics. Zoey Handley of Destructoid wrote that "You might wonder how much gameplay you could really stretch out of a single Mario Party mini-game, but it turns out it’s a lot." [2] Writing for TheGamer , Ben Sledge described the play experience as "unsettling"; [3] both he and Polygon's Cass Marshall wrote that the egg-flipping mechanic was unique among games they'd played. [4]
Per TechRaptor, "Underneath all this humor and oddity is a shockingly well-made game, from Arctic Eggs' music, art design, and most importantly gameplay." [5]
Year | Ceremony | Category | Result | Ref. |
---|---|---|---|---|
2024 | Golden Joystick Awards | Best Indie Game - Self-Published | Nominated | [6] [7] |
2025 | Independent Games Festival | Nuovo Award | Honorable mention | [8] |
Poaching is a cooking technique that involves heating food submerged in a liquid, such as water, milk, stock or wine. Poaching is differentiated from the other "moist heat" cooking methods, such as simmering and boiling, in that it uses a relatively lower temperature. This temperature range makes it particularly suitable for delicate food, such as eggs, poultry, fish and fruit, which might easily fall apart or dry out using other cooking methods. Poaching is often considered a healthy cooking method because it does not use fat for cooking or flavoring the food.
Gravy is a sauce made from the juices of meats and vegetables that run naturally during cooking and often thickened with thickeners for added texture. The gravy may be further coloured and flavoured with gravy salt or gravy browning or bouillon cubes. Powders can be used as a substitute for natural meat or vegetable extracts. Canned and instant gravies are also available. Gravy is commonly served with roasts, meatloaf, rice, noodles, fries (chips), mashed potatoes, or biscuits.
The gizzard, also referred to as the ventriculus, gastric mill, and gigerium, is an organ found in the digestive tract of some animals, including archosaurs, earthworms, some gastropods, some fish, and some crustaceans. This specialized stomach constructed of thick muscular walls is used for grinding up food, often aided by particles of stone or grit. In certain insects and molluscs, the gizzard features chitinous plates or teeth.
Balut is a fertilized developing egg embryo that is boiled or steamed and eaten from the shell. It is commonly sold as street food most notably in the Philippines, Cambodia, and Vietnam also occasionally in Thailand.
Stunt Race FX, known in Japan as Wild Trax, is a racing video game developed by Nintendo and Argonaut Software and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the second game to use the 3D-centric Super FX powered GSU-1.
Battle Clash is a 1992 light gun shooter video game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is one of several titles that requires the Super Scope light gun. Set in a futuristic post-apocalyptic Earth where battles are fought with mechs called Standing Tanks (STs), a man named Mike Anderson participates in the Battle Game to face the ruthless champion Anubis. The player acts as the gunner of the ST Falcon piloted by Anderson, taking on Anubis and his subordinate chiefs in one-on-one fights.
Metal Combat: Falcon's Revenge is a 1993 light gun shooter video game developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the sequel to Battle Clash (1992) and one of several titles that require the Super Scope light gun. Taking place three years after the events of its predecessor, the player acts as the gunner of the Standing Tank (ST) Falcon piloted by Mike Anderson, fighting a group of chiefs in the Battle Game, the returning emperor Anubis, and the invading Eltorian alien race.
In cuisine, cutlet refers to:
Boiled eggs are typically from a chicken, and are cooked with their shells unbroken, usually by immersion in boiling water. Hard-boiled or hard-cooked eggs are cooked so that the egg white and egg yolk both solidify, while soft-boiled eggs may leave the yolk, and sometimes the white, at least partially liquid and raw. Boiled eggs are a popular breakfast food around the world.
Chicken is the most common type of poultry in the world. Owing to the relative ease and low cost of raising chickens—in comparison to mammals such as cattle or hogs—chicken meat and chicken eggs have become prevalent in numerous cuisines.
Quantum is a color vector arcade video game developed at General Computer Corporation for Atari, Inc. and released in November 1982. It was designed by Betty Ryan who was the first female developer at GCC. The premise of the game is related loosely to quantum physics; the player directs a probe with a trackball to encircle atomic "particles" for points, without touching various other particles. Once the particles are surrounded by the probe's tail they are destroyed.
Low-temperature cooking is a cooking technique that uses temperatures in the range of about 60 to 90 °C for a prolonged time to cook food. Low-temperature cooking methods include sous vide cooking, slow cooking using a slow cooker, cooking in a normal oven which has a minimal setting of about 70 °C (158 °F), and using a combi steamer providing exact temperature control. The traditional cooking pit also cooks food at low temperature.
Fried chicken, also called Southern fried chicken, is a dish consisting of chicken pieces that have been coated with seasoned flour or batter and pan-fried, deep fried, pressure fried, or air fried. The breading adds a crisp coating or crust to the exterior of the chicken while retaining juices in the meat. Broiler chickens are most commonly used.
Cooking Mama is a video game series and media franchise owned by Cooking Mama Limited. The series is a cookery simulation-styled minigame compilation of many video games and adventures for Nintendo gaming platforms. Generally, the gameplay revolves around performing different kitchen tasks, through the instructions of "Mama", to cook various meals. The series so far consists of five main games on Nintendo DS and Nintendo 3DS, two spin-offs on Wii and DS each, as well as a spin off on 3DS. It is also a spin-off to the Gardening Mama series. The original Cooking Mama video game was also ported to iOS. A sixth main series game, Cooking Mama: Cookstar, was released for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4 in 2021.
Cook, Serve, Delicious! 3 is a restaurant simulation game developed by Vertigo Gaming. It was released for Windows via Steam early access in January 2020, and was fully released on October 14, 2020 alongside versions for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, with a version for Amazon Luna releasing on October 20, 2020. It is the sequel to Cook, Serve, Delicious! 2.
Life Eater is a 2024 video game developed by Strange Scaffold and published by Strange Scaffold and Frosty Pop for Windows. The game is a narrative horror puzzle game in which players are a murderer that use an interactive timeline to learn the routines and vulnerabilities of their victims. The game was concepted by independent developer Xalavier Nelson Jr, who aimed to create a "horror fantasy kidnapping simulator" that explored themes of surveillance in a fantasy horror context. Upon release, Life Eater received mixed to average reviews from critics, with reviewers noting the impact and ambition of its premise, but expressing mixed views on the effect of its gameplay and narrative to execute its concept.
Mullet MadJack is a single-player first-person shooter and roguelite game developed by Hammer95 Studios and published by Epopeia Games. It was released on May 15, 2024 for Windows.
Cat Cafe Manager is a 2022 simulation video game developed by Roost Games. Gameplay centers around managing a cat cafe, taking in stray cats, and catering to customers. The game received mixed reception.