Egg is a small video game made in March 2018 for a two day game jam. Contestants were given the theme of ‘fast and slow’. By a happy coincidence, I had earlier been considering sprinting in games and what makes sprinting an extra mechanic rather than a button to always be pressed. As a child, some of my favourite games were the isometric Spyro renditions on GBA. These games I completed 100% several times over and frequently the game involves traversing across familiar terrain to reach your destination. Like in the mainline games, Spyro can charge for a burst of extra speed. What stuck in my mind was that with the isometric view, the terrain was at set levels and increments of height. The smallest increment could be taken with a charging jump - a speedy jump with reduced height. However, the timing for making this jump was very precise and failing would mean losing more time as Spyro hits his head and plays a short animation.
Running back and forth across very familiar hub worlds, when confronted with a jump like this I always attempted to clear it while charging and inevitably, often this would waste time as Spyro bonked his head again and again. For me, Spyro’s charge speed struck the perfect balance of being fast enough to tempt me to risk trying to optimise movement whilst being just uncontrollable enough that this was a risk in the first place.
Egg is designed to frustrate. Emphasising this risk/reward mechanic of speed vs. control, Egg moves slowly at the default speed and almost instantly while dashing. The trade off in control is simple - when moving at regular speed, Egg has full rotational control, whereas he will sprint forward in whatever direction he is facing. The player is encouraged to take risks to avoid crawling along at a snail’s pace. Egg also dashes at a fixed length so if the key to dash if mashed without proper planning, Egg is more likely to go over the edge. The level design features gaps that can only be spanned while dashing to force the player to utilise the mechanic, but ultimately whether the player takes a slow, calculated path or adrenaline fuelled speedy dash is up to them.