“As highly qualified goose parents, work together to bring your little egg home safely. Every crack makes it harder to control, every mistake more hilarious. A co-op physics game for 2 or 4 players about teamwork, clumsiness and honking. HONK!” – Steam Description

An Eggstremely Hard Game is.. an eggstremely hard game. It’s the latest in the friendship testing, duo shattering genre of rage games. You and a friend each control a goose. You are each holding one half of a pan that has your nest in it. You must go from the Park to the Farm without breaking your egg like the good, loving parents that you are.

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Crackin’ Up

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The game has a few mechanics that you must keep in mind in order to succeed, or really, progress in general. I once listened to a podcast on game design and it mentioned not giving a wall of text for your tutorial. Instead, the host posited, the developer should put the instructions into the game and this developer did just that. As you start out in the first area, you see signs that will explain the game to you.

Don’t break your egg, that’s the number one cause of scrambled goose. The signs will also caution you to not bump into obstacles. The more you damage your egg and then bump into obstacles, the more your egg will move. It can bounce right out of your nest. Luckily you can channel your inner soccer player and body it back into the nest with your head, body, or whatever as long as it doesn’t touch the ground.

The game also touches on more advanced things like lifting your partner, stretching out to go under things, and even jumping and gliding together. Make sure you practice these, especially the ducking under things one. I could not tell you how many times I misjudged the height and walked my egg right into the overhang. You don’t need to be perfect though. Your egg’s soft little shell is fixed when you reach a new checkpoint for free. The first time you reach that checkpoint anyway. There is also a button to reset and fall back to the last checkpoint but it will count as a broken egg so if you care about that sort of thing. Try to minimize that tempting button when you’re in a delicate situation.

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Stop Yolkin’ Around

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You can customize your goose in the beginning of the game. You can’t just go around looking like your run of the mill, average goose, now can you? Of course not! You’re one half of the goose team that is bringing your egg home safe and sound.

As you progress through the stages, there are alternate (sometimes harder?) paths that you can take that will lead you to a decorated egg you can collect. These eggs will unlock new cosmetics for you to look fly and crack your friends up. I obviously went with the halo, because I am a little angel.

Once you progress through the 5 stages, you are shown your time. Well, you’re shown your time the entire time too but at the end you are shown how long it took you, how many times you broke your egg, and it gives you the option to take a screenshot. There is even a function where the 4 fastest players are displayed as an in game Hall of Fame.

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• Graphics– Graphics is never the focus for a game like this, but visual fidelity is really important. Being able to see what’s happened when the chaos is ensuing can make or break a game and this game keeps its shell intact.
• Gameplay– Gameplay is frustrating but it’s designed to be that way. You have to work together with another player, or you have the option to controlling both geese with your keyboard. I think if you play that way, you are doing yourself a disservice and you should at least play this with your gaming duo or some discord stranger. I’m not your dad.
• Sound– Part of the customization is that you can customize your honk. You honk every time you left click and it’s very funny to hear someone panic honk in this game. Otherwise, sounds were fine.
• Controls– Controls are simple, move your duck. You can jump, you can glide. You can even lift your partner up for a little bit until you get tired. They are simple but they all have specific use cases and they were well though out for the obstacles.
• Story– Uh, you have an egg, you have to bring it point a to point b. That’s it, that’s the story. Much like Paddle Paddle Paddle, you are in a boat and you need to go from a to b. Heck, even in Peak, there’s a mountain and you gotta climb it. Story isn’t really a factor in games like these, it’s about the social interaction.