Recently we did a short story called Egg. The best possible complement to that is Touch Egg! It's an absurd game, but one ridiculous enough to capture our attention.
One of the reasons we love the yellow Playdate handheld is because of weird little games like this. There's no explanation or point, you're just presented with a strange arena and get on with it. Sunny side up.
Going Beyond Comprehension in Touch Egg
This thing costs $1 and is by one-man indie game maker Joelle Tindall. Our brief video of it above shows what's going on! Kind of... but in summary:
- The bloke in a hat keeps laying eggs.
- You have 60 seconds to keep touching the egg.
- Don't wake him up!
The goal? Touch the egg as many times as possible in one minute. High scores are the name of the game, which is like Root Bear. You crank, you aim high, you repeat.
Pick-up-and-play overload of fun, which is what the Playdate was designed for.
Playdate recently got behind Touch Egg by posting the below. The mass media don't really cover the Playdate, but some gaming publications do. Usually to run features if there's something completely absurd going on—like with Touch Egg.
The Playdate harks 40+ years back when the gaming industry was finding its feet. The early 1980s with consoles like the Commodore 64, from which emerged some of the strangest possible concepts.
Back then a standardised structure for what a game should be didn't exist. Nintendo hadn't laid the foundations for all of that yet, so the result was all manner of bizarre C64 games.
The baffling and obscure Dancing Monster (1983) springs to mind.
That's the beauty of Playdate and indie gaming. The AAA scene is often way too formulaic, but the likes of the Playdate offer developers with unique creative opportunities.
Touch Egg has emerged from that like a demented omelette.
Not that we're complaining. It's all part of the Playdate appeal, with the chance to pick it up, crank, try for a new high score, and then abandon it until later. Short bursts of fun. Eggscellent!
No comments:
Post a Comment