Before I state I want to give my appreciate to the developers, AO Games, for providing me with a review copy.
Egg King is about an egg trying to rescue a crown from a dragon. Whoever can rescue the crown will become the king of the land. That plot makes me think of something out of Monty Python. From there you must jump, slide, and roll your way from the castle to the dragon’s lair, gaining new abilities along the way. At least, that’s what the game description states. Personally, I couldn’t get through the first level.
Egg King is labeled as a casual game but the core of the game, the platforming, requires precision. Not Celeste precision, more bad Mario Maker precision. You have a button to jump, and you can turn on a guiding line to help you aim but that line is a lie. Throughout my experience, the line would show my jump to land in the center of the platform but then when I made my jump, I would fall short. Like my egg suddenly put on heavy boots. The game tells you to push the control stick forward during a jump to help clear longer gaps, but this is also misleading. I would do so, and the sudden weight increase would still cause me to far short. One of the problems, honestly, is the shape of the character. Since you are an egg, you are oval shaped, so before each jump you must make sure you adjust to being straight up. From there I also learned to land with your bottom helps with fall damage. I don’t know if there are any enemies in this game but fall damage would be at the top as most annoying and dangerous. I get it, you are a fragile egg. However, there is no clear definition for what counts as too far of a jump. Sometimes I would make a jump or roll off a slant and take no damage while other times I would. The game does feature checkpoints, that you don’t actually have to touch to activate, just get near but the first level just felt too long even with them. I cannot speak for the other levels.
[u]PROS[/u]
[b]Simple Controls[/b] – With just three buttons and movement, the controls being simple is the best part of the game. A simple concept that not all platformers get right.
[b]Controller Support[/b] – In today’s age of gaming, controller support is a must for a lot of games, yet I have seen games just ignore it or include it later. Seeing full controller support is nice.
[b]Price[/b] - At $4.99, that's not a terrible price. I have seen worst games go for more.
[b]Post Launch Support[/b] - The game has a pre-release patch, 1.0.5, that fixes a couple of bugs and adds hardcore mode. Will we see more patches later on? I don't know but seeing any kind of patch is a good sign.
[u]CONS[/u]
[b]Gameplay[/b] – Simple controls can’t help the frustrating jumping. The jumping feels bad and feels like you are jumping with added weight at the bottom. Showing the curve doesn’t help since it’s not accurate to where you are going to land. Without it you are jumping blindly into the wind. Some of the jumps require you to land perfectly. Too high and you fall off, too low and you break.
[b]Music[/b] – They went with the Minecraft approach of having very light music, but it’s so quiet, it’s hard to hear. I honestly thought it didn’t have any music for a while. Turns out this might have been caused by a bug that fixed with the 1.0.5 patch.
[b]Presentation[/b] – The maps, at least the first world, were bare boned in the design aspect. The first stretch of it looked nice, with a windmill, a pond, and a well. Once you start descending the castle, it gets really boring to look at. They placed barrels, statues, flags, and other objects around on platformers, but they don’t feel natural. They feel like someone placed them there to fill up space.
Again, perhaps I am just bad at this game but it’s my opinion that this is a bad game. From reading the description, to the fact that they have a Discord set up, I can tell the two creators have a desire and passion to make games. Every developer makes a rotten egg from time to time, pardon the pun. Maybe if the game included a bullseye where you are going to land or maybe if the line was just more accurate it would be better. Overall, I cannot recommend Egg King. I would only nab it if you enjoy bad games or can power through it. The developers do state the game is only about 1-2 hours in length. So that works in the games favor.
You can see gameplay of it here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKHNr8LLIlU
