2023, The Year of the Rabbit; a year of terrible significance. In the great country of Eggstonia, an undercooked scramble was beginning......

Orange Julius, the emperor walks up the stairs to the Curia of Poinpy as he hails his colleagues. A bearded eggish soothsayer approaches and speaks to Julius, "beware the ides of starch...."; they quickly leave much to Julius' confusion.

Suddenly, from behind Brutus and Cassius draw out their egg beaters and plunge them deep into the back of Julius' eggshell, yolk spills out onto the stairs as yellow becomes it's new coat of paint.

"Egg tu, Brute!?"

Orange Julius has been beaten to death. Chaos ensues, the country of Eggstonia now in political ruin; giant rolling siege weapons in the form of what would be the chicken become a common sight of what formerly was the peaceful sunny side of Eggstonia. Cities smashed underegg by these terrible Easter Sunday monoliths of death as warring empires look only to expand their territories without a worry for the common cackleberry.

"Omelette du fromage...." they sang in hopes that the goddess Midnerva would protect their battered shells from continued damage as the oval-shaped monstrosities roll over their once fair cities. Flattened, beaten, scrambled, fried; the once great country of Eggstonia now nothing but a destroyed mess of protein and healthy calories. Breakfast will be served, but not to anyone in Eggstonia....

camera tilts upwards revealing the narrator and true mastermind behind it all...

...Time to eat.

stabs the camera with fork

chews and swallows a bite and begins the real review

Not really my cup of tea, but if anything it does perfectly represent one of the many reasons why the PS1 has my favorite library of any system; experimentation hitting peak levels of bizarre. I thought about playing Power Shovel quick, but I think I gaslit Detchibe enough with the Game & Watch title a bit ago.

continues eating scrambled eggs

Jogado como parte do Backloggd Discord Game of the Week

Hm, não sei bem como classificar isso daqui. É um jogo bem esquisitão, do tipo que grita "JAPÃO". Uma mistura louca de Qix e city-building com estética anime pós-Evangelion.

Acho que eu apreciaria mais o game se entendesse melhor o que estava acontecendo, mas infelizmente ainda não estudei japonês o suficiente para conseguir lidar com a barreira linguística, mesmo fazendo uso de vários recursos como dicionários e tradutores. Sendo assim sinto que meu contato foi um tanto quanto incompleto, mais como uma curiosidade estética do que uma experiência lúdica. Talvez eu volte para essa obra inusitada no futuro, mas por enquanto fica só a consideração de que "é, os japoneses faziam umas coisas doidas nos 1990".

Its a weird thought to have, but about halfway through my play session of egg a thought entered my head - "how long is inbetween each turn?" Is the game real time, or do the machinations of these egg gods fighting it out take place over eons, their civilisations living their lives under the shadows of the eggs, that only move occasionally to distribute destruction and bountiful life all the same?

Of course, there is no answer and it's not important really. But I bring it up because this weird-ass strategy golf-god game about eggs legitimately wormed quite deep into my head. As you knock your egg, raising and destroying huge cities as lovely music plays on weird abstract playfield, there's just the right amount of time left for you to think, the gameplay is just the right pace, for the ambience to really get to you - in my experience at least.

And the aesthetic here is just great. There's your obligatory excellent 1990s pre-rendered CGs which go hard as hell and are particularly fitting, but the sprite art is also excellent, particularly the remarkable amount of effort that's gone into giving the various stages of your civilisation different animated sprites, which really makes it feel alive.

And the end result is a bit unnerving, which I think is the point. I know it's a bizzare comparison to make but it reminds me a lot of Flower, Sun and Rain in how it makes and treats a semi-real bizzaro logic world, and how it gets the mind racing. It's hard to make much of a statement on an art piece that people are going to take very different things away from, but I just really like this kinda shit.

Also in the ultimate plot twist, its actualy a pretty good strategy game? The combination of golf, city building and conquest with a fucking egg actually works really well. The key really in my opinion is that there's a good number of different win conditions which overlap with each other just enough, and are generally enough in reach at any one point to make for frankly, really interesting gameplay. And the egg golf itself is just a thing of genius - I think without it the game's strategy could get too "worked out", but with the layer of chaos that comes with smashing eggs all over the place mistakes and misjudgements are inevitably made, and capitalising off them and changing your plans on the fly is where the gameplay really shines.

It is too slow, the mission mode is shite and the enemy AI isn't great, but it's still a pretty great time for what it is. I think the main thing i'd change is making either the maps smaller or making the egg shots a bit more powerful, because things can really get drawn out if you allow them to - but honestly with a bit of adjustment would make an absolutely fantastic board game.

Perhaps the most baffling thing about Egg then, is how cohesive it all is. There are frankly, plenty of cool as hell aesthetic games of this era which are captivating on a conceptual or visual level, but the gameplay in Egg turns out a perfect compliment as something to get the mind racing. It's engaging and honestly fun, but also fundementally extremely simple, and it just makes it oh so easy to immerse oneself in it, get in the headspace it feels like the devs want you in - at least in my experience.

It is a very limited work, granted. Exceptionally cool and well worth a look, but it's hard to imagine this truly captivating anyone for too long, and it's more of a thought provoker than something that will truly linger in the mind, but for what it is, it's an exceptionally cool time, and well worth the sub-hour it really takes to get the whole gist of it all.

The egg can create. The egg can destroy. The struggle of egg never ceases. is also peak tagline, and also honestly represents the game quite well.

     「それはひとつの終末 そして始まり...」

Played during the Backloggd’s Game of the Week (Dec. 27, 2022 – Jan. 2, 2023).

A glance at Beyond Interactive's website turns out to be a rather disappointing visit. Although the company was founded in August 1989 by Hitoshi Akashi, no trace of their early work remains. Nowadays, the company operates mainly as a development auxiliary for various projects, without producing any original titles. This philosophy is surprising in the light of the fertile experimentalism that Bunmei Korokoro Game: Egg illustrates with considerable poetry. Perhaps this transformation could be explained by the departure of talented and creative employees, who had made their mark on PC-98 titles, such as Kiyoto Yoshimura, currently working for Chime Corporation. As a result, it is not so easy to find any information about Egg, either in English or in Japanese.

A CGI scene immediately sets the tone of the game: over layers of ambient music and a few broken piano chords, an egg is revealed, enclosing a foetus and a whole galaxy of civilisations. This cosmogenetic setting places Egg within the mystical movement of science fiction, more interested in the great trends that drive the rise and fall of civilisations than in the individuals within them. The egg turns out to be an object of adoration for the different societies, alternately protector of life and herald of destruction. The player acts as an egg on an idealised battlefield, pitted against another civilisation. Players play one after the other and, when they can control their egg, must hit it, similar to a golf or pool ball. The standard move allows the player to cover the tiles with their civilisation. Surrounding a large area also captures everything inside it. As soon as the civilisation becomes substantial, a tower emerges and grows as the surrounding civilisation develops. This tower is the command centre and must be protected at all costs, as allowing it to be destroyed by the opponent leads to an immediate defeat.

Victory can be achieved in three different ways. The player can break the opponent's egg by smashing it repeatedly or they can destroy the opposing tower, following the same method. It is also possible to achieve a cultural victory, as in civilisation simulators, by upgrading the tower to level 9. Depending on the chosen solution, the strategies implemented will be different and the player will have to use their arsenal creatively. Indeed, in addition to normal shots, it is possible to spend energy – accumulated by expanding one's civilisation – to perform defensive shots that create walls or offensive shots, which destroy buildings, whether they are allied or enemy. An aggressive approach requires a high degree of precision when shooting, and this is rendered tricky by the shape of the egg, whose propensity for unexpected turns should not be underestimated. Meanwhile, an overly defensive approach prevents the accumulation of sufficient energy and is punished in the mid-game, as soon as earthquakes are available.

This results in a constant strategic asymmetry, reminiscent of the dynamics in chess. Progress is only made at the cost of imbalances, which may or may not be punished, thus making it necessary to anticipate the amount of risk that can be accepted. The weakness of the tower may push one to build the base far from the centre of the arena and refuse a direct attack too quickly, out of fear of being too far away from the base to defend it effectively. Furthermore, overextending risks running out of energy if the opponent engages the egg directly, nearly always resulting in a loss. Ultimately, it is necessary to find a rhythm in the progression, so as to execute shots that always have dual objectives. In the early stages of the game, the creation of territories often requires three moves to be optimal; a good play can break out of this ternary pattern to surprise the opponent and create positional traps. Cutting off the enemy territory to prevent them from expending, whilst leaving an exit route to reach one's own base and increase its civilisation strength, is therefore a formidable strategy. Building walls very closely to the enemy base limits movement and slows down their civilisation's development. Every move can be used defensively and offensively, and Egg reveals a genuine strategic and tactical depth in its gameplay.

Perhaps most importantly, the title is driven by an atmosphere of rare poetry. The electronic noises hark back to the aesthetics of 1980s sci-fi and complement the instrumentation of every mission. In Stage 4, the alien civilisation has organic-looking buildings and is accompanied by muffled bass lines and primordial noises. Stage 5 stands out for its carnivalesque aesthetics, while the sixth mission has metal accents, immersed in wicked coughing sounds. The last mission opens with traditional Japanese instruments, reinforcing the contemplation of the final stretch of the journey. These atmospheric shifts give the title an esoteric quality, and when the player is focused on the move they are about to make, a real sense of poetry is created, perfectly in line with the game's discourse. It is as if, in a way, the creation and destruction of civilisations, which result from the various shots, do not matter. They are merely a product of the conflict between the galactic eggs, whose potential, in a philosophical sense, is indescribable. Admittedly, the egg must stay close to its civilisation to survive, a symbiosis that is very well implemented in the gameplay, but the beauty of life and the tragedy of war are not relevant to these shells of boundless substance. The glory of progress shines on no one.

After the World War II, Japanese fiction is riddled with visions of the apocalypse. The Lost Decades underlined the individual's lack of control over the world ending, in a society where young people find it difficult to belong and to understand why they have to suffer injustices that are not of their making. Unlike the teenage revolt of the sekaikei, which invaded the 1990s manga and anime [1], Egg provides a half-toned response, one that does not resolve the complexity of the issue, but seeks to assuage the fears. Societies come and go, they have their idols, but these cannot guarantee absolute security. Fortune and fate remain a sword hanging over everyone's head. These themes have been tackled in a much more frontal way by other Japanese works and Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995) is perhaps a shining example, wherein the Black Moon carries Lilith, avatar of life and destruction. The angle of the anime is very different, as the camera focuses mostly on the characters, but I would argue that the roots of the discourse are the same. Just as Shinji struggles to evolve in a world where moral values are blurred, so the apocalypse in Egg is never one-dimensional. There is, through the ambivalence of the gameplay, creation in destruction and vice versa.

It is unfortunate that Bunmei Korokoro Game: Egg is so poorly known. It is however a classic example of the experimental capacity of Japanese studios in the PS1 era. A unique poetic breath runs through it, halfway between the absurd and the contemplative, and is supported by an always apt gameplay. There is something eerily cathartic when playing the game. The cosmic scale of the playground both underlines and dampens conflict. It's an end and a beginning, the game repeatedly intones. Yes, it's definitely an end and a beginning.

_________
[1] Motoka Tanaka, Apocalypticism in Postwar Japanese Fiction, PhD thesis, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, 2011, pp. 164-174.

the egg gives live, and the egg takes it away.

"Egg" is both completely bonkers and very natural. the sound design perfectly captures the essence of the game; you're gazing upon something far beyond your comprehension. from the womb to the grave, war and conflict is something all humans desire deep within themselves. each golf putt along the field spreads the tyranny of the egg, yet the egg is just as fragile as it is cruel. the strategy required to defeat your opponents comes not from your developed brain, but from a feeling within your heart carried all the way from the primordial soup of mankind. you must properly assess the wind, terrain, and force of your putt to enact domination over the opposing empire.

I'm not sure what changed along the way for BEYOND Interactive to go from this to "Muzzle Flash" for the Xbox, but I will make sure this moment in Japanese PlayStation history is not forgotten. I'm the only reason this is even on the database.