What do you get if you ask a puzzle game designer to make a platforming game? You would probably expect something along the lines of Braid, Fez, or Portal: games obviously based around movement and jumping across obstacles, but with an additional layer of puzzle-specific gameplay elements to spice up the level design. Oeuf, the new game by legendary puzzle game designer Increpare, goes the opposite direction. Instead of adding mechanics that offer an extra cognitive challenge, Oeuf distils platforming to its most rudimentary form: a character with the ability to move and jump, an obstacle-ridden environment and a goal to reach.
When hearing that description, one might wonder: is the developer of the genius and excruciatingly difficult Stephen’s Sausage Roll taking a break from making complex games? It might seem that way at first sight. The environment of Oeuf is visually sparse and consists of extremely simple 3D shapes: blocks, slopes, ridges… All objects are textured in a pixelated way, similar in style to something you would see in Minecraft. The resulting world is undeniably charming, especially with the added rain effect and soothing music, but it is still very minimalist. Not a single part of the environment moves; everything in the game is static except for one thing: the player-controlled character. Which, by the way, is an egg.
Surprisingly enough, it is exactly there that the design complexity is focused: in the movement of this strange protagonist. In theory, it is limited to the absolute essence of what you would expect of a 3D platformer character: there is directional input to move and the ability to jump. In practice, however, the movement is totally physics-based. In combination with the peculiar shape of an egg (a shape that you will become intimately knowledgeable with by the end of this game), it results in a wide variety of movement techniques and progression hurdles. The egg is able to roll well when on its side but will bounce wildly when rolling along its top end. It is able to gain momentum, which will allow it to make legendary leaps, but will also at times be positioned in an awkward direction and make even the simplest jumps seem impossible.
When you die, for example by missing a jump and tumbling down an abyss, the egg breaks and the yolk becomes visible. If you continue to use the inputs, the yolk attempts to push in the desired direction, sadly with no result, and you will have to restart the level. When I saw this for the first time, something that I had been suspicious of before was finally confirmed: the inside of the egg was also being simulated. The way the egg turns and changes momentum is just too sophisticated for it to be a simple solid volume. I have no proof of this, but I have been controlling this egg for the past 8 hours, and I have all sorts of theories about it. I am not crazy, I swear.
When this depth of the main character is understood, all other design choices fall into place. The egg is exceptionally difficult to control, and an intense learning process is required to be able to successfully predict and command its movement. Naturally, the perfect and least frustrating environment for experimentation to take place in is a predictable, unsophisticated and immobile space. One no doubt filled with challenge, but a challenge that is clearly defined and unchanging.
The intricacies of how balance and friction work in this world are already a lot to take in even when jumping from block to block. Refusing to add more dynamic or strangely shaped obstacles does not feel like a developer oversight but an intentional exercise in restraint for the good of the gameplay experience. This reduces the risk of frustration that is often present in these types of experimental games, as there are no random factors like moving obstacles or enemies to influence your chance of success. It all depends on mastering the controls, and the game gives you all the time and space to do so.
It is this mastering that is the true joy of Oeuf. The game takes place in a single game world, with a linear progression route, dotted with a reasonably generous amount of checkpoints. At the start, you’re mostly exploring on the ground, with no real danger of dying or losing progress. In this stage, you mainly learn the basic behaviour of your character and, in the meantime, get to do some exploration to find out where to go next.
Before long, however, things become more complicated: your first jumps happen, you start to need momentum for a certain move, and you begin crossing dangerous chasms. Every one of these challenges feels fair and increases in difficulty in a reasonable and achievable way. Moving the egg around increasingly dangerous and intricate obstacles quickly becomes a highly immersive and rewarding experience. By the end I was clearing challenges without blinking that would have taken me dozens of attempts at the start of the game.
I finished the game in 8 hours with just over a thousand respawns. Around 2 of those hours were spent on the final section of the game, where the difficulty takes a final substantial spike and the precision and focus needed to complete the game reach an all-new height. Still, even during these final attempts, spread over two evenings, I felt like I was making progress and absorbing new information about the minuscule effects my inputs had on the motion of my tiny hero.
I completed the game using a mouse and keyboard on a desktop PC. I also played it for about an hour on a Steam Deck to see how performance and controls are on a handheld device. I was only going to test it for a few minutes and eventually ended up playing almost halfway through the game again. The game ran at a solid 60 fps, battery usage was impressive for a 3D game, and the controls worked perfectly.
The game also has a level editor, which requires some obtuse steps to open and is quite complicated to interact with, only supporting mouse and keyboard at the moment. Still, I was quickly able to make a small proof of concept, and especially the idea of playing what other (more talented) people made through the Steam Workshop seemed enticing to me. As an example, there is an extra level by the developer of the game, which consists of 100 consecutive obstacles that you need to conquer. Clearly inspired by games like Roblox and Fortnite, this is a fun showcase of what is possible with the editor.
Somewhat surprisingly, the game features online multiplayer. The gameplay remains the same, but multiple eggs are present and are able to explore the same space together. Impressively, the eggs collide and have realistic physics between them, resulting in some hilarious tactics to knock people off course, which was extra fun in the aforementioned bonus obstacle course level. Still, the implementation is quite bare-bones, with seemingly no ways to communicate or keep score. A nice little gimmick, but not something that will keep your attention for long in its current state.
