Here's the dystopian cooking simulator about frying up illegal eggs in Antarctica that you've always wanted

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Only the hottest physics-based cooking action will suffice.

Here's a weird new indie that has my undivided attention: Arctic Eggs, a game where you're in a miserable future seeking to escape a dystopian prison with nothing but your wits, strong wrists, and a frying pan. You cook for others, you cook to survive, and you cook to explore the low-poly, lo-res, scanlined brutalist heckscape that is this weird frozen penal colony.

Arctic Eggs takes place almost entirely via the action of walking, talking, and frying pan flipping. You ain't got no spatula to cook from. You got a pan, and moving it with a mouse is how you slide the food so you can roll it perfectly up and off the edge and into the air for a beautiful flip that you just absolutely must catch again because there are no sunny-side up eggs in this dystopian landscape.

An incomplete list of things you can cook includes: Eggs, fish, link sausages, cigarettes, ice cubes in a glass, a bottle of beer, bullets, bacon, cockroaches, unidentifiable cubes.

Your task is to feed enough people that you're allowed to leave this arctic purgatory by the fabled Saint of Six Stomachs. It's definitely harder than you want it to be. You'll get good at flipping an egg and then you'll have to flip two eggs. You'll get good at two eggs and then someone will be like "please don't spill my beer" and place the open beer directly in your pan.

Arctic Eggs is a great game if you're into strange indies full of verve and vibes. It takes a few hours to beat and I'll be thinking about it for a lot longer, which is pretty great for the price. I'm going to wake up from a dead sleep some day in 2029 and think "What the hell was that egg game?"

You can find Arctic Eggs on itch.io for $7 and on Steam for $10, though it's 30% off on Steam until May 23. It's made by an indie team called The Water Museum.

Jonathan Bolding
Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.