Hi! What’s crackin? Don’t answer that. Rhetorical question. You’re here to get ANSWERS, and trust me, we got a bunch of them today.
The first thing we cooked up is this Everest Girl plush. It’s available for pre-order now. I’ve hired it to watch you.
Pre-order one for yourself on YOUTOOZ
Secondly, Arctic Eggs is finally coming to consoles! Actually, it’s already available on XBOX. And it smells great. Folks with PlayStation and Nintendo Switch might need to wait for your order a bit more, though. It is ready and coming soon, just pending final certification .
And finally, I've had a little fishing outing with my friends at CRITICAL REFLEX and we chatted about two years of flipping eggs, which ideas I'd want to steal next, About Fishing, and the sacrosanct Cheeseburger Meal from McDonalds.
CR: Were you surprised by the level of recognition Arctic Eggs had received?
WM: Yes, but more so with the initial game jam version. It was made in two weeks and was basically just the chicken closet, rooftop, and Mount Everest. Even with so little content, people connected really deeply with the handful of words I'd hastily written the night before the deadline. I still revisit the old jam page occasionally to read the comments, I remember some extremely long and heartfelt ones that were truly the main reason we decided to expand it.
So when expanding it, I figured all we had to do to maintain that positive reception was continue putting in whatever me or the team found interesting. I think the main risk was charging $10 for roughly two hours of content, which is pretty steep for a lot of Steam users. Of course now I know that people are surprisingly okay with it. I think the mechanic/presentation was unique enough that people didn't have much else to compare it to, so the actual price became less relevant.
I’ve even had a few people message me saying they pirated the game at first but after completing it they decided to purchase the game properly just to support the team haha
CR: Looking back, is there anything you would’ve done differently?
WM: Definitely. I wasted probably 2–3 months after the jam trying to come up with new ideas that would drastically shake up Arctic Eggs' formula. And when considering we planned to release just 4–5 months after the jam, I essentially wasted half our development time.
I think this mostly came from insecurity. I wasn't convinced that talking/flipping could sustain a 10–20 minute jam game, let alone a full two-hour game. It wasn't until I stopped thinking about the project as a whole and started asking myself, "How can I make what I'm doing right this second more interesting for me personally?" that things began coming together.
Unfortunately, that wasted time meant a lot of nearly finished ingredients/environments and great ideas/assets from the rest of the team never made it into the game. I still consider that a pretty big failure on my part.
CR: You’ve mentioned Tales From Off-Peak City as a huge inspiration for Arctic Eggs. These past two years, were there any games you felt majorly inspired by? Any ideas you’d love to basically "steal” for yourself?
WM: I've mentioned a few in other Steam posts/interviews, so I don't want to beat a dead horse (play Shenmue), but something I played recently that really surprised me was actually Schedule I. I have no idea why I finally decided to try it. It's not my type of game at all, and I went in with a pretty artsy/pretentious attitude, assuming that because it was so popular, it was probably just another surface-level Unity asset flip aimed at making as many Breaking Bad references as possible.
Quickly I was brought to my knees.
When you start, you need to purchase all the equipment to grow your weed, and the amount of money you start with is just shy of what you need. You have to start looking for alternative ways to make money and that's when you are meant to notice all the trash lying around on the ground. The game asks you to manually pick it up and recycle it, which I happily obliged. Immediately I felt like a beaver, stacking all my trash into one giant pile so I could more efficiently bag it up, throw it away, and make money faster. It was a rush.
This alone made me incredibly happy, but I figured the fun would stop once I finally bought all my supplies. And I felt justified when it was time to place my growing station and a familiar grid popped up in my apartment showing me where I can place it.
"Ah okay, so it was fun for a moment, but this is actually just another farming sim in disguise," I thought. But then, when it was time to pour dirt into the pot, the game asked me to click near the top of the dirt bag and drag my mouse to physically rip it open.
I sat up a bit in disbelief.
It then asked me to manually tilt the bag to pour the dirt into the pot. I probably started tearing up a little when it asked me to move a few pieces of dirt aside to make room for the seed, which I also had to manually uncork and tilt out of its container. And when the game asked me to push those pieces of dirt back into place to cover the seed, the floodgates opened.
I think over the years developers have gotten too used to bending their knees to players, sanding down experiences until there's almost no friction left. So seeing such an incredibly popular game make you manually/physically act out these mundane tasks, things that could've so easily been reduced to a button prompt and quick animation, genuinely inspired me and gave me a lot of hope for the future.
I also really loved FlyKnight. I hope to steal that exact combat system one day.
CR: How did the players’ interpretations of Arctic Eggs change your own view of the game? Did this also affect About Fishing in any way?
WM: I don’t think there were many interpretations of the game that I didn’t intend, and that has definitely fed into About Fishing. I thought the meaningful moments in Arctic Eggs were pretty jarring, so I didn’t think a lot of people would feel the intention behind most moments but they might grasp a few. But really it seems like people who did see there was something under the surface, felt it wherever it poked through, and understood exactly what was being said. So, for me, I saw that as: I didn’t really dig deep enough and was too ambiguous.
So going into About Fishing what I'm trying to make is much more specific. I think fewer people will connect with it, but I think those who do will appreciate it far more.
CR: Saint of Six Stomachs is probably one of the most unique characters in Arctic Eggs. What would you do if you had Six Stomachs?
WM:
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/meal/cheeseburger-meal.html
CR: In one of your interviews, you’ve mentioned that you never wanted to write dialogues again. Yet it seems characters in About Fishing have a lot to say?
WM: I thought I didn’t because it was kind of embarrassing putting all that down, but I think I started to miss it.
CR: Out of pocket question: what’s the weirdest thing you ever fried or tasted?
WM: There was a period of time in college when our coffee machine was broken but the beans were still around, so for a while I would just grab a handful of beans in the morning and eat them like chips. One time I did this just after brushing my teeth and the taste was surprisingly pleasant. I never did it again though.
CR: Your worlds always feel bigger than what you see on the screen. How do you achieve this level of worldbuilding as a tiny indie team?
WM: CDbunker came up with a lot of the history/worldbuilding behind Arctic Eggs, but I think a big part of what makes the world feel bigger is how little attention we draw to it. Since I'm the one who actually has to put these things into the game, and I personally feel a little preachy whenever I'm explicitly doing any sort of worldbuilding no matter how good it may be, I tend to go out of my way to distract from it/pretend that's not what's happening. Inadvertently makes things feel more real, since no stranger in real life will ever just outright state, with dates and names, the history of the area to you.
CR: Do you dream about Antarctica and would you like to visit it some day? What would be the one item you’d definitely bring there?
WM:
https://www.mcdonalds.com/us/en-us/meal/cheeseburger-meal.html
CR: So, your next project. What is About Fishing specifically? Was it inspired by a personal experience?
WM: About Fishing is a world I hope you get to live in a bit longer than you did Arctic Eggs. In terms of the story I didn’t realize until like halfway through but there is a very personal experience that influences a lot of my instincts/decisions that made itself a very prominent part of the game. I am not trying to be secretive about it or anything I just feel embarrassed talking about personal stuff haha. With that in mind It’s weird looking back on Arctic Eggs because you can spot the similarities almost immediately like it has always been trying to poke through the surface.
CR: Arctic Eggs was pretty straight-focused on one unique mechanic. Is About Fishing more involved in that regard? How do the two games compare in terms of scale?
WM: I think About Fishing has a lot of smaller mechanics that stack themselves on top of each other to create the flow compared to Arctic Eggs’ one mechanic that was constantly being pulled in different directions.
I do miss the simpler/smaller scale of Arctic Eggs, but judging by the review play times for the About Fishing demo, people are already spending so much time in the world and still left wanting more. So I think it was worth it.
CR: Are you more of a prepper, a peddler or a purchaser?
WM: A purchaser, unfortunately.
CR: Are there any secrets left to uncover in Arctic Eggs still?
WM: Everytime I go back the things that meant nothing to me before suddenly become important.
CR: So Arctic Eggs is available on consoles now. Any tips for those who haven’t yet experienced the joy of frying an egg atop of Mt. Everest?
WM: Please use the motion controls, it's the most biblically accurate way to experience Arctic Eggs.
Thanks for reading the entire post. Could’ve fried like, 2 eggs at least in that time. Since you’ve read so much, it’s time we wrap up. Wait, actually… Don’t forget About Fishing! Try the demo, you’ll like it.
[dynamiclink href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/4362430/About_Fishing_Demo/"]
Okay, that’s everything now. Bye.
~ Kevin (The Water Museum)
