Bunmei Korokoro Game: Egg (文明コロコロゲーム エッグ)
Developer: Toshiba EMI
Release Date: 1998
Platforms: PlayStation
Bunmei Korokoro Game: Egg is a ludicrous concept even for PS1 standards. Combining aspects of billiards, god games like Populous, and strategy games like Civilization, it sounds way too ambitious, but it all congeals once you get past the inherent silliness of doing it all with a giant egg. Egg unfortunately only has two modes with which to explore its concepts, one of which is a seven stage Mission mode that mostly serves as a way of getting used to the mechanics, but the last three levels, unbalanced as they may be, do show the strategic potential of combining these ideas.
In Egg, there are three ways to win a match. Players can destroy the enemy egg, destroy the enemy tower, or achieve the maximum tower level. Each turn, you select a direction and level of force with which to launch your egg along the map, which will create buildings along its path. All movement counts towards building your civilization, but the best way to develop your tower involves creating Qix-like boxes to cover as much ground as possible in one fell swoop. Once your civilization grows, you can employ natural disasters like tsunamis and earthquakes to devastate your opponent’s civilization or you can create barriers that their egg won’t be able to pass through. All three of these options being valid win conditions creates a game where finding a balance between building up your resources, harming your opponent’s civilization, and protecting your progress becomes paramount, though matches will take forever if you intend to win through maximizing your tower level.
As you’d expect from a game about rolling giant eggs to build societies, the presentation is bizarre in a way that evokes the imagination. CG cutscenes allude to a mysterious story about the creation of life itself, the music and sound effects seem like they should be in a survival horror game, and the emptiness of the world becomes a beautiful canvas for civilizations to be built upon. Multiple egg colors can be chosen and while these don’t affect gameplay, each egg creates entirely unique buildings that all animate in different ways as your civilization grows, lending the game a lot of personality. This isn’t a substantial game for a solo player, but if you can get one to three others to join in for versus play, you’ll find that Egg contains enough depth and genuine originality to encourage one to master its eggcentricities.
