I Asked the Arctic Eggs Guy How Much He Smokes
push to talk #22 // a short Q&A with The Water Museum about cigarettes, his writing process, and really good Steam reviews
I already wrote a glowing mini-review of Arctic Eggs in last week’s edition of the newsletter, but I can’t stop thinking about the game.
I find myself looking at frying pans differently, hearing the sound of sizzling bacon even when nobody’s cooking. Twice this week I went to a restaurant and ordered eggs for breakfast, and—maybe for the first time—I really noticed the taste and texture. This is what a playthrough of Arctic Eggs does to a man.
In an attempt to cure my condition, I reached out to game’s creator, The Water Museum, to ask him some burning, yet half-fried questions about the game.
That Q&A is below. But first, this week’s spiciest games industry news links:
Scuttlebutt and Slackery
The week’s most-shared, oft-Slacked, and spiciest games industry news links.
Half of Active PlayStation Players Are Still on PS4 - This and other surprising stats came from a recent public business report from Sony. The PS4 released in 2013, which means it’s a decade into an insane run. This figure alone explains why so many “next-gen” games—including the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 (see story below)—will continue to release on previous-generation hardware, nearly four years into the PS5’s lifecycle. (@DomsPlaying on X)
Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 is coming to Game Pass - This is a bet-the-house moment for team Xbox. They’ll sell this year’s CoD for full price across all the usual platforms, but in theory the cheapest way to play will be as a $9.99/month Game Pass subscriber. As of now they’re still running a “first 14 days for only $1” deal for new subs. Surely they reign that in before CoDBlOps hits, right? (The Verge)
Sony Apologizes for Fake Neil Druckmann Quote - The Last of Us lead dev Druckdaddy was originally quoted (by Sony’s own PR team!) as having said that his next game would "redefine mainstream perceptions of gaming.” A lot of people—me included—found this pretty annoying, but then it turned out that the source for the quote, which Druck later posted himself, had been summarized so sloppily by Sony’s PR team that it effectively became a totally different statement. Weird! (Game Developer)
Game Recommendation: Squad Busters - I played a couple of hours of Supercell’s latest while stuck on a plane last night, and the most striking thing about it is how absolutely unhinged they’ve gone with the metagame systems, fidget spinners, and lootsplosion rewards. It’s actually funny to see it all in action—like an entire building’s worth of pachinko machines compressed into one phone screen. The actual game design is surprisingly weird and fresh: some autobattler mechanics but in a free-roaming MOBA arena. It’s worth playing for any game dev who wants to see what sort of wild stuff is happening in mobile. (Supercell)
I Asked the Arctic Eggs Guy How Much He Smokes
So much of the really innovative work happening in video games comes from people on the margins of what we would consider to be “the games industry.”
I like interviewing these people. Like the guy running a bizarre N64-themed shitpost account, or a hilarious esports caster, or the the 21-year-old who made $100 million on a single game.
These people are making cutting-edge work, but they rarely receive the recognition that, say, a AAA studio game director might.
It’s a story that’s playing out across a bunch of different industries. The mainstream companies and institutions all seem to be losing their ability to create reliable hits, while renegade solo artists keep emerging out of nowhere to release incredible, breakout hits that actually push the medium forward. The old structures crumble, and light shines through the cracks.
Earlier this month, one of these true gems appeared on Steam: Arctic Eggs.
It’s centered around a single mechanic: using your mouse to flick and wiggle a frying pan to cook eggs, fish, and bacon for a series of increasingly strange and damaged characters. Sometimes they throw cigarettes, beer bottles, and cockroaches into your pan just to make things interesting.
It’s weird. It’s fun. And it worms its way into your brain. After finishing my two-hour playthrough last Saturday, I had questions. So I reached out to the game’s creator.
See my short Q&A with The Water Museum below.
PUSH TO TALK: Arctic Eggs is only your second title, and seems to be a breakout hit. Can you talk about your journey into game dev up to this point?
THE WATER MUSEUM: I think like most people who grew up with games, it was always a dream of mine to make my own, but of course the programming aspect seemed like a huge roadblock at the time. So instead when I got to college I went to school for graphic design.
During school I really started getting into 3D modeling and animation and thats what I ended up pursuing after graduating. I have been doing that for a few years now and with an insane amount of luck I stumbled across a YouTube video in the devlog series for the game Wrought Flesh by Miziziziz. It was an incredibly entertaining video showing the full process from 3D modeling a creature to programming it in game and at the end of the video he plugged a Udemy course he made called How to Make a Retro Style 3D FPS in the Godot Game Engine and like a mindless zombie I just bought it and started watching it despite having zero experience with game engines/programming.
I don’t know if he was just an incredible teacher or this was just what everything was preparing me for my entire life but I grasped the workflow very quickly and have not stopped making things since.
Cigarettes are used for two different mechanics in Arctic Eggs: as time-limiters on certain cooking challenges and also as a way to measure your progress through the game. How many packs did you smoke while making this game?
Haha I actually don't smoke at all! Growing up my mother always told me that we have incredibly weak lungs and many of our family members were affected by smoking just a few cigarettes. I came to find out later in life that was a lie and they were chain smokers, so of course they were affected by it, but it has been my belief for so long that it feels so wrong whenever I even think about it.
I crave to smoke one myself though. I love the smell whenever I walk by someone smoking. I think that’s probably why there is so much importance placed on cigarettes in this game. I am clearly yearning for it.
With a lot of the dialogue, I can tell you were just having fun with it. But there are poetic moments as well. Can you share anything about your writing process? Like was this stuff drafted out in advance or did it emerge as you built the rest of the game?
I am not a writer in the slightest but I really wanted to try and convey something about the world the characters live in/my feelings on art as a whole. But whenever I tried, it always felt a little too forced. I found, though, if I dispersed those really genuine bits of dialogue amidst a sea of people saying random things, meaningful dialogue felt even more out of place, but out of place on purpose, and therefore almost intentional.
In the notes app on my phone I have a document where I have been writing random thoughts for years, so I had no shortage of random thoughts that I could give out. So for the game, whenever I had a character with something important to say, I made sure to surround them with like three or four people who say one of these random thoughts from my notes.
It started having a weird effect, though. The characters who said nothing of importance started feeling more real than the characters who do, so they began meaning more. Thinking back on it now…
I think this is one thing games get wrong constantly, strangers aren't meant to be used for world building.
You've mentioned wanting to step away from "PS2/PS1" style graphics for your next project in part because it can sometimes be a crutch, but until recently I was seeing very few games that looked like Arctic Eggs. Now, with games like Dread Delusion and Crow Country hitting, the retro 3D look is definitely in. I'm wondering if you have any thoughts on what's driving that. Is it a cultural thing? Helped along by the evolution of dev tools? Or something else.
At first I feel like retro 3D games were kinda pandering towards nostalgia, but it has been so long now that it is something else entirely. I think it's almost like when impressionism hit the art world. Retro 3D is asking us to look less at how realistic things are depicted and focus more on our ideas, shapes, color choices, etc. The raw emotion rather than the final picture.
It is less labor intensive than something like AAA graphics, which is why so many devs (including myself) lean into it, but because of that we have to be more creative with how we compose our scenes.
For me, I want to step away from it just for a little bit because I think it is being overdone right now and people are getting fatigued. I enjoy it so much, though, so we will see how long I can actually resist.
I really liked this Steam review and I wondered your reaction to it:
With all of the incredible games that came out this month, this review actually means a ton to me. However nothing will ever top this review I got on my previous game:
That’s it for this week. I’m gonna go make a PS1-style vehicular combat game where you have to grill eggs on the hood of your car—I’m calling it Twisted Griddle.
See you next Friday.
lol - i keep forgetting to play this despite loving their posts on "X". thanks for doing this.