I just squeezed more eggs in one hour than you have in your entire life

2 months ago 94
A hand holding an egg and squeezing it
(Image credit: Matter Games)

"You have been chosen as a volunteer for the 'Egg Squeeze' exam—a test that evaluates one's psychokinetic intuition of biological makeup. In each test, you will be asked to squeeze an egg for a short period of time. The objective is to estimate the egg's unique breaking point and release your grasp before it cracks. You will be graded relative to your synergy with the eggs."

Thus reads the letter at the beginning of Egg Squeeze, a game where you hold the mouse button to squeeze an egg and release the mouse button to stop squeezing it. That's all you do. Squeeze an egg and stop squeezing that egg.

I've been playing it for, like, an hour.

The longer you squeeze, the further along the hidden meter you score, racking up points. Unless you squeeze too long and the egg breaks, in which case you lose points. How do you know how long to squeeze for? You don't, unless… you do? If you have synergy, you'll know just when to stop squeezing for the maximum multiplier. If you don't, you'll wind up with a handful of wet yolk.

There's more to it, naturally. Each squeeze is accompanied by a bit of music, nearly 50 tracks in all, and there's plenty of other distractions on the screen, especially if you squeeze for too long too many times and begin to lose your "eggsanity." You can earn multipliers by putting together streaks where you don't break any eggs, though that can be tough when you literally have no idea how long it will take until any given egg breaks. (Unless you do, because synergy.) One time I squoze an egg too long and it cracked and instead of a palm full of yolk a baby chick stood there. That was weird. And there are more missives from Egg Co. Investor Group in the form of letters and, if you perform well enough, mysterious phone calls.

A hand holding an egg and squeezing it

(Image credit: Matter Games)

I'll admit at this stage that I'm still not quite sure how Egg Squeeze determines how long I can squeeze an egg before it breaks. It doesn't necessarily seem to be related to the awesome collection of musical tracks (or occasionally the disturbing dead silence) that accompanies my squeezes, nor the eventual on-screen "Eggmeter" that sweeps around like a radar at different speeds and contains a seemingly unrelated number between one and nine, nor the live chat window that eventually pops up where "viewers" say things like "Egg King" and "Sexy Egg" and "Egg Tuah," nor the egg-themed game of Pong that begins playing itself during my squeezings, nor the little egg character named Buddy who stands smiling in the lower right corner of the screen saying helpful things like "NEED AN EGG?" and "YOU KILLED A LOT OF MY FRIENDS."

I suspect it's completely random. And yet… I can't deny that there were stretches of Egg Squeeze where I racked up long streaks of success by simply vibing. By knowing just how long to squeeze and release. By experiencing… synergy with the eggs. Is it all in my head? Am I succumbing to eggsanity? I don't know. But for now I'm gonna keep squeezing. You can too.

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Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

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