Evil Egg

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People will perhaps be inclined to call this game a roguelike. I can see why, but I think it's a pure arcade shooter. If you've played Nuclear Throne before, you'll likely feel at home here. The action is extremely fast-paced, runs are short, and your player "character" improves over the course of the run as you grab upgrades and artifacts, but how many you can hold is limited. Sound familiar?

There's absolutely no meta-progression in this game, meaning there's no unlockables at all, so if you want to have a better chance at scoring higher and reaching further, you'll need to improve your own skills. No shortcuts.

The game is totally free and it's available on Steam and Itch.io.

Download Evil Egg on Steam

Download Evil Egg on Itch.io

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The first thing I need to mention is that this game is not suitable for photosensitive people. The visuals are simple in nature but the game quickly gets very busy as you progress. There's mild flashing lights throughout most of it and lots of flashing colors.

The options menu has a setting that's disabled by default that apparently enables even more effects. I'm photosensitive myself so I don't wanna enable it to find out what it does. My condition isn't very strong and I don't feel any real discomfort playing this, but you should be aware of this. Proceed at your own discretion.

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Evil Egg is a pure arcade shooter. The overall goal is to get the highest score possible, but you can simply define your own goals if you wish. The game has a global leaderboard that you can choose to partake in, where you get ranked in a variety of ways. There is a library feature (named "Codex") where you can view information about the various game mechanics that you've encountered.

The whole concept of survival, short runs, and playing towards a leaderboard is heavily reminiscent of Devil Daggers. You don't instantly die upon getting hit though, but you also don't have a lot of HP.

The objective isn't very obvious at first and there's no tutorials, but if you pay attention, you'll quickly learn how it works. The game starts off with your character hatching from an egg, and then you're given a choice of where to go to.

Enemies will come in waves. They will come either after killing every enemy, or after a certain amount of time has passed. The first level has 1 wave, the second level has 2 waves, and from the third level onwards, every level will have 3 waves.

Your task is to defeat every enemy while avoiding taking damage. Every wave, a set number of Greenoids will appear, and you have to try your best to rescue them. They spawn over time and will have a short window of invincibility when they do, but then they'll be able to take damage. They have 4 HP, and can die pretty quickly if left unattended. You'll incur a heavy score penalty if you allow them to take damage, and if one dies, well, you can expect to score no points at all for that level.

Enemies will attempt to target both you and the Greenoids, so you need to be fast and precise to succeed. Most enemies have little HP, but they come in hordes, so things will get very busy. The good news is that your main weapon has infinite ammo, and you can also shoot enemy bullets to delete them.

That brings me to the next point...

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The controls are extremely basic. You can move, you can aim, and you have a button for boosting and another for using your secondary weapon. That's all there is to it. I play with a controller, it's more challenging than a game like Nuclear Throne because you need higher precision to hit enemies here, but at the very least, I can shoot by just tilting the stick. There's an additional button that you can hold for aiming without shooting, but I'm not sure what purpose it has.

Navigating the Codex is a bit annoying, it doesn't seem like you can turn back a page, you can only go forwards. Maybe I'm wrong, I hope I am.

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The essential game mechanics that you need to know are detailed here. More complex ones are out of scope for this article. You'll likely observe these things on your own after a few minutes of gameplay.

This is the first thing you'll see upon starting a run. Levels are randomly generated, and choosing which one to tackle can be a complex decision. At first, you don't need to worry too much about that.

Does the image above look confusing? That's because it is! Worry not, I can explain it to you:

Apparently the bar on the bottom right shows your XP, but it's not essential to keep track of it. There's a variety of ways to earn XP, like killing enemies, completing some objectives, and even destroying artifacts. Earning enough of it will reward you with an upgrade.

Your health is represented by hearts. You start with 1 and can have up to 2. Getting hit by anything will deduct one, and if you have no hearts and you get hit, it's game over.

Your primary weapon is an auto-firing beam of some kind, it starts out shooting two bullets and has little range, but it has infinite ammo. Over the course of a run you'll collect upgrades for it. These are held by Greenoids, and they're indicated before entering a new room.

Taking damage will remove an upgrade. The upgrade you lost will eventually become available again.

After completing level 2, the hub area will give you a choice between 3 rooms, each one containing a specific secondary weapon.

Each one of these has a unique effect. The Executioner's Sword is a short-range weapon with weak damage, but it can clear a lot of small things in front of you at once. The Rail Gun fires a single powerful shot across the whole room in a straight line. The Plasma Cannon is a large-area weapon that can clear a whole room in an instant, but uses a ton of ammo.

You'll get a fixed amount of ammo for your secondary weapon each level. Greenoids can carry some more, which is indicated before entering a room.

Some of the upgrades you can collect from Greenoids can affect your secondary weapon as well.

As mentioned earlier, the first level will have 1 wave, then the second will have 2, and from the third onwards, all levels will have 3 waves. Enemies and environmental hazards will spawn every wave, either after you've killed every enemy on screen, or after a certain amount of time has passed (indicated by a bar at the top of the screen).

Removing hazards is not mandatory in order to progress, but it's a good idea. Also, you can shoot enemy bullets to remove them.

Greenoids are the friendly, helpless green guys that appear throughout a level. Touching one will rescue them. Like enemies and hazards, Greenoids also spawn in waves. First wave will have 1, second wave will have 2, and third wave will have 3.

You should try your best to rescue them, as otherwise they'll take damage from enemies and hazards, and eventually die. Greenoid damage has a score penalty, and letting one die will greatly reduce your score for that level, and reset your Greenoid multiplier back to 1x.

Upon completing a level, all remaining Greenoids will automatically be rescued.

Artifacts are items that enable a variety of helpful gameplay effects. These are collected at the end of a level, and they're rewarded by getting enough XP. You can hold up to 8 of them.

When an artifact is offered to you, you can choose to destroy it if you don't want to pick it up. This will yield some points and XP, but the artifact won't come back for that run.

You earn score in a variety of ways, like beating enemies and completing certain objectives. Score that you earn is increased by two separate multipliers: the Score Multiplier, and the Greenoid Multiplier. The former increases by a tiny amount as you achieve certain objectives, and the latter increases by 1 each time you rescue a Greenoid, with a cap of 20x. However, letting a Greenoid die will reset it back to 1x, so make sure you don't let that happen.

In the image above, you can see I earned 60 XP for each rescued Greenoid, 1050 points + 0.01x multiplier + 600 XP for clearing the room, 300 points + 0.02 multiplier + 240 XP for rescuing all Greenoids, and so on.

The Codex contains details on how much score, multiplier, and XP you earn when completing any given objective. For the most part, you can simply play the game to the best of your ability and not worry about score too much. Once you understand the fundamentals, you can then start working towards a high score.

Sound is important in this game. Everything has a unique sound cue, so you can learn to recognize them to figure out what's going on in the level. Music is mostly limited to the title screen. The overall sound design is reminiscent of old video games, and judging by the quality of it, I think it might've been made within the limitations of at least a specific sound chip. Which one? Fuck if I know*, ask an actual chiptune nerd.

I'm not sure if the game utilizes stereo or directional audio. Despite how important it is, I'm pretty sure it's possible to play this game with no audio and still do well, since everything that's communicated by sound is also done visually.

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The game has a leaderboard feature where you're ranked in a bunch of ways, like speed, depth, level 20 score, and level 20 speed. It's divided into Daily, Monthly, and All-time sections, and it even lets you filter by which secondary weapon was held (including none). You can opt out of this from the options menu, but it's on by default.

Judging by one of the entries in the Codex, I'm inclined to believe that the game implements some sort of anti-cheating measure. For example, Devil Daggers requires valid replays in order to participate on the leaderboard. There could be a similar system at play here, but this is simply conjecture, and I'm basing this guess off of one specific place, where the game says it'll disqualify you if you're running the game too fast or too slow.

As of 2025-11-09, the best score run in the world is held by Mousmine and scores a total of 193,227,820 points, reaching level 100.

You can watch the run here.

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I think this game definitely scratches that fast-paced shooter itch. Nuclear Throne and Devil Daggers are the only two other games that I can think of.

I do feel that my overall potential is limited by playing with a controller here. Unlike Nuclear Throne, you need to be able to aim precisely here if you want the best results, which I guess is doable with enough practice, but I'm past my prime. The good thing though is that I have no ambitions of becoming a world-class player here, like I did with Nuclear Throne. I'm fine with playing this game in intense short bursts and trying to outdo myself.

Hopefully the information here gets you interested in the game, and helps you get started.

(*) The game's sound was made entirely in Furnace, using the Atari Lynx sound chip

Download Evil Egg on Steam

Download Evil Egg on Itch.io