Where's an Egg?

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''"In this hard-bolied <!--sic--> adventure game, you must help the Boise police force find a missing egg. Not in Mancuso's garage? Try Brodermaker's gymbag. Everyone's a suspect when 'Where's an Egg?' is the game that you are playing. And that's this game!!"'' -[[Videlectrix]]
''"In this hard-bolied <!--sic--> adventure game, you must help the Boise police force find a missing egg. Not in Mancuso's garage? Try Brodermaker's gymbag. Everyone's a suspect when 'Where's an Egg?' is the game that you are playing. And that's this game!!"'' -[[Videlectrix]]
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'''Where's an Egg?''' is a game by [[Videlectrix]].
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'''Where's an Egg?''' is a game by [[Videlectrix]]. The game recreates the trial-and-error aspects and confusion of playing games in another language.
'''Date:''' Monday, July 16, 2007
'''Date:''' Monday, July 16, 2007

Revision as of 03:34, 10 August 2007

Game Category: Videlectrix Game
play 50k Racewalker Duck Guardian One
A renegade cop with nothing to lose and an egg on his mind.
Where's an Egg? box art.
Где – Яйцо?

"In this hard-bolied adventure game, you must help the Boise police force find a missing egg. Not in Mancuso's garage? Try Brodermaker's gymbag. Everyone's a suspect when 'Where's an Egg?' is the game that you are playing. And that's this game!!" -Videlectrix

Where's an Egg? is a game by Videlectrix. The game recreates the trial-and-error aspects and confusion of playing games in another language.

Date: Monday, July 16, 2007

Page Title: Where's an Egg?

Contents

Instructions

The object of the game is to find an egg that one of the suspects is hiding. The task is a variation on the Knights and Knaves puzzle, in which suspects either always lie or always tell the truth. After you think you know who or where an egg is, you go to that location and shoot the suspect, who will give up an egg if you have guessed correctly.

After clicking on the title screen, you are presented with several locations in a city. Clicking on the thumbnails will take you to those locations, at which you will encounter a suspect with an item. From the menu at the bottom of the screen, you can choose one of any of the items or suspects you've encountered. When you choose an item, the suspect will tell you the location where that item can be found or the suspect who has it. When you choose a suspect from your menu, the character on the screen will tell you where that suspect can be found or what item they have. Once again, they may or may not be telling the truth.

There are three other notable replies you may receive. If you ask a suspect about himself or about the items he carries, he will respond with a smiley face. If you ask a suspect about anything after shooting him, he will respond with a red cross. Also, if you ask a suspect about an egg and he replies with a question mark, he does not have any information about the location of an egg.

Strategy

Since a given suspect either always lies or always tells the truth, their reply about the location of an egg can be tested by asking them questions to which you know the answer. For example, if they give you information about an egg, you can ask them about an item and verify that the location or suspect with which they reply indeed corresponds to that item. If the answer they give is correct, then the location of an egg that they give is correct as well.

The above method can be modified by first asking about the first person or item you have seen, then if the suspect answers correctly, ask about an egg. Continue asking all the suspects the same question until you find a person who gives a correct answer and knows about an egg. If none are found, revisit your first person and ask about an egg. Then simply find the culprit and shoot them.

In some cases, a lying suspect may reveal themselves as such by giving the same answer for two different questions (e.g., suggesting that two different characters have a potted plant) or, due to a programming error, even answering with their own face when questioned about a different item.

Another strategy is to ask every suspect the location of an egg until you have two replies that agree. In that case, it is likely, though not certain, that the suspect they incriminate indeed has an egg.

In order to keep accurate track of which person matches which object, just quickly visit all of the locations before asking anyone a question. This will cause each person and their object to appear in the same order at the bottom of the screen. Once your have visited all locations, start asking each person where the egg is. Once you find someone who replies, figure out if they are a truth-teller or a liar by seeing if their responses properly match up people to their object. If they are a truth-teller, move on to asking about the egg. If they tell the truth, you know who has the egg.

However, one haphazard strategy is to simply shoot three random people. This gives a 1 in 3 chance of winning, with no real effort.

Suspects, locations, and items

Suspects, locations, and items are randomly assigned for each game.

Suspects

Locations

Items

Endings

Lose screen

If you run out of time or shoot three characters who do not have an egg, the game ends. The character who did have an egg is shown running with it through the area they were in, and the main character is shown in the icy mountains wearing prison clothes and a ball-and-chain. He quickly turns into a skeleton.

Win screen

If you successfully shoot the character who has an egg, a uniformed man (probably Stalin) awards you with a badge in front of Lenin's Mausoleum. The screen pans up to the sky, where fireworks shoot off. If the game was completed with enough time left on the clock, different spaceships fly through the sky:

  • 901–940 seconds left — one spaceship
  • 941–970 seconds left — two spaceships
  • 971 or more seconds left — three spaceships, the last of which is exited by a cosmonaut

Fun Facts

Trivia

  • This game was released more than two and a half years after its description was featured on the Videlectrix website. The main page message announcing its release read: 'new' videlectrix game!
  • The language used in the game is Russian, and is understandable to a native speaker, although there are various grammatical and stylistic errors (see Translation section).
  • After shooting someone who does not have an egg, you can still question them and they will reply with the symbol for the Red Cross (indicating they require medical attention). The Red Cross has recently been trying to stop game creators from using their logo this way.
  • In every game, there are either three or four suspects who tell the truth, and either three or four suspects who will give an answer when asked about an egg. Three is more common in both cases.
  • Each suspect has a theme song that plays when you visit them.
    • If a suspect talks about another person, that person's theme plays in the right speaker.
    • If you ask about another person, that person's theme plays in the left speaker.
    • If you kill a suspect, their theme song volume is lowered.
    • The victory music is all of the suspects' themes played on top of each other.
  • Where's an Egg? is shown on a floppy disk in the introductions for strongbad_email.exe Discs Three and Five.

Remarks

Page 13 of the instruction manual
  • A page of the manual was also made available at the same time as the game was released.
  • Although the Videlectrix description suggests that an egg may be in "Mancuso's garage", a garage is not one of the locations in the game, although there is a mechanic.

Goofs

  • For the first second of the game, the timer reads 000, when its true value is 999. One second later, it changes to 998. If you manage to win in that first second, it will read 999 on the victory screen.
  • A programming error allows a liar to answer with their own picture when questioned about an item that isn't theirs.

Glitches

  • If you shoot the last bullet at the wrong person right before time is up, when the clock runs to 000, you will be presented with a win screen with the perpetrator sliding across the screen, plus the lose screen in Siberia, then presented with a medal.

Inside References

Real-World References

  • Boise is the capital city of the US state Idaho.
  • Brodermaker is a reference to video game company Brøderbund, makers of the Carmen Sandiego games.
    • This game is also very similar, in some aspects, to the early Carmen Sandiego games.
  • The music at the beginning of the game accompanying the Videlectrix logo is from the traditional Russian Song of the Volga Boatmen.
  • The three spacecraft that fly across the screen in the ending sequence are Sputnik 1, Vostok 1, and Voskhod 2, commemorating three "firsts" of the Russian space program: the first artificial satellite, the first man in space, and the first spacewalk, respectively.
    • The congratulation scene is reminiscent of the Game Boy and NES versions of Tetris (A game that is famous for having come out of Russia), in which the player was shown rocket and shuttle launches of spacecraft at the end of a game depending on how well the player did.
  • Gameplay bears certain superficial similarities to the boardgame Clue, being a whodunit wherein a specific accusation must be formulated from a set of distinct suspects, items and locations.
  • The scene where the main character is stuck in icy mountains with a ball and chain is a reference to the old Russian practice of exiling criminals to Siberia, which is a cold, mountainous region of Russia.

Translations

Location Message Transliteration Translation Notes
Loading screen телевизионный электрический televizzionniy elektricheskii Videlectrix Literally: "televisual electric"
Title Где – Яйцо? Gde Yaitso? Where's an egg? Russian has no article, so it is impossible to make a distinction between "the egg" and "an egg" and the title could refer to either. The dash in the title is incorrect; such a dash is only used to separate a predicate from a noun phrase (an action from an object) instead of the present tense of the verb "to be", which does not exist in Russian.
Inscription above the columns of the gray building берег Bereg Bank The word has the sense of "riverbank", as opposed to a financial service institution, which would be "банк" (Bank).
When you discover who had an egg виновник vinovnik criminal or guilty person
When you win the game поздравление pozdravlenie congratulations Although English speakers often use the noun "Congratulations," a Russian would probably have used a verb: "I congratulate you with your victory." The verb is often dropped entirely from such phrases, leaving only "with your victory."
ЛЕНИН LENIN Lenin An entrance to Lenin's Mausoleum
When you lose гулаг gulag Gulag The name given to the Soviet labor camps
игра законченный igra zakonchenniy game over This phrase is incorrect due to misuse of gender (nouns have genders in Russian). Grammatically correct phrase would read "игра закончена" (igra zakonchena).

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