Lockwood’s Scrambled Eggs
by SealWyf, HSM Editor
They spawn, faster than you can imagine. Faster by far than you can stomp them. And that’s what you’re there to do — keep those eggs from multiplying.
Yellow and blue, green and orange and pink they spawn, popping up all over the place. You dash among them, swerving, running in circles. Kicking them like tiny footballs, exploding them in puffs of colored light. And they just keep on coming.
It’s “Defeat Brinsop the Evil Dragon”, a new game in the Lockwood Showcase. You are turning dragon eggs into omelettes as fast as you can. A counter in the upper left of the screen tallies your score, and counts down to the next time it will be saved on the game server. At the upper right there is a menu of rewards. Pull it down with the Square button, and weep at your lack of progress. You’re going to have to stomp a lot of dragon eggs to win anything at all.
Actually, the first prize isn’t bad. Stomp a few hundred yellow eggs, and you score a nifty sand castle. You can do it in ten minutes or so, no problem. The problem starts with the next prize, which appears to be a pinwheel. For that, you need five hundred blue eggs.
But blue eggs are rare. So are all the colors except yellow. With concentrated running around, you can collect maybe one blue egg per minute. That’s a lot of work for a pinwheel.
Take that, you evil egg!
And the other prizes are even worse. Five thousand green eggs. Ten thousand magenta eggs. And then there’s the community bonus, which requires 999,999,999,999 red eggs. That’s right — one less than a trillion.
There’s also a final prize, which, judging by its silhouette, is a flaming sword. To win it, you find one deep purple egg. Just one. But you haven’t seen one yet.
You start to realize that this is going to take a while.
If this game looks familiar, it should. It’s a clever re-skin of Lockwood’s “Baron’s Eggcellent Plan” active item, which was first issued for Easter, 2011. It features dragon eggs, and you play it in the Lockwood Showcase. Being a public game adds a lot to it. Although you don’t see other people’s eggs, you do see them running around to stomp them. The excitement is contagious. You know you’re all in this together. Sometimes you take a few minutes off to catch your breath and chat. “I only have 31 blue eggs!” one avatar complains. You feel his pain. You only have 57.
With everyone playing, the Lockwood Showcase looks like a window into Home’s collective imagination. And the collective imagination is somewhat surreal. Gliding skate-boarders jostle space aliens. Mech-jets collide with somersaulting ninjas. Rock stars and belly dancers cross paths with Santa Claus. All are intent on their own vision, the multiplying legions of scaly dragon eggs.
Roguish charm -- or enough of it to get the bonus
The eggs are spawning in lines and patches, steaming and quivering, waiting to be stomped. Slowly, the point-counter climbs. Now, another batch of points is saved. A few more colored eggs are added to the totals. You check the menu again. Alas! there’s not much progress. The rewards seem farther off, less attainable than ever.
You don’t have to win them all today. This game is advance publicity for Lockwood’s coming in-Home RPG, Mercia, which won’t open for a while yet. You do some quick mental math. At one magenta egg per minute, how long will it take to find ten thousand? And how many hours are you be willing to spend on this each day?
Fortunately, there’s a way to speed things up. If you are wearing the new Roguish Charm outfit (or a significant part of it), your eggs are multiplied by two. Will other Mercia-based outfits have a similar effect? Could the multipliers for them be even higher? Will the “bonus item” differ each day? Each week? Only time will tell. But Lockwood has always been full of surprises.
Meanwhile, you run in circles as eggs dissolve beneath your feet. It’s actually rather fun. There is something satisfying about seeing the counter tick upward, and the saved total increase. At this point, it’s not really about the rewards. Do you really want a pinwheel, anyway? Or those other, half-guessed items further down the menu? You are just enjoying being in Home, playing a mindlessly simple game with dozens of other avatars. You’re enjoying the outlandish costumes, the noticed scraps of conversation. You’re enjoying kicking eggs, running down a line of them and hearing them crackle as they bounce away and explode in puffs of light.
Brinsop, queen bee of the dragon kingdom?
You start to have all sorts of odd ideas. Aren’t dragons supposed to be endangered? Are you going to get in trouble for wiping out so many of them? Do the different egg colors hatch into different breeds of dragon? Is Brinsop really a female? And even if she is, how is she laying so many eggs? Dragons must be even more prolific than queen honeybees! It’s lucky we are keeping these eggs under control, or we would be buried in them.
What is it about these games, the ones that are so simple they’re barely games at all? The games of mindless accumulation? I played “Baron’s Eggcellent Plan” with the same enthusiasm I’m stomping dragon eggs today, and not just for the rewards. I’ve spent many happy hours stomping scorpions in Sodium Hub. I chased Orbs relentlessly in Aurora, until I reached Level 100.
These games are so simple, they feel like popping bubble-wrap. (Come to think of it, popping bubble-wrap could probably be made into a Home game if they added a counter and some rewards.) They’re “mind-combers” — something you do when you don’t feel like thinking. You go into a sort of trance while playing them, and your brain turns to jelly.
Which is not a bad thing. We all need our down-time. And, making this a public game has added a wonderful element of social interaction. Or, at least of people-watching. In Home, that’s always a win.
I’m giving this one 4.5 Bubble Machines — a bit less than perfect, because it’s going to get tedious toward the end. But for now, it’s grand, mindless fun.
- An enjoyable re-make of the egg-smashing game
- The public setting allows fun social interaction
- The goals are huge, and will take a lot of tedious work
May 30th, 2012 by SealWyf_ | 21 comments
SealWyf is a museum database programmer, who has been active in online communities since before the Internet, and in console gaming since the PS1. In games, she prefers the beautiful and quirky, and anything with a strong storyline. She is obsessed with creating new aesthetic experiences in PlayStation Home.
You know i won the sand castle before i even started the actual game. I was just stomping the cluster of eggs that appear as soon as you spawn into the place. Didn’t realize you had to go up to the cage to start the actual game. But it did give me a headache, and now I am very dizzy! I can’t play this for too long.
Great article Seal…as always! Spot on! I played super early this morning and got the sand castle, then relized I no longer needed the abundant yellow eggs and i gave up for now. lol.
I need to get into Home to check this out! After I take care of the Dragon Eggs… I’m going to see what I can do about the Griffon Bacon.
Great article Seal. Thanks for the timely review! I tend to not get on Home the day of update anymore so seeing what is new with in-depth descriptions is pretty helpful!
I played this for awhile today until I got too dizzy to continue, all that running around in circles can get to you. I like the idea of it though, like you said simple but much more entertaining than just going to the showcase and finding something. It will take a lot to get the rewards, but they want everyone coming back , and in that they have accomplished their goal I think. Nice review Seal.
interesting, after midnight london time the majority color changed to blue. I wonder if this is going to be the trend, with a new color per day dominating the eggs. So maybe you wont find that deep purple egg for the flaming sword till the 6th day. this game doesn’t seem so daunting anymore. Still it gives me a headache if i play it too long so I hope it will be around for a while, I really want those dragon statues.
Indeed this is the trend, well spotted Bonzo. Today the majority eggs are blue. Yesterday they were yellow, so going by this trend this is what I expect the pattern to be:
Day 1 -- Yellow eggs
Day 2 -- Blue eggs
so (maybe)
Day 3 -- Green eggs
Day 4 -- Purple eggs
Day 5 -- Red eggs
If this is the case, then hitting those prizes won’t be quite as hard. HOWEVER, you’d still need 5,000 green eggs for the first statue or worse 10,000 purple eggs for the “swarm” prize. Even with the X2 outfit on this is still a headache inducing target to hit for anyone. I think I’ll just pop back in about 100 years when the 999,999,999 eggs have been accumulated and claim my *ahem* “rightful” prize lol.
The video shows the iron fusion logo and 8/22/2012 so i wonder if you have to collect all the rewards by then to collect the final egg and the flaming sword or if that particular egg wont be available until that date. It says a mysterious egg lingers in the shadows, and the Dragon cage is in the Iron Fusion room. So that could mean either the door opens to that area 8/22 and you’ll find it in there, or like egg baron you have to unlock the egg before the set date? to unlock the final reward..Damn Lockwood and their flair for mystery
Today’s dominant egg was Green, you were right. I bought that rogue suit so it gave you 2 pts per egg, but I still only got to 2,000 out of 5,000 needed before I started getting dizzy and feeling nauseus. LOL.
Indeed. Blue eggs were all over the place last night. If the dominant egg color changes each day, it won’t be quite as impossible to reach those higher totals. (I may take a couple of evenings to earn ten thousand, though.)
This is the hazard of posting a review within hours of when a game opens. It’s oh-so-timely — but you may miss the whole point of it, if that point is time-dependent. Oh well. Guess you can all say I have egg on my face.
LOL, very true SealWyf. But don’t feel down about it, you couldn’t have known this would have happened. You’ve actually amazed me with how much detail you could write about such a simple game. You still deserve the kudos for writing a good review.
This actually won’t be nearly as tedious as it seems. I was averaging roughly 1,000 eggs per 15-minute segment, so even the reward requiring 10,000 eggs will only take a few tries to get. I believe the final reward will only become available on August 22, when the golden egg hatches. It’s my guess that the flaming sword will be a reward that can be used in the Mercia game.
Great review and I am glad the dominant egg color changes. Today was my first day playing and I got mainly blue ones. I won the pinwheel. It’s cute. I really want the sand castle. I also get dizzy playing the game, but sometimes it’s so hard to stop!
I think POP POP POP TWIRL … sorry can’t taPOP POP POP POP POP TWIRL POP …
Whoever at Lockwood came up with the goal of 99,999,999,999 egss for the community reward needs a reality check. I don’t think they realize just how big 99 billion truly is. It’s been roughly a week since the space opened up and we barely cracked 100 million. At this rate, the community reward will take 990 weeks to unlock.
I seriously doubt we’ll still be playing Home on our PS3s in 19 years…
oops, you forgot a 9… make it 192 years roughly
I bet we will see a red egg day or two toward the release date of Mercia.
God, that’s even worse.
I don’t think there actually are any red eggs. Just a guess, but it’s more likely that the red egg count is just a running total of all the eggs collected by Homies up to that point.
I think they’re the ones that look orange in the space. They die with a red flash. I expect there will be “red egg days” in the future. And, perhaps some item that will increase the multiplier. Maybe that’s what the deep-purple egg flaming sword will do.
As of right now, 70,762,295 red eggs have been destroyed by the community (use the square button to pull down the menu to find this info out).
So we’ve done 0.007% of the total needed?
So, you know how you can leave up the rewards list and you can see it count each egg you pop? Well, I’ve watched the Red egg counter while popping the “Orange” eggs and the counter never moves for that color? But, of course, I never see any Red eggs
You’ll also notice on the right that your own count will have two numbers -- the current number of eggs you’ve just smashed (“Saved”) and your overall count. Notice too, that the overall number gets updated every so often. I think that also happens with the red egg count, probably at midnight GMT.