The peculiar shape of eggs serves as the intriguing core of Oeuf, a new physics-based platformer developed by the prolific Increpare Games. In a gaming world often filled with elaborate systems and cinematic narratives, Oeuf stands out by simply asking players to ponder the movement of an egg as it rolls, slides, and hops through its universe.

This universe is brought to life with nostalgic, ’90s-style 3D graphics reminiscent of classic games like Ultima and Might and Magic. Released around the same time as Resident Evil Requiem, Oeuf embraces its simplicity. As a speckled egg launched from a church steeple, your mission is to navigate the churchyard, ascend trees, traverse slanted rooftops, and climb over protruding bricks to return home.

The egg you control is unpredictable. It glides smoothly when on its side but can be overly eager, while being on its end offers better balance at the cost of control. The true challenge of Oeuf lies in positioning yourself on tiny platforms, building the right momentum for jumps, and then halting that motion before plummeting to the ground. And when you inevitably fall, the game playfully responds with an “oof,” humorously rendered as “oeuf!”

While it may bring to mind games like Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy, Oeuf is kinder with its checkpoints, which help alleviate much of the frustration associated with such games. These checkpoints establish a comforting rhythm, allowing players to focus on the satisfying challenge.

Games reliant on repetition and frustration often risk becoming tedious by escalating difficulty. However, Oeuf cleverly mixes up the sequence lengths, interweaving shorter sections within longer ones. This creates a gratifying sense of progress, alternating between challenging and more relaxed segments. Successful navigation of difficult platforming sequences often rewards players with shorter, varied challenges, such as building speed on slopes to achieve seemingly impossible jumps.

Player experience may differ based on their interaction with Oeuf‘s 3D landscape. Personally, I enjoyed tackling lateral crossings and demanding climbs, while others might favor bouncing through obstacle courses and momentum-based puzzles. One of my toughest challenges was maneuvering down a series of ramps early on, whereas scaling a tree later was relatively easy for me. For others, these experiences might be reversed.

Oeuf understands that players can only get so frustrated before they stop playing. In fact, its choreographed rhythm appears to encourage that. Checkpoints already delineate clear opportunities to start and stop, but a generous attitude to maintaining player progress means stepping back in response to a frustrating section is often the recipe for coming back soon after and blitzing a sequence on which you’d previously been stuck. The joy of overcoming is only increased as you race through the following sections — sometimes literally, particularly when tasked with navigating slopes. It’s a level of technical self-awareness that eludes so many similar games.

That said, Oeuf is at its best when it’s asking you to jump. Some of its momentum-based puzzles can be finicky, particularly when the way the egg moves and bounces renders some jump inputs unresponsive. This appears to be a side effect of how the egg lifts off the ground when bouncing on its end, rather than a programming error.

Not every section enjoys the same generous checkpoints. One particularly provoking area that sees you traverse a series of sloping surfaces left me stumped across multiple sessions. Not for a lack of solutions — the only option was to balance on the corners of blocks — but for how unforgiving it was. When I finally made it through, I was surprised not to find a checkpoint waiting in line with the rhythm that both preceded and followed the section. Instead, the eventual checkpoint came after a lengthy series of jumps. This was the only discordant moment I perceived in Oeuf’s otherwise comfortable rhythm.

You can, however, skip areas using the built-in map editor — in which you can also build your own courses — or you can edit frustrating sections into something more forgiving to avoid actual bottlenecks. You may even, in stepping away from a frustrating section, unwind on one of the custom maps already included. Intended or not, the function offers an interesting accessibility solution to break out of any loop in which you find yourself.

Not that those are going to be common for most players. Oeuf is, paradoxically, a chill game. You may grind your teeth in places, squeeze the controller too hard, but Oeuf is trying — not always successfully — to get you to decompress. In the mellow soundtrack, the natural tones and sound of the wind, Oeuf gives you every chance of entering a relaxed state of pure concentration. Whether you can or not likely depends on how you react to being perched precariously on the edge and desperately twitching the joystick to keep your bottom-heavy egg from tipping into the abyss.

Still, it’s hard to get too frustrated with Oeuf. With quick restarts, surmountable obstacles, and generous checkpoints, the relationship with failure it fosters is a comfortable one. A popular framework in video game reviews is to find meaning in a game outside the obvious. Games secretly represent moments in time, capture bygone feelings, or help you discover something about yourself. Oeuf really is just a game about being an egg and hopping up a series of platforms. It’s just fun — really, really fun.

_{Oeuf is available now on Steam.}