Fry bacon, sausages and cigarettes to escape an Antarctica where eggs are illegal in this surreal sci-fi cook-’em-up

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Arctic Eggs’ low-poly graphics and moody dystopia recall the first Half-Life, with added frying pan

Image credit: The Water Museum

I’ll be honest: fried eggs are my least favourite way to enjoy the versatile food. But even a noted fried-egg hater like me was left salivating over a pan full of sizzling yolks by my first look at strange yet mesmerising upcoming sci-fi cooking sim Arctic Eggs.

Arctic Eggs’ sparse description and brief, moody trailer paint a low-poly picture of a seemingly dystopian Antarctica where eggs (and possibly chickens as a whole?) have been outlawed. (Thanks for the spot, and RPS in Peace, Quinns.)

You are a so-called Poultry Peddler trapped in the frozen wasteland whose apparent only way out of said frosty clime is by cooking up breakfast for your chilly companions. (Yes, I too am aware that Antarctica is at the literal other end of the globe to the Arctic, I don’t have an answer for you as to the name-setting mismatch. No, you don’t need to leave a comment demonstrating how clever you are.)

That cooking inspires a physics-based simulation of a frying pan you’ll hold out toward your waiting dinner guests, with possible meals including eggs, a string of sausages, fish, bacon and a pan full of unlit cigarettes. Mmmm.

As the food sizzles away, you’ll need to rotate the pan to flip over the ingredients to cook them evenly and stop things burning.

Arctic Egg Trailer

The whole thing is complemented by the jagged polygonal models of gun-toting soldiers, staircases and industrial towers vanishing into bleak short-draw-distance fog, and, yes, chickens that put me in mind of the first Half-Life and PS1-era games like Metal Gear Solid

Arctic Eggs is simply listed as “coming soon” on Steam, and appears to be the second release from indie outfit The Water Museum after last year’s IBIS AM, a bizarre game in which you are a hungry bird trying to catch fish using your beak in first-person. It costs less than £2 and looks exactly my kind of weird and wonderful, so I know what I’ll be playing this weekend.