How to play Egg Catcher
Egg Catcher is a remake of the LCD handheld games of the early eighties. Four hens sit at the top of four ramps, two on each side, and their eggs roll down towards the middle of the screen, where a cat holds a basket.
Every egg has to land in the basket. Swing it under the right ramp before the egg drops off the end, and keep it up as the game speeds up.
Rules
- Everything moves in beats, like the segments of an LCD screen. On each beat every egg rolls one place down its ramp. After five places it drops off the end on the next beat.
- If the basket is under that ramp, you catch the egg for a point. If not, it breaks on the floor, a chick hatches and runs off, and the ramps are cleared before the hens start laying again.
- Three broken eggs end the game. Now and then a mouse peeks out of the window at the top; while it is watching, a broken egg counts as only half a miss.
- At 200 and 500 points your misses are wiped. Reach either mark with no misses at all and every egg counts double until you next break one.
- The beat gets faster through each hundred points and eases off a little at every hundred, and more eggs roll at once as the score climbs, up to four. Game B starts faster and with three eggs.
Controls
- ← → ↑ ↓
- Swing the basket to that side or height
- Q A E D
- Jump straight to the top-left, bottom-left, top-right or bottom-right ramp
- Mouse / touch
- Click or tap the corner of the screen you want; corner buttons on phones
- P / Esc
- Pause
- Enter / Space
- Start
Tips
- Watch the eggs, not the cat. The egg nearest the end of its ramp is the only one that matters right now.
- Use the direct keys. Q, A, E and D reach any ramp in one press, while the arrows need two for a diagonal.
- Only one egg drops per beat, so every egg can be caught. When two look close, the one further down goes first.
- While the mouse is out a miss costs half, which makes it the time to stretch for an awkward egg rather than give it up.
Egg Catcher strategy
How fast it gets
Game A opens with a beat of about 0.56 seconds and Game B with about 0.44. Each point takes about 2 milliseconds off the beat, and each hundred takes 65 off for good while resetting the drift, so the beat jumps back up a little at 100, 200 and so on. The fastest beat is 0.24 seconds in Game A, reached at about 430 points, and 0.20 seconds in Game B, reached at about 320.
Reading the ramps
An egg spends five beats on its ramp and drops on the sixth, and the hens lay at most one egg per beat, so no two eggs ever drop together. Game A starts with up to two eggs on the ramps and allows one more every 25 points, up to four at 50; Game B starts with three and allows the fourth at 20. With four rolling, go to the lowest egg, then look for the next lowest.
Spending the mouse
The mouse is out for 6 to 10 seconds, then away for 14 to 26. While it watches, a broken egg costs half a miss, so you could survive five of those where you survive only two full misses. Misses go back to zero at 200 and 500, and a clean run to either mark makes every catch worth 2 until your next miss, so on the way to 500 a careful game is worth more than a lucky one.
About Egg Catcher
The game goes back to Nintendo’s Game & Watch Egg of 1981, in which a wolf caught eggs from four hens. In 1984 the Soviet Elektronika line made its own version, the IM-02 “Nu, pogodi!”, starring the wolf and the hare from the cartoon of the same name, and it became the handheld a generation of kids grew up with. In it the hare peeks out of the corner and halves your misses, and a long-running playground legend said that reaching 1,000 points would play a cartoon.
This version is an original remake with its own characters, a cat, four hens and a mouse, drawn as LCD segments with the faint ghosts of the unlit ones showing, as on the real screens.
Questions
Is this the original “Nu, pogodi!” game?
No. It is an original browser game inspired by the LCD handhelds, with its own cat, hens and mouse instead of the cartoon’s wolf and hare. It is free, with nothing to install.
What is the difference between Game A and Game B?
The rules are the same. Game B starts with a faster beat and three eggs at a time, and gets to four eggs sooner. Each keeps its own best score.
Why did my misses disappear?
Misses are wiped at 200 and 500 points. If you had none when you got there, catches count double until your next miss.
How do I play on a phone?
Tap the corner of the screen where you want the basket, or use the four corner buttons under the game.
