Game developers reveal their best in-game easter eggs

In a thread started by ex-Vlambeer developer Jan-Willem Nijman, game designers have revealed the best kept secrets in their games. Turns out Pac-Man is in basically everything.
Hyper Light Drifter has a neat audio easter egg

Over the Easter weekend, game designer Jan-Willem Nijman tweeted asking game devs for the best easter egg they had ever hidden in a game. The designer, who himself worked on Disc Room and Minit, and was formerly one-half of Vlambeer studios, received enough responses to fill several books of weird videogame secrets.

Read: Video game easter eggs prove that all games are personal

For the uninitiated: an easter egg, in the context of videogames, is a secret object, reference, or event, that is concealed unless you know where to look – or in the case of some hidden references, unless you know what you’re looking at. The h gems that developers reported ranged from hidden rooms and alternative endings, to mentions of emotionally significant birthdays, and references to real life friends, pets, hometowns and loved ones. Here after some highlights from the thread.

Turtle Time

Level Designer Acke Hallgren hid each of the weapons used by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles throughout Tom Clancy’s The Division: 

KATAMARI TYCOON 

Hallgren wasn’t the only developer to use easter eggs to express appreciation for another piece of art. Hayden Scott-Baron made a sly reference to the Katamari series while designing the animal toys in RollerCoaster Tycoon 3: 

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Pac-Man makes his mark 

It seems that Pac-Man has made his mark on more games than just his own since his debut on 29 June, 1980. He doesn’t just turn up in Bioshock….

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He also makes an equally cheesy appearance in Endon’s house, in Skyrim

Image: u/LucidLarceny, Reddit. 


Not-so-spooky voice acting in Hyperlight Drifter

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— Doblenegra (@Disasterpeace) April 4, 2021


Nijman responded to the confession by adding his own, saying that many of the vocaloid-esque sounds in Minit were just chopped and screwed clips of different team members saying ‘McDonalds.’ Big franchises supporting indies: it’s what we love to see. 

PUTTING THE CRY IN FAR CRY 

Some developers used easter eggs to convey a message. Australian creative director Alex Hutchison doubled down on the prompt, letting the world know that Far Cry 4 offered a very different ending, for players who had a little patience.

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Make blob not war

Andrew Trevillain, who worked as lead level designer on De Blob 2, made sure that the game’s anti-fascist and anti-military themes ran throughout, adding this historical reference: 

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Really bad face mode 

…though other entries were a bit more lighthearted: 

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— Zach Gage (@helvetica) April 4, 2021


 

Jini Maxwell

Jini Maxwell is a writer and curator who lives in Naarm. They are an assistant curator at ACMI, where they also host the Women & Non-binary gamers club. They write about videogames and the people who make them. You can find them on Twitter @astroblob