Egg Cars

So You Want to Play Egg Cars

Egg Cars is a free-to-play online racing game built by students at UCL. You drive little egg-shaped karts on procedurally generated circuits with other people. It sounds silly, but the physics can be brutal if you don't understand what you're dealing with. I spent a solid month trying to figure out how to actually win races instead of just spinning out on every corner. Here's what I learned. The game runs on a custom physics engine. Your car is literally an egg. It has rotational momentum, drift mechanics, and boost items you can pick up. The tracks aren't static - they regenerate every race, which means memorizing a layout is pointless. What matters is learning how to read the track as you're going through it and knowing how your car behaves when you push it. It's on Steam. Search for "Egg Cars" and install it. The base game is free, and there are cosmetic upgrades you can buy, but none of them affect gameplay. Don't waste money on anything except maybe the community-recommended wheel skins since the default ones can look cluttered in fast-paced races.

Getting Started Without Embarrassing Yourself

The controls are basic. Arrow keys or WASD for steering, spacebar for boost. The trick nobody mentions upfront is that your egg car has a center of mass that shifts based on how fast you're turning. If you hit a sharp corner at full speed without easing off first, you will flip. This happens constantly. I flipped in my first twelve races in a row. Here's what actually works: approach corners at about 60% speed, tap the opposite direction briefly to initiate a drift, then release and reapply throttle as you exit. It feels unnatural at first because you're essentially driving like you're in a simulation instead of a arcade racer. Give it five races and your instincts will start catching up. The boost mechanic is where most people lose races. Boost gives you a burst of speed but also locks your steering for roughly half a second. Using it mid-corner is basically suicide. I saved all my boost for straightaways and only used it when I had at least two seconds of straight track ahead of me. This simple adjustment alone improved my finishing position from consistently last to occasionally top ten.

Track Reading and Positioning

Since tracks regenerate, you can't rely on muscle memory the way you would in something like Mario Kart. What you do rely on is track geometry cues. Most circuits have wider sections near the start and finish, and tighter chicanes in the middle. Learn to spot these patterns within the first five seconds of a race so you know when to slow down. Positioning matters more than raw speed. Stay toward the outside of corners when you're not in first place. The inside line looks faster but it gets blocked constantly by other players. The outside line is slower but more predictable, and you can carry more momentum through it. This is true in every kart racing game I've ever played, and Egg Cars is no exception. One specific problem I ran into: when racing on the map called "Ridge Runner," there's a section where the track narrows significantly and the walls are perfectly vertical. If two players hit that section at the same speed, someone gets pinned and flips. My workaround was simple - I'd brake before entering that section even if I was in last place, let the pack compress, then boost through the gap that formed. It cost me maybe two seconds but saved me from wasting the entire lap.

Advanced Tactics That Actually Work

Most people treat Egg Cars like a casual party game. It has that energy, sure. But there are legitimate techniques that separate people who win regularly from people who spin out repeatedly. Drift chaining is the big one. When you drift through one corner and immediately enter another in the opposite direction without fully straightening out, you maintain more speed than you would drifting each corner separately. The technique requires reading the track ahead by at least half a second. Most beginners only react to the corner they're currently in, which is why they lose speed constantly. Item usage timing is another thing nobody talks about enough. The game gives you random power-ups during races. The common ones are speed boosts, oil slicks, and mines. Oil slicks are most effective when thrown behind you rather than ahead of you. Players will almost always try to go around something in front, but they don't expect an obstacle behind them. I stopped using oil slicks offensively and started using them defensively. My race survival rate went up noticeably.

Mines are surprisingly situational. They detonate on contact and can take out multiple cars if placed near tight corners. But here's the counter-intuitive part: don't drop them where you think a player will be. Drop them where they can't avoid them because of track geometry. A mine in the middle of a wide straightaway is useless because players swerve around it. A mine near a wall at a tight turn forces a decision - hit it or risk hitting the wall. Most players hit the mine.

Multiplayer Reality Check

The multiplayer is where this game lives and dies. Single-player against bots isn't terrible for learning the controls but it doesn't teach you anything about real racing. The online matchmaking puts you in lobbies of varying skill levels. Some are chaotic trash cans where everyone spins out. Others are competitive enough that you need to be paying attention the entire race. I found that playing during off-peak hours on weekdays tends to give you more balanced matches. Weekends attract a lot of casual players who are just messing around, which makes for fun races but zero improvement in your skills. If you actually want to get better, schedule practice sessions for Tuesday or Wednesday evenings. There's also a ranked mode now, which I tried briefly. It's tighter matches with less chaos, but the ranking system seems to pair you with people significantly above or below your actual skill level half the time. Not a dealbreaker, but something to be aware of if you take it seriously.

Where to Download and Install

Egg Cars is available exclusively through Steam. Go to the Steam store, search for "Egg Cars," and download it. The file size is relatively small - under 500 megabytes on most systems. The game supports both keyboard and controller input. Controller feels better for the drifting mechanics because the analog sticks give you more precise steering control than mouse or keyboard inputs. If you're on Linux or Mac, it runs natively without issues. No Wine or emulation needed. I tested this on my own machine running Ubuntu 22.04 and it launched and played without a single crash over two weeks of regular use.

When Egg Cars Won't Work For You

The game has limitations that are worth acknowledging before you invest time in it. The procedural generation means you'll never master any single track. If you're the type of player who likes to perfect a layout through repetition, this game will frustrate you. Every race is a new puzzle. The physics can also feel inconsistent at higher speeds. There have been patches that adjusted collision detection several times, and sometimes you'll hit another car and feel like you should have bounced off but instead you just stopped dead. It's not a game-breaking issue but it does happen frequently enough that you learn to account for it. If you want a more traditional kart racing experience with consistent tracks and predictable physics, games like Tracker Card Racing or even the newer entries in the Mario Kart series might serve you better. Egg Cars is its own thing. It's chaotic, it's unpredictable, and it rewards people who can adapt quickly rather than people who memorize everything.

The community is still active enough that you'll find matches within a minute or two of queuing. New features get added sporadically - the developers release updates maybe once every few months with new maps and slight balance changes. It's not abandonware by any stretch, but don't expect constant content drops.