Recently I was watching animated Disney version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame for the first time. Early in the movie, Megan exclaimed, “Wait, go back a few seconds–that’s Belle!” Sure enough, the star of Beauty and the Beast appears on the streets of Paris for a moment during an overhead shot.
Personally, I love Easter Eggs like that. Disney, Pixar, and Marvel movies have quite a few of them, and sometimes they appear in other forms of media as well. I’ve seen them in television shows, tabletop games, digital games, and elsewhere.
So I put a few little Easter Eggs in Viticulture back in 2012, including the St. Louis Arch in the name of the game. From then on, I encouraged artists to include a variety of Easter Eggs in our products. The Arch and my cats are the most common, as well as nods to our other games, and artists sometimes include other Easter Eggs that are meaningful to them.
Since Easter was yesterday, I thought I’d share the various Easter Eggs featuring my cats across any of our games that feature them. Before I do that, though, here are a few pros and cons to incorporating Easter Eggs into your products:
Pros
- It provides a fun treasure hunt for fans, something to do when they have extra time to look closely at the art.
- It offers that feeling of being “in the know” without excluding anyone who doesn’t get the reference.
- It’s silly fun! Most forms of media exist to entertain, and Easter Eggs show that the people behind the media are having fun too.
Cons
- It can break theme, worldbuilding, and immersion.
- Sometimes it just doesn’t work (my cats don’t appear in Wingspan, for example).
- Not all illustrators are okay with such disruptions in their artistic freedom.
- Sometimes I just forget to add them!
Overall, when used in ways that don’t disrupt theme or artistic integrity, I think Easter Eggs are worth including in games. What do you think? Are their upsides or downsides I didn’t list here?
Below are all appearances of my cats, Biddy and Walter, in our games. I can’t find an appearance in Viticulture or its expansions and I know they’re not in Wingspan.
Also see Can You Find the St. Louis Arch in Each of Our Games?
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7 Comments on “The Upsides and Downsides to Easter Eggs”
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[…] Biddy (and our other cat, Walter). Also, in nearly all Stonemaier Games, Biddy appears as an Easter egg, ready to bring a small dose of joy into your life as he did into […]
[…] you like finding Easter eggs in games, books, and movies? I wrote about this topic a few years ago (original post here), and someone recently asked me about it. That post focused on the appearance of my cats, Biddy and […]
This is very fun! Love that you include these fun easter eggs in your games!
How strange – I’ve literally just played my first ever game of Viticulture (Essential ed) and as I was packing it away, I started to look for any Easter eggs on the board and/or cards. I couldn’t find any. So then the internet took me to this blog post!
I’ve seen many Easter Eggs in Scythe. They’re fun and quite small. But once you’ve seen them, they’re hard not to see again.
I notice there’s a strange mouse or possum in the Kittenry too 🤔
Hmm. Although I never expected that your cats would show up as Easter eggs in Wingspan, it never stopped me from wondering if there are other Easter eggs in the game that I had missed though. 🤔 Care to drop a hint? 😁
Offhand, the only Easter Egg I can think of in Wingspan is the Viticulturist bonus card.
The bird-on-white-background art doesn’t leave a lot of room for Easter eggs, though we did include a fair number of egg eggs.