CRACK Is What Happens When Your Day-to-Day Lab Work Goes Wrong

CRACK is a co-op adventure game where you and up to three friends work in a lab to crack an egg. Of course, it’s not a regular egg, nor is it a regular lab. But this job starts the same way as many other similar adventures.

Ahead of the game’s full launch on Oct. 26, I played the playtest version of CRACK. Long story short, if you’ve enjoyed “friendslop” games like PEAK, RV There Yet?, and among the more recent ones, How to Fish, this lab adventure should be next on your list.

Working in pristine conditions

Sometimes you even get pizza. Screenshot by Dot E-sport

From the first day on the job, it’s easy to notice that CRACK is incredibly polished, with lots of little things that make it feel complete. You and your friends have named rooms and lab coats. Every player has a keycard to access terminals, shops, and other things. Those cards also have your name, and any terminal will say “Hello [name]” when you access it.

In the lab’s main open area, there’s a large screen that shows the egg and its agitation. It’s not there just for decoration – it’s a core part of your day-to-day work that reflects the things you do in real time.

Look at what you’ve been up to. Screenshot by Dot E-sport

My favorite is the end-of-day screen that, on top of your performance and earnings, also shows a quick recap of the day through a time-lapse of photos taken by the cameras, where you can see you and your friends going about your day. And yes, there are cameras, and they are always watching you.

There are still some bugs that you may encounter, mainly when working with the egg. Once, one of us managed to fall through the egg and walk through textures, and in the same way some items were also lost, but nothing game-breaking or that can’t be recovered.

Get cracking

Time to get to work. Screenshot by Dot E-sport

After a brief orientation, it’s time to get cracking. The loop is simple: you use your tools to crack and excavate resources from the egg. Starting with the shell, you dig deeper into the tissue, calcite, bone, and further inside. As you complete objectives, you unlock new tiers of tools that let you excavate more advanced resources. In that sense, the progression is very straightforward.

There are a bunch of tools at your disposal, from basic pickaxes and shovels to dynamite and drills. You can also get yourself cars to move buckets with resources or employ a squad of robots to help you move things around. Ideally, you want both, as the amount of resources lying on the floor can quickly get out of hand.

It’s a science of its own. Screenshot by Dot E-sport

A few hours into the game, you can start building scaffolds to distribute efforts across the egg. To my surprise, scaffolds are an entire system. You get a toolbox with parts and a hammer, and start putting together poles, floors, and support parts. Scaffolds can only go so high without proper support before falling, and even if you build everything right, the bolts will loosen over time.

It’s not all peace and quiet, though. The egg is alive and reacts to what you’re doing. If you continue working in the same area, the egg gets agitated, eventually causing a reaction. These reactions are inevitable, and while you may delay them using sedation or by working elsewhere using scaffolds, you’ll have to face them eventually.

When a reaction happens, it can be one of seven different events, ranging from a power outage to spawned tentacles. During the reaction, the most agitated area also regrows, setting you back a little bit. Luckily, the reactions are more minor inconveniences that don’t last too long rather than major setbacks. So as long as you use Support Spikes, which prevent an area from regrowing, it becomes just another part of your day-to-day.

HATCH’s secrets

Open up! Screenshot by Dot E-sport

The day-to-day can slowly become a grind, as you dig up resources, sell them, buy more equipment, go to bed, then rinse and repeat. After all, the whole point of the lab is to keep you there working on the egg. But when you start getting bored (for us it was about six hours in), you begin to discover the lab’s secrets, and your focus completely shifts.

Instead of digging up resources, you want to turn the place upside down. Without spoiling too much (and because not everything was available in the preview), there are lore bits, secret areas, and more to discover, including what’s in a room locked with a passcode that you’ll notice from your first day on the job.

CRACK has multiple endings, and while we haven’t had the chance to experience them ahead of the full launch, it’s bound to be the best way to close out this adventure with a crack.