Easter egg

An Easter egg is a deliberately hidden surprise. It might be a secret room, a joke line of dialogue, a nod to another game or film, a developer’s name tucked away, a strange object in an unlikely corner of the map, or a secret mode unlocked by an unusual button combination. Easter eggs are not needed to finish a game; their reward is the fun of discovery.

Where the term comes from

One of the best-known early examples is in Adventure (1980) for the Atari 2600. Atari did not credit programmers in its games, so the designer, Warren Robinett, secretly hid a room containing the words “Created by Warren Robinett”. Reaching it required finding an almost invisible single-pixel object and carrying it to a particular place. When the message was discovered, Steve Wright, a director in Atari’s consumer division, suggested keeping it and encouraging similar hidden messages in future, describing them as Easter eggs for players to find – a reference to an Easter egg hunt.

Easter eggs today

Modern games are full of them. Developers hide references to their own earlier games, to colleagues, to popular culture or to community jokes. Some Easter eggs are so obscure that they are only found years after release, often by players examining game files or exploring unusual places. Communities share discoveries eagerly, and some long-running mysteries have attracted enormous collaborative efforts.

A fun one for families

Hunting Easter eggs is a low-pressure way to enjoy a game together, especially one already finished. It rewards curiosity and careful observation rather than fast reactions. One word of caution: searching online for a game’s Easter eggs can lead to spoilers for the story, so it is worth looking only after finishing if the plot matters to you.