Have I just been playing the wrong games, or are easter eggs and crazy secrets completely gone from modern games? This was something I loved in classic games. Weird, unexplained areas. Tricks to get a special weapon or help you skip ahead. Am I just not playing close enough attention?
Half the time, Easter eggs used to be bugs or artifacts from development that were left in for players to find. Nowadays, there is a lot less excitement about it - since as soon as an Easter egg is discovered, it's all over the internet and no longer fun. Though yes, they are a lot less common and, sadly, things that are called Easter eggs often aren't.
The fact that they weren't meant to be there made them so intriguing, like the original Metroid vertical scrolling bug areas. I'm going to start poking devs I work with to put in some secrets!
I'm not talking about ios here, but I used to love looking around for easter eggs and/or glitches on halo 3. Makes it more fun, and it's even better if they have achievements for it, for example the skulls.
If you are referring to the games at the appstore, might be beacuse of this: "Apps that include undocumented or hidden features inconsistent with the description of the app will be rejected" At the best case, if a dev includes an hidden feature, needs to let reviewers know about it. But that might just cause an extra review delay and with still no guarantee of approval...
Letting people know they have easter eggs doesn't necessarily mean they tell their customers what the eggs are or how to find them. For example, Doodle Jump states in it app description that it has three secret modes but only hints at what to type in for one of them.
Another thing, special Features like a new costumes etc. that could be "discovered" or "unlocked" in erstwhile games have been reduce to IAPs in the modern times. Another sad loss.
Problem is, from a developer point of view... easter eggs are discovered by so few people. No one outside of our office has discovered any of the easter eggs we put into our first game (for example). @echoseven: That is, assuming what I think easter eggs are what you think they are. A hidden minigame was included and a hidden animation if a certain condition was met.
