Yolk Heroes: A Long Tamago won’t take a ton of your time — but it’s worth every minute

The job of raising a hero destined to save the world is an underrated role. In video games, many of our RPG heroes come to us as fully grown adults who are old enough to handle being whatever kind of hero they need to be for the game they’re in. We don’t need to worry about bathing them, making sure they don’t poop themselves, or raising them in the right way so that they can have the right powers for whatever class of fighter they grow up to be. To be honest, I never considered the early years of the hero. That is, until I played Yolk Heroes: A Long Tamago.

Developed by the small studio 14 Hours Productions and published by Astrolabe Games, Yolk Heroes: A Long Tamago starts with a fairy. She lays an egg (in front of you) and tells you that she doesn’t want to raise it (rude!). She then gives you the egg and says that it’s up to you to raise the creature so that it can grow up to be a hero who saves the land of Faria from the Frog Lord. Thus began the biggest adventure of them all: parenthood. I named my character Beadle (like the scrawny salesman Beedle from The Legend of Zelda games), because I didn’t know what would emerge from the egg. After a brief few minutes of tending to the egg and playing a simple minigame where I protected it from the elements, a whole-ass human baby hatched from the egg — Beadle was a girl!

Yolk Heroes: A Long Tamago contains all the trappings of your typical pet sim and idle game — like a Tamagotchi — but then adds a whole bunch of other stuff onto that framework. On the most basic level you can tend to your Yolk Hero at the guild where they live. There, you manage your future hero’s four different status bars — energy, hunger, hygiene, and bladder — by taking actions like bathing them or sending them to use the toilet. Each task takes a set amount of time unless you decide to help your Yolk Hero by playing a simple mini game. So Beadle might take a minute and half to poop by herself, but I can shorten the amount of time it takes and lessen her constipation by button smashing my mouse.

Image: 14 Hours Productions/Astrolabe Games

Image: 14 Hours Productions/Astrolabe Games

The game gets more complicated when it comes to the “heroes” part of it all. I can send Beadle on little adventures where she’ll fight a series of enemies with short walking breaks in between. A quest might take 30 minutes to complete, but I can step in to allow Beadle to complete the quest much more quickly by helping her fight. These quests introduce systems with a surprising amount of depth: Area 1 contains 12 different quests, during which you can level up your Yolk Hero. Player characters even develop specific skills for different classes like Monk, Ninja, Paladin, and so on. Beadle grew up to be a Samurai, which I didn’t pick but might have been influenced by the training I had her do in her child stage, so I would buy items and upgrades specifically tailored for her class to maximize her odds of success.

Turns out I am a bit of a helicopter parent, so I’ve been watching her fight a goose wearing a kimono to the left of my browser as I write this. If I see she’s having a tough time with a fight, I click over and give her a little boost to make sure she stays safe. That might make this game sound a bit demanding, but the greatest part of Yolk Heroes: A Long Tamago is that I feel like I can put as much or as little time into it as I’d like.

I still have memories of rushing off to the bathroom to feed my needy Tamagotchi as a child, but I don’t deal with that in Yolk Heroes: A Long Tamago. I am taking care of a budding hero. She might not be the most powerful warrior in the land, but she’s not so helpless that I need to be checking in on her all the time.

What’s more is that the game has settings that allow you to decide details of gameplay like whether or not you want the game to continue to run in the background when you close it or not. So if you want to turn off care for your character for the weekend when you’re away from your desk, you can. Similarly along those lines, features like the task queue allow you to line up a to-do list for your Yolk Hero. So when I left for dinner last night, I set up a little evening routine for her so she would come back with her status bars in good shape.

Image: 14 Hours Productions/Astrolabe Games

Each time I log off, I feel a small pang of anxiety: Will my Yolk Hero be okay? What if she dies on her quest? I worry about my poor Beadle — but never for too long.

Again, that’s because Yolk Heroes: A Long Tamago is an idle game that gives you a good amount of flexibility as to how much time you actually spend playing. If you want to get really into adventuring and help your Yolk Hero fight and explore, you can. If you just want to watch them bop around on the side of the screen as you work, that’s also possible. Or if you have moments where it’s just too much, you can just close the game entirely and allow your hero to work through their challenges themselves.

The joy of parenthood — at least, as it’s represented in the sweet little microcosm of this game — is about seeing growth, but also knowing when it’s okay to step away and let your child surprise you.

Yolk Heroes: A Long Tamago released May 20 on Windows PC. The game was played on PC using a pre-release download code provided by 14 Hours Productions. Vox Media has affiliate partnerships. These do not influence editorial content, though Vox Media may earn commissions for products purchased via affiliate links. You can find additional information about Polygon’s ethics policy here.