Penguin Colony Mixes Horror With Cute Birds

Penguin Colony is a new game from Umurangi Generation creator Naphtali Faulkner. It uses penguins to pull apart the horror and colonial ideas in H.P. Lovecraft’s At the Mountain of Madness.

You play as different kinds of Antarctic penguins, including emperor penguins, chicks, rockhoppers, and chinstraps. By bumping into one another, players can swap between birds, each with different movement traits like speed, swimming, jumping, and even a photo mode.

The story changes the original setup by sending Nazi explorers into the ice instead of wealthy New England academics. Their search for an ancient god leads to a shapeless terror, while the penguins wander through the ruins and tombs around them.

The game also includes sections about local indigenous caretakers dealing with the damage left behind by outsiders. Even with its serious ideas, the game still keeps the penguins mostly safe, using them as observers moving through a huge, eerie world.