There was really only one way to enhance the prospect of an Antarctic open world game with a choice of playable penguins that’s actually a fractious retelling of Lovecraft’s Mountains of Madness, created by the developers of Umurangi Generation. And that one way was to hire Lenval Brown, narrator for Disco Elysium’s special edition, to voice the first proper trailer. And also, make the trailer look a lot like John Carpenter’s The Thing. No further words from me are needed or desired. Find the footage below.
Watch on YouTube
I have been informed by management that being a website editor, I am contractually obliged to provide further words. So be it! Announced in June, Penguin Colony is a short narrative adventure in which an explorer thrown outside Time by the Old Ones seeks aid by possessing or manipulating the local penguins. You will slide and slip around the surface of the bergs and also, travel deep beneath the ice, which is generally not a great place to be in anything Lovecraftian.
This being a game from the people behind Umurangi Generation, a brilliant political artwork which deals in themes of decolonization from the perspective of a Māori shutterbug, I imagine there will be some critique of Lovecraft’s notions about foreign parts and people. I don’t have the linguistic knowledge to confirm this, but based on some quick online research, part of the trailer also appears to be voiced in Māori.
The last penguin game I had the pleasure of was Faaast Penguin, which Brendy (RPS in peace) summarised as “that Super Mario 64 level where you race a penguin except now the penguin is 39 other players”. There are no Old Ones in Faaast Penguin, but it did launch almost exactly a year ago to the day – a temporal alignment that surely reflects the dire intervention of some cosmic Cthulhuin or Penghulu, tracing cryptic sentences with its immense pygostyle (tail bone) upon the snows of unreality.
While researching penguin anatomy in order to construct that stupid skit about the penguin god, I discovered that a “penguin diagram” is also some kind of quantum field McGuffin referring to the “flavours” of “quarks”. Coincidence? None of this is coincidence, foolish child! The universe is ending and Lenval Brown is here to preside over the collapse. Let’s see if we can distil any further cortex-flensing insight from the Steam page.
“Unlock different penguins to replay the game as,” it comments. “Different penguins have different abilities and challenges. For example playing as a baby penguin means you can fit in smaller gaps but you cannot swim.”
Well, that seems harmless enough. Please try to distract yourself from the coming doom by telling me which is your favourite penguin. If you wrote anything other than Rockhopper then sorry, you are wrong. Alternatively, exacerbate your awareness of the coming doom by rewatching Thingu.