TheRetroArcade
Veteran
Posts: 12,622
Joined: Feb 2026
Joined: Feb 2026
A little uneven, but Penguin Colony is too weird, wonderful, and surprising to miss.
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What is it? Lovecraftian horror through the eyes of a penguin.Release date October 16, 2026Expect to pay $15 / £13Developer Origame DigitalPublisher Fellow TravellerReviewed on RX 9070 XT, Core i5 12600K, 32 GB RAM, Steam DeckMultiplayer NoSteam Deck VerifiedLink Steam
Penguin Colony is a work of cosmic horror that I would recommend to anyone with even a passing interest in scares from the beyond, even though its unique penguin platforming can be frustrating to wrangle. It's a radical recontextualization of an H.P. Lovecraft classic with a clear affection for the writer's storytelling, but also scathing contempt for his racism.
For my money, it's not October without a weird-ass new indie horror game leaving a lasting impression on me, and Penguin Colony has satisfied my annual craving. You are a penguin witnessing the events of the Lovecraft story, At the Mountains of Madness. Your powers are honk, slide, swim, and hop.
Rather than being limited to a specific bird, you are able to possess any penguin you come across, theoretically using different species' abilities to tackle different movement challenges. Aside from using little baby penguins to squeeze into tight spaces, I was almost exclusively a Rockhopper main: Their impressive vertical jump was a boon in many areas. They shoulda hooped instead of investigating The Strange.
The GOAT, PC Gamer Tales from The Hard Drive host Lenval Brown, narrates the adventure from the perspective of a customarily neurotic and verbose Lovecraft protagonist. Brown's delivery lends everything a similar emotional weight to his iconic performance in Disco Elysium, and he makes for a comforting, familiar presence even as things go all nasty crazy style.
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I remain conflicted over Penguin Colony's movement and mechanics: I didn't find them especially fun, they got in the way, but that also felt weirdly appropriate. As a penguin, waddling around is kinda shitty and sluggish, particularly as the levels shift away from their native habitat.
Most charitably, there's a Foddian (Getting Over It, Baby Steps) quality to the mechanical exploration. It got me to really lean in for some tricky traversal as the atmosphere reached its most suffocating and intense in the caves and structures deep under the arctic ice. I felt frustrated and restless as Penguin Colony's coolest levels opened up before me, held back as I was by this little penguin body. But that dovetails quite well with Penguin Colony's whole premise: that you are an inhuman observer of a human (and something else) story.
A more clear-cut negative was an inconsistency with a mantling (do penguins mantle?) feature (was this intentional?) that felt more like a clipping glitch, letting me clear some ledges but not others. Penguin Colony's appropriately minimalist UI has one glaring exception: A Shadow of the Colossus-style circular stamina meter that appears only when your stamina is depleting. It is distractingly massive and neon-colored, and it usually wasn't clear what the relationship was between what I was doing and the stamina bar's drain. It had a mind of its own, and was never a welcome sight during my playtime.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
At its best, though, the penguin parkour contributed to this feeling that I was a small, insignificant thing skirting the edges of a drama I only partially understood. We as humankind are effectively unknowable elder gods to the rest of the animal kingdom, and Penguin Colony largely succeeded in evoking a one-of-a-kind sense of dual-layer cosmic horror through its mechanics.
None of w...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?
PC Gamer's got your back
Our experienced team dedicates many hours to every review, to really get to the heart of what matters most to you. Find out more about how we evaluate games and hardware.
What is it? Lovecraftian horror through the eyes of a penguin.Release date October 16, 2026Expect to pay $15 / £13Developer Origame DigitalPublisher Fellow TravellerReviewed on RX 9070 XT, Core i5 12600K, 32 GB RAM, Steam DeckMultiplayer NoSteam Deck VerifiedLink Steam
Penguin Colony is a work of cosmic horror that I would recommend to anyone with even a passing interest in scares from the beyond, even though its unique penguin platforming can be frustrating to wrangle. It's a radical recontextualization of an H.P. Lovecraft classic with a clear affection for the writer's storytelling, but also scathing contempt for his racism.
For my money, it's not October without a weird-ass new indie horror game leaving a lasting impression on me, and Penguin Colony has satisfied my annual craving. You are a penguin witnessing the events of the Lovecraft story, At the Mountains of Madness. Your powers are honk, slide, swim, and hop.
Rather than being limited to a specific bird, you are able to possess any penguin you come across, theoretically using different species' abilities to tackle different movement challenges. Aside from using little baby penguins to squeeze into tight spaces, I was almost exclusively a Rockhopper main: Their impressive vertical jump was a boon in many areas. They shoulda hooped instead of investigating The Strange.
The GOAT, PC Gamer Tales from The Hard Drive host Lenval Brown, narrates the adventure from the perspective of a customarily neurotic and verbose Lovecraft protagonist. Brown's delivery lends everything a similar emotional weight to his iconic performance in Disco Elysium, and he makes for a comforting, familiar presence even as things go all nasty crazy style.
View Original
View Original
View Original
View Original
I remain conflicted over Penguin Colony's movement and mechanics: I didn't find them especially fun, they got in the way, but that also felt weirdly appropriate. As a penguin, waddling around is kinda shitty and sluggish, particularly as the levels shift away from their native habitat.
Most charitably, there's a Foddian (Getting Over It, Baby Steps) quality to the mechanical exploration. It got me to really lean in for some tricky traversal as the atmosphere reached its most suffocating and intense in the caves and structures deep under the arctic ice. I felt frustrated and restless as Penguin Colony's coolest levels opened up before me, held back as I was by this little penguin body. But that dovetails quite well with Penguin Colony's whole premise: that you are an inhuman observer of a human (and something else) story.
A more clear-cut negative was an inconsistency with a mantling (do penguins mantle?) feature (was this intentional?) that felt more like a clipping glitch, letting me clear some ledges but not others. Penguin Colony's appropriately minimalist UI has one glaring exception: A Shadow of the Colossus-style circular stamina meter that appears only when your stamina is depleting. It is distractingly massive and neon-colored, and it usually wasn't clear what the relationship was between what I was doing and the stamina bar's drain. It had a mind of its own, and was never a welcome sight during my playtime.
Keep up to date with the most important stories and the best deals, as picked by the PC Gamer team.
At its best, though, the penguin parkour contributed to this feeling that I was a small, insignificant thing skirting the edges of a drama I only partially understood. We as humankind are effectively unknowable elder gods to the rest of the animal kingdom, and Penguin Colony largely succeeded in evoking a one-of-a-kind sense of dual-layer cosmic horror through its mechanics.
None of w...Read more: Full article on www.pcgamer.com
What do you think about this?