Umurangi Generation creator unveils Lovecraftian penguin game

Naphtali Faulkner, the creator of Umurangi Generation, has announced a new game called Penguin Colony, detailed in a feature published by Kotaku. The game stars Antarctic penguins and retells H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness.

Players control a range of penguins, including emperor penguins, babies, rockhoppers and chinstraps. Nuzzling another penguin instantly transfers the player's essence into it, and each bird carries different traits such as speed, swimming and jumping. The game also includes a photo mode.

In Faulkner's version of the story, Nazis rather than New Englanders are the ones unlocking the ice sheets. Lenval Brown, who narrated Disco Elysium, narrates Penguin Colony.

The game avoids showing penguins in distress. If the player's penguin falls into a pit or is corrupted by a shoggoth, control switches to the next available penguin instead of showing the bird suffer.

That approach follows a position Faulkner took in a conversation with the feature's author for their zine last year, when he said he would never make players watch a penguin suffer.