The works of H.P. Lovecraft have been influential for many games, including the recent Cthulhu: The Cosmic Abyss, but when you think of the author's cosmic horrors, you probably wouldn't naturally think of penguins. But that's what Penguin Colony does as an unusual adaptation of Lovecraft's At the Mountain of Madness about a disastrous expedition in Antarctica, from the perspective of the South Pole's indigenous flightless birds.
I actually got to play Penguin Colony a few months ago at BitSummit where I also got to meet game director Tali Faulkner at Melbourne-based indie studio Origame Digital, which previously made the award-winning Umurangi Generation. While there's a considerable leap in scope and ambition between the two games, that distinct lo-fi 3D aesthetic that harkens back to early console generations is still very much there. But where Umurangi Generation was described as a dystopian Jet Set Radio, Faulkner describes Penguin Colony as "a souped up PS2 game. Kind of like if you were making a PS2 game and had the power of a PS3."
