How Origame Digital are channelling and defacing Lovecraft over a trilogy of “inherently indigenous” anti-fascist games

Origame Digital’s *Penguin Colony* recasts H.P. Lovecraft’s cosmic horror through an anti-colonial lens, turning familiar images of an ancient alien city into a critique of colonial settlement. The game also challenges portrayals of Australian history that celebrate its landscapes while overlooking the violence of colonisation.

Players explore as a Rockhopper penguin and, in another section, as Māori voyagers trying to stop German and British Nazi occultists from reviving a being they call the “one true Aryan king”. The city draws on Melbourne, built on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung and Bunurong Boon Wurrung land, and on the ravaged terrain of Minecraft’s 2b2t server, which the developer describes as a depiction of colonisation without rules or regrowth.