Penguins cross Nazi occupied Antarctica in Lovecraft inspired adventure game
Penguin Colony is an exploration adventure in which players guide penguins across Antarctica towards an otherworldly entity pursued by Nazi explorers. The game reworks HP Lovecraft’s At the Mountains of Madness, using its unsettling world to challenge the racism and human arrogance associated with both Lovecraft’s writing and the Nazis.
Players hop, swim and glide through a semi-open landscape, switching between penguins with different abilities and collecting words. The review praises the jagged, low-poly environments, layered storytelling and striking final map, while noting occasional audio glitches and control bugs. It describes the game as an unusually ambitious experience whose world holds more secrets than a straightforward journey first suggests.
- Players explore Antarctica as penguins in pursuit of an eldritch entity.
- The game critiques Lovecraft’s racism and Nazi barbarism.
- Its strange, expansive world is occasionally let down by technical glitches.
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H P Lovecraft was an American writer whose horror stories often featured ancient beings and civilisations beyond human understanding. His 1936 novella At the Mountains of Madness follows an Antarctic expedition that uncovers evidence of an ancient presence; Lovecraft’s fiction also reflects racist views and distrust of people he considered different.
Antarctica has long drawn explorers because of its remote, harsh environment, and Nazi Germany sent expeditions there in the 1930s. The game brings these elements together in a fictional journey, placing penguins between Nazi explorers and an otherworldly entity. Its premise uses the source material’s themes of human ambition and fear while engaging with the racism in Lovecraft’s work.
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Originally published by The Guardian as “Penguin Colony review – an Antarctic odyssey of Nazis and Lovecraftian horrors”.