Don’t worry about all the supernatural scares afoot, you’re a flightless bird
It’s one thing to face down supernatural creatures when you’re a rough-and-tumble badass like Resident Evil Requiem‘s Leon Kennedy. It’s another thing entirely to encounter eldritch horrors when you’re just a dumpy little flightless bird whose every step is an unsteady wobble. That’s the premise of Penguin Colony, a new Lovecraftian narrative game where you explore the secrets beneath the Antarctic ice as various members of a colony of penguins.
Penguin Colony is being developed by Origame Digital, the creators of Umurangi Generation, one of Polygon’s favorite games of 2020. It’s being published by Fellow Traveller Games, the Australian company behind acclaimed recent indies like Citizen Sleeper and 1000x Resist.
Each bird in Penguin Colony has its own unique abilities and limitations, which will shape how you explore the game’s open-ended environments. Smaller fowl can squeeze into tight spaces, while others are better suited to swimming through icy waters. You’ll uncover the fate of two factions who have come to the South Pole: one wants to subdue the power of an ancient being who dwells there, while the other wants to seize the creature’s power for its own ends.
This mix of snowbound isolation, stark environments, and cosmic monstrosity beyond human (or avian) understanding has shades of 2018’s unforgettable horror series The Terror, which follows the British crews of two ships tasked with discovering the Northwest Passage, a route connecting the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Their ships become trapped in the ice, and their presence disrupts the truce between the Inuit people and a terrifying monster. But in Penguin Colony, you’re not Jared Harris armed with a rifle, a massive chip on his shoulder, and a five-year supply of whiskey to guzzle. You’re just a rotund little meatball who doesn’t speak the language. Sounds pretty awesome!
Penguin Colony will come to Steam and Nintendo Switch 2 later in 2026. Fellow Traveller will publish a playable demo sometime in early June.
