While his politics and bigotry have long been part of the analysis, Lovecraftian scholars benefit greatly from the fact that the namesake died before 1939. Stories of unfathomable beings, the reaches of sanity, and proto-steampunk sensibilities are ultimately plotted with racial scientific sentiments and colonial expeditions. A new game from Umurangi Generation creator Naphtali Faulkner seeks to wield the horror genre without excusing its many sins. And how does he achieve this? Adorable penguins. In Penguin Colony, you play as Antarctic birds. A large number of them. Large emperor penguins. Little baby penguins. Grasshopper. Chinstraps. By petting another penguin, the player can transfer their essence in an instant. Each one has alternating characteristics. Speed. Swim. Jumping. A photography mode. And although it would be quite elegant to glide across the tundra, their harsh but simple lives change drastically. With hints of alternate history, the game retells Lovecraft’s On the Mountain of Madness, this time with the Nazis unlocking the ice sheets instead of the well-funded New Englanders. Learning of the existence of an ancient god, captured in the frost, his research team attempts to discover the deity. With the aim of demonstrating its racial purity through the resemblance of the ancient. As you may have guessed, the face they discover does not look like their own, unleashing a formless, mind-melting terror. The penguins, much more suited to this environment in many ways, are also traveling. Go deeper into the tombs. Pecking at fragments of forbidden knowledge. There have been a lot of Nazi Lovecraft shipments (Hellboy comes to mind). Faulkner attacks the foundations of the genre, wielding Lovecraft’s own work against it. In their stories, anthropologists suffer from the madness of curiosity, but it is curious how often Western academics in their work bring reality itself to the brink of ruin. It doesn’t have to be on a cosmic scale how out of reach these explorers are. Interspersed between chapters are glimpses of local indigenous caretakers, cleaning up the messes of self-inflated travelers for generations. Its segments intentionally look like clips from other games. A half-minute snippet as if you accidentally sat on the input button on the remote, dipping in and out of an active Nightreign session. As critical as the game’s thesis is, know that you can’t be an overly critical penguin. The jumps make a beautiful anime noise. While Nazi soldiers skin their faces and tear out their intestines like paper towels, you’ll be too busy with belly acrobatics. The most disturbing thing is in the scope. The game is narrated by Lenval Brown, whose voice feels like honey in the ear, just like in Disco Elysium. The landscape is vast, dark and howling. There are secrets and hidden sights everywhere, often requiring you to guide specific penguins to the best platforming challenges. These levels are built to accommodate existing debris (grasshoppers seem to have magnetic feet), but it’s true that there were at least three occasions where I found myself hopelessly stuck in a crevice in a non-supernatural way. When I spoke to Faulkner for my fanzine last year, he told me that he would never make you watch a penguin suffer. This is mostly true. While their crouched posture could be mistaken for an ominous prayer, they are as unaffected by the mass of ancient gods as humans. You can fall into a pit or be corrupted by the shoggoth, but the game will take you to the next available penguin. Much like playing as a photographer in an apocalyptic war in Umurangi Generation, you’re here as an observer rather than an interloper. You walk through impossible architecture simply to witness it. It’s your world. He’s being torn down by idiots. But challenging the fabric of time and space out of arrogance is not for birds.
