Game Review: Penguin

Dive into some Tiny Wings action with Penguin, the first Tiny Wings-type game on WP7. By the way, it’s free to download.

Overall Score: 3/5

The gameplay and presentation are good, but the lasting value could see some improvements. However, it’s a great Tiny Wings style game for now!

Gameplay: 4/5

The gameplay feels almost identical to Tiny Wings. You touch the screen to dive down (gaining speed), and then you release the screen to fly. The goal is to get as far as possible without running out of air, so you have to try to catch big jumps as often as possible. If you’re not sure how to play, Penguin has a fabulous adaptive help system that teaches you when to press on the screen, and then gradually fades away once you get the hang of the game. Eating the fish in the game will give you a little speed boost. It feels pretty solid when playing it!

Presentation: 4/5

The visuals are only decent, however the load speeds and music makes up for that! The game loads extremely fast, and will also resume even faster, so you can respond to that text right when you get it instead of worrying about having to wait for the game to resume! The music in the game sounds awesome and is nice to listen to. For HTC phones, there’s currently a bug where the sound effects make constant static, but by turning the sound effects volume off, that static went away. While the visuals could be more interesting, they are definitely effective and work for now.

Lasting Value: 2/5

Unfortuantely, this game doesn’t have a local or online leaderboard. You can sort of compete with friends locally, since it records your best all time score, but a leaderboard system would make the game far better.