Major Update: Gliders, Penguin Games & A Very Busy Month

Hello, beloved penguins! It’s your host, Alican again!

It has been almost a month since our last major update, which is definitely a little longer than we originally planned. Some of you on Discord already know what happened, but we never really talked about it here. Alongside working on A Game About Penguins, I’m also the only 3D artist on our team, and a few weeks ago I managed to break my right hand. As it turns out, having a functioning right hand is surprisingly useful when most of your day involves making 3D models.

Because of that, development slowed down for a while, especially on anything that needed new art. My cast finally came off about a week ago, and we immediately got back to work. Apparently we had quite a bit of catching up to do, because what started as “let’s finish a few things” quickly turned into one of our biggest updates so far.

Before getting into everything, we also want to say a huge thank you to everyone in our Discord community. Even while updates were slower, you kept playing, reporting bugs, sharing suggestions, sending us screenshots and supporting the game. A lot of the things we work on are shaped directly by the feedback we see there, so if you want to follow development more closely and see smaller updates between these larger posts, our Discord is still the best place to do that.

Now, let’s get into what we’ve been working on.

Hezarfen’s Glider - Penguins Can Fly Now

Hezarfen’s Wind Test now has a proper reward: a glider. If you already completed the quest before this update, don’t worry, you can still get yours.

We wanted the glider to feel like more than simply falling slowly through the air, so we built a full movement system around it. You can glide, dive, climb and slow yourself down while flying. Diving builds up speed, and that momentum stays with you for a while when you level out again, which makes it possible to build speed from high places and travel surprisingly far across the island.

You can also roll left and right in the air using A and D. We added wind sounds, trails and stronger camera movement during fast dives to make speed feel much more noticeable. Sliding received some of the same treatment too, with new wind trails and camera reactions while moving quickly.

So yes, the island now has air traffic.

We’re sure this will go perfectly.

Restaurant Deliveries - Penguin Delivery Service Is Open

The restaurant now has a new way to earn money and XP. You can pick up food orders and deliver them to customers around the island, with longer deliveries giving better rewards.

To make finding customers easier, deliveries show their direction and distance while you’re carrying an order. Nam Nam also has its own new delivery point, complete with an animated sign, so it should be much clearer where your new career in penguin food logistics begins.

We also added daily delivery rewards. Reaching 5, 10, 15, 20 and 25 deliveries in a single day gives you additional fish rewards, so if you really enjoy running around the island delivering food, there is now a little extra reason to keep going.

We did not expect A Game About Penguins to eventually contain a delivery economy, but here we are.

Penguin Game - A New Survival Minigame

One of the biggest additions in this update is a brand-new multiplayer activity called Penguin Game.

Up to 8 players can join a survival tournament made up of four different rounds: Falling Tiles, Laser Rush, Spinning Arms and Falling Rock. The order changes every tournament, so you never know exactly what you’ll be dealing with next.

Players earn points based on their performance, with rankings shown between rounds and again at the end of the tournament. If you get eliminated early, you don’t have to stare at a menu while everyone else continues playing either. You can spectate the surviving players and switch between them until the round is over.

This is especially useful if you want to support your friends.

It is even more useful if you want to watch your friend confidently say, “I’ve got this,” and immediately get hit by a rock.

Racing, Time Trials & More Climb Up

Racing has received a much bigger structure in this update. Before starting, you can now choose your game mode and track, and we’ve added a new Time Trial mode focused on beating your own records.

Your lap times and personal bests are now tracked, and your previous best runs can appear on the track so you can race against them. We really like this because it gives racing something to do even when you’re playing alone. Instead of only racing other players, you can keep trying to shave a little more time off your own record.

Climb Up now also has both normal and timed modes, along with a second map. Pitstop received a second racing map too, and the mode, map and vehicle selection screens have all been redesigned to make getting into these activities much easier.

Basically, we’ve created several new reasons to say, “Okay, one more try,” and then realize much later that it was not, in fact, one more try.

Fishing Has Been Reworked

Fishing has been part of A Game About Penguins from the very beginning, so we wanted to spend some time improving both its progression and the way it actually feels to play.

Early fishing levels are now easier to progress through, and several fishing rods have received new or updated models and icons, including the Collector, Deep Sea, Golden, Monster Hunter, Precision, Fast, Small, Lucky and Heavy Duty rods.

The fishing animations and physics have also been improved. The fishing line and bobber now behave more naturally while walking, casting, waiting and pulling in fish. We also reworked the throwing motion and how the line opens while flying through the air.

The fishing minigame itself is more dynamic now too. Fish can briefly stop, suddenly accelerate and use more varied movement patterns, so catching them should feel less repetitive. We also improved the warnings, sounds and controller vibration during catches to make the whole interaction feel more responsive.

The fish have apparently learned tactics.

We probably should have expected this eventually.

New Shops Across the Island

Shopping has also changed quite a bit. Instead of having everything feel like it comes from the same place, different parts of the game now have their own dedicated shops.

There are separate shops for fishing, houses, party food, snow vehicles and upgrades, each with redesigned layouts and their own shopkeeper penguins. You can also sell items directly through shops now.

And yes, when you open a shop, the little counter bell rings.

This was not strictly necessary.

We considered it extremely necessary.

Some of the island’s game tables have been updated as well. Certain minigames can now be joined directly from beside the table without needing to sit down first. The new tables also have screens showing preview videos of their games, while things like chess pieces and Color Clash cards are physically visible on the tables.

They’re relatively small details, but they help these places feel more like actual parts of the world instead of just interfaces you walk up to.

A Better Map & Easier Navigation

As the game keeps growing, one problem has become increasingly obvious: adding more things to the island doesn’t help very much if players can’t actually find them.

So we’ve made several improvements to the phone map. You can now place a destination marker, zoom in and out, and drag around the map using the left mouse button. Once you select a destination, a blue line connects your current location to the target.

We’ve also added a direction arrow and distance indicator to make navigation around the island much easier.

Quest markers have been redesigned as 3D icons too, and quest-giving penguins will now wave and smile when you approach them. Hopefully this makes important NPCs easier to notice without covering the screen in giant UI markers.

They are smiling because they have something for you to do.

Whether that is good news is another question.

“What Do I Do Now?”

One of the biggest things we’ve been trying to improve is the first experience for new players.

A Game About Penguins has grown a lot, and that has created a slightly strange problem. There are many things to do now, but if a new player doesn’t know where they are, the island can still feel empty.

So after the onboarding section, regardless of which onboarding option you choose, you’ll now see a simple panel asking:

“What do you want to do now?”

You can choose activities such as fishing, quests, dancing, racing, arcade games and more. Once you pick something, a 3D direction arrow appears beneath the top bar and guides you toward the activity.

We don’t want the game to become a long tutorial where every action is explained to you. It’s still a sandbox, and getting distracted is part of the fun. We just want the island to do a better job of showing new players how much there actually is to discover.

You should still be able to ignore your destination entirely, follow another penguin for ten minutes and somehow end up fishing on the opposite side of the island.

That part is working as intended.

Steam Deck, Gamepad & Lots of Small Improvements

We’ve also spent a lot of time improving controller and Steam Deck support.

On Steam Deck, selecting or tapping a text input field should now correctly open the on-screen keyboard. We’ve also added a controller-friendly cursor and button prompts that automatically change depending on which input device you’re using.

Navigation through settings, tabs and different UI pages has been improved for gamepad users as well, so much more of the interface can now be used naturally without needing to switch between controller and mouse-style input.

Alongside those larger improvements, we fixed a lot of smaller issues throughout the game. World-space text and markers should no longer move incorrectly while the camera rotates. Items in your hand now pause correctly while using the phone and return afterward. Swimming no longer prevents interaction with certain quest objects. Hezarfen’s conversations are no longer interrupted by the mysterious lamp whispering at you, and bounce bonbon can’t affect players during Penguinator anymore.

Resetting the game also correctly gives you the starting 300 coins again, the cost of creating the Fisher NPC has been reduced to below 1,000 coins, and dancing now rewards more XP.

Because if you’re willing to dance in front of a group of strangers as a penguin, you deserve something for it.

We’re Back to Building

This update took longer to arrive than we wanted, but it feels really good to be properly working on the game again.

A lot of what we’re trying to do with these updates comes back to the same idea: we want the island to give you more reasons to explore, more activities you can immediately jump into with friends, and more moments where someone says, “Come here, you need to see this.”

The glider gives you a completely new way to move around. Deliveries give you another reason to travel across the island. Penguin Game adds a new multiplayer activity. Racing and Climb Up have more replayability, fishing feels better, shops feel more connected to the world, and the map and onboarding should make everything easier to discover.

There is still a lot we want to improve, and we’re continuing to read the feedback you send us. Thank you again to everyone who supported us during the quieter month, and especially to the people in our Discord who kept reporting issues, suggesting ideas and checking in on development.

Now we want to know:

What are you trying first?

The glider? Penguin Game? Deliveries? Or are you going straight back to fishing and pretending none of this happened?

Much love, Alican 🐧❤️