A Platform-Golf-Bouncing Game That is one of the Most Marmite Experiences You’ll Play
I was braced for some platforming in Pengilo but got that assumption entirely wrong. Pengilo is not a Pingu-inflected platformer: it’s actually something more like Party Golf. You’re not jumping around an icy arena, you are flinging your penguin around with a power-bar and a directional arrow. It’s about p-p-picking up a penguin and then chucking it.
Your task in Pengilo is to toss your penguin first at a key, and then at a door that the key subsequently unlocks. All of this is done in a 2D level, not too dissimilar to one you might find in a platformer. You can stop for a moment and even imagine your little penguin-Mario completing it in a more conventional way.
Enter the Flinguin
The complication, of course, is the flinging. There are spikes and chasms in almost every level, so you have to be careful about how far you toss Pengilo, and the arc of that toss.
In the opening levels I made the mistake of taking things slowly. It made sense to be careful: to make the perfect, looping shot onto a platform. I tried to collect all of the coins, which were optional but took me to all corners of the level. Golf had taught me that this is how Pengilo should be played. You don’t see Scottie Scheffler running after the ball so that he can take a swing as soon as it lands.
Don’t be me. Playing Pengilo this way is the absolute worst, for a multitude of reasons. The biggest is that the accuracy is way, way off. I’ve fired Pengilo in a very carefully prepared arc, only for it to ping off in another direction completely. It’s bizarrely mercurial, which isn’t the best in a game where you’re trying to land a penguin on some tiny platforms.
A Golf Game Where you are Completely out of Control
Similarly, the power-bar is an enemy of precision. It may be me, but I couldn’t find a way of performing a small ‘dink’ shot: a sand-wedge of a shot. You are forced to take a full-power shot every time, which means you need to git gud at huge, looping arcs, sometimes straight up into the air. And, again, it’s mercurial. Sometimes, the full-power shot will be a mid-power shot. There’s no reason for it; you just have to deal with it.
Which should, pardon the imagery, take a shotgun to Pengilo’s chances of a good score. You couldn’t have a golf game with wild, random hooks and pulls. You want to feel like you are in control.
That is an understandable reaction. I can see people bouncing off Pengilo like a penguin-shaped golf ball. But it’s somewhat saved by its ‘one-bounce’ system.
Pengilo doesn’t tutorialise this one-bounce system: this is something I have found out entirely by myself. As soon as Pengilo hits solid ground – a wall, platform or even a corner of a platform – you can slow down time and start making your next shot. You don’t have to wait for the ball to stop: in fact, you shouldn’t wait for the ball to stop. You need to be making your next shot almost always after the first bounce, as it’s still moving.
With that mental reset, Pengilo starts making sense. A random, wild shot in the wrong direction is redeemable. As soon as it hits a wall, you can slow time and correct it with a second shot. A misfire that would bounce into a spike can be remedied with a course-correction after that first bounce. Pengilo starts to morph from a golf game into something else, something like that Party Golf we mentioned, where you don’t have to abide by the usual rules.
Optional Missions That Should be Mandatory ‘Nope’
My second tip would be to ignore the optional stars. Don’t bother. There aren’t any achievements or unlocks connected to them, and they tend to make Pengilo less enjoyable. That’s because they reset as soon as you die, which is fairly often. One weird misfire (Pengilo will randomly do this to you, rather than you do it to yourself) and the star-progress is gone. For your sanity, ignore them.
And public service announcement #3: Pengilo will not tell you where the key is. I don’t know why it doesn’t, as there are signposts in the level pointing to the exit. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to do the same for the key. But that means you need to do a spot of exploration in the level, invariably bouncing in the wrong direction before resetting and heading in the right one. Curse you, Pengilo: this would have been so easy to solve.
But account for all of these gigantic, almost game-sinking flaws – flaws that really shouldn’t be here – and you can actually have a good time with Pengilo. I started to develop some tricks that made this unique game tick along nicely. I learned to bounce the ball into the ground more often than I played a conventional golf shot. The bounce is more controllable when you’re forced to make every shot full-power, and that first bounce means that you’ve ‘touched ground’ and can now pause the gameplay to make a second shot. If you just make a conventional golf shot, it hasn’t hit the ground, and you can’t course-correct it if it’s flying over your target.
A Game Where you Need to Develop a Completely New Set of Skills
I would hit walls deliberately, so that I was in a better, higher position for lofting Pengilo over that same wall. Rather than land on the exit, I would fire myself at it from height. It’s so much easier to reach the goal from above than below. All of these quirks are unique to Pengilo, and take time to learn.
The ultimate question is: will anyone bother? Pengilo presents as a platformer, but isn’t. It then makes you think that it’s a golf-like game, but down that path lies frustration. What it REALLY is is a bounce-platformer where you need to be pivoting after every bounce. Only players with persistence are going to find that out. And even then, it still has glaring flaws and weirdo controls.
Oh, Pengilo. You have a list of issues as long as my arm, but I did grow to enjoy your weird, unique ways. I don’t think many others will. I reckon about five other people will get past your unorthodox controls and like you as much as I like you. Which was just a little bit.
Important Links
Pengilo – Proper Frosty Fun? – https://www.thexboxhub.com/pengilo-proper-frosty-fun/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/pengilo/9ns2s6vmw9d6
