Penguin Colony was made to 'put the games industry on notice'

At first glance, Penguin Colony might look like a cute, if slightly unsettling, throwback to the PlayStation 2 era. You play as a penguin waddling, sliding, and swimming through the shadowy Antarctic wilderness, following a mysterious light. But there are also Nazis.

And ancient cosmic horrors. And a searing indictment of colonialism lurking beneath the ice. The latest game from Origanme Digital (Umurangi Generation) reimagines H.P.

Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness through the eyes of Antarctica's indigenous inhabitants, transforming a seemingly absurd premise into a deeply personal work of psychological horror. For Tali Faulkner, a Māori developer from New Zealand, the monsters of Penguin Colony aren't nearly as frightening as the real-world atrocities that inspired them. In a sprawling conversation with Polygon, Faulkner unpacks how penguins, Nazis, Lovecraft, and his own Indigenous perspective collided to create a bold new lo-fi horror game that is also extremely playable.

Below, the artist explains why he felt compelled to confront everything from the violence in Palestine and what he sees as a failure of the video game industry to respond to the horrors unfolding in plain sight, in a package where nailing the level design and core mechanics were just as important as the messages. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. Polygon: The clash of Penguin Colony’s Playstation 2-coded penguins traversing a murky arctic wasteland, and its ultimate antifascist and anticolonial messages, reminded me more of great comics than games, like Art Spiegelman or Mike Mignola books.

You mentioned a personal Alan Moore influence ahead of our call, which feels on that wavelength. What advantage did you gain from making Penguin Colony a game rather than a work in any other medium? Tali Faulkner: We're in the tenth art form, right?

Games are the tenth art form that humanity has created — like film was the sixth. And to me, games are the only art form where interaction is compulsory. You can go to an art exhibit and interact with it, but not really.