Game: Penguin Land
Console: Sega Master System
Developer: Sega
Release Date: 1988
When I started Penguin Land up and was greeted with its colourful title screen, I thought I'd be in for a fairly simplistic 8-bit puzzle game. It's a little more complex than that though, as players are tasked with guiding a penguin egg down through a series of levels, breaking blocks to lead it past polar bears, eagles and more hazards and to safety. There are 30 levels that can be selected from the start screen and a level editor in which players can design their own.
Players move the penguin with the d-pad and are able to jump and break blocks with the 2 controller buttons. The egg can only fall a short distance, and blocks can only be broken from an adjacent block, meaning that some planning is necessary to guide the egg down to the end of the level. With patrolling polar bears, and an eagle that tries to smash your egg if you leave it in one place for too long, there's a level of complexity to this puzzle game which isn't often seen in 8-bit titles.
Graphically the game is basic, but has enough detail for the objectives to be obvious, and for special types of blocks and enemies to be apparent to players trying to plan their route through the level. There's only one bit of music which plays throughout the entire game, which is a little disappointing but obviously there's only so much space on a Master System cartridge. At least the music isn't particularly grating or repetitive.
Overall Penguin Land is a far better puzzle game than you'd think on first impressions, and has enough levels and subtleties to its gameplay to lend a good amount of replayability to its levels. The level editor is also a big plus, as players who have mastered the way the game works can test themselves against their own levels and continue the fun.
Rating: 62/100
Grade: C
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