Penko Park

by Aethyna Sep 29, 2022 | 1 Votes | 93 Played | 0 Reviews

10 rate

Genres:

Adventure

Graphics:

Labels:

Adventure , Photography , Collectathon , Exploration

Platforms:

Publishers:

Secret Mode Visit the unique Penko Park, and fill up your collection book with photos of the most amazing creepy-cute creatures in this Pokemon Snap-inspired, collectathon-based “rail-shooter”! There are lots of ways you can interact with the wildlife, as well as plenty of artifacts and hats to collect, and new locations and upgrades to unlock. Play Now Similar Games

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Summary Plotline Gameplay Graphics/ Sound Conclusion

Summary

Do you consider yourself a fairly adventurous tourist? Well, Penko Park, the seemingly abandoned wildlife park is open for visitors! The game itself is a photography-based, collectathon-styled “rail-shooter” as you sit comfortably in your tour tram (of some sort) while taking photos of the wildlife with your complimentary Penko Snap-a-Lot 9000. There are also lots of ways you can interact with the wildlife, getting them to show their various poses and expressions. You’ll have plenty of artifacts and hats to collect, as well as new locations and upgrades to unlock. Will you be able to fill up your Penko Park collection book?

Plotline

Established in 1952 by Sir Rubertus Penko, the Penko Park is a wildlife park that is home to a diverse and unique range of Penko species that you couldn’t find anywhere else. However, the park has seemingly been abandoned, which would explain its lack of tourists… besides you, of course!

In this game, you get to ride a tour tram of some sort – it’s actually a cauldron on wheels with a seat inside – and go through various parts of the wildlife park in search of these creatures to photograph using your complimentary Penko Snap-a-Lot 9000 camera. You are also accompanied by a guide called Penki, who will be providing you with various explainers as you explore the park.

Gameplay

In terms of gameplay, Penko Park is very much like Pokemon Snap due to the fact that you don’t walk around the park yourself but rather you follow the pre-determined path of the tour tram like a rail-shooter, except that this indie title seems a lot more fleshed out and has a whole lot more quality-of-life features.

As you might expect, in this game, the main activity you’d be doing here is to take photos of the many different Penko wildlife here just so you can fill up your Penko Park collection book. Photographing anything is simple, fast, and very intuitive in this game. You just need to right-click to bring up the camera and left-click to snap the shutter. You can also use the scroller to zoom in or out, so as to get the best view of the animal you’re photographing.

Each photo you capture is rated with 1 to 3 stars. Naturally, you’ll want to grab as many 3-star photos as you can. Each star you earn contributes a little to an “experience bar”-like meter where you’ll earn a Penko Stamp for filling it up. Once a stamp is awarded, the meter resets itself and you can fill it up once more to get more stamps.

These stamps are very important for progression in Penko Park because you’ll need them to unlock new tools, upgrades, and even new locations via the collection book, such as the Grappler, the ability to stop the tram for a while, the Penko Ball, and the Penko Wand. Once you have the Grappler, you can then start collecting hidden Penko Artifacts in the park and add them to your book as well, some of which, when collected, will force a creature to emerge from its hideout in anger.

Like most wildlife in real life, the creepy-cute creatures in this game have many expressions and actions that you can attempt to capture on a Polaroid as well. Some creatures will react to the flash of your camera for instance, while others will react to certain things that you can do using the new tools you unlock using the Penko Stamps. The Penko Ball, for example, may delight some creatures while anger others.

Similarly, the Penko Wand, which functions much like a flute, can play certain music that soothes creatures or make them burst into a dance. The Wand can also be used at certain marked stones to reveal hidden secrets, be it a Penko Artifact or a new unseen-before Penko species. Some creatures, like the Uekmeup, can also be painfully shy and will run (or swim!) away as you get close, so you might want to make sure to put that zoom effect to good use!

Oh, and don’t forget to look behind you once in a while. You’d be surprised how many things you can see if you just look back.

As challenging as some creatures might be to photograph, thankfully, you just need 1 photo for each creature and its respective range of actions and expressions – there’s really no need for more unless your photos aren’t 3-stars yet – but if you don’t like the current photo, you could always take another and replace it with the latest one.

In the beginning, the number of photos you can take can be a bit more limited, but still sufficient if you don’t take multiple photos of the same wildlife. However, as you progress, you’ll be able to get more photos thanks to Penko Stamps, which would be helpful in other sections of the park where the wildlife might be a bit more abundant.

The park has around 5 unique sections (or biomes) that you can visit, you see, each featuring its own special myriad of Penko species. There’s also a “spirit realm” version that you can unlock by using the Grappler on the little folded paper where you can then take a photo of a Penki ghost. Overall, the pace of unlocks in this game, whether it is a new location or a new feature, is done perfectly well and in a way that makes revisiting previous locations as exciting as the first time you were there.

Another little fun thing about this game is its absurd range of hats that you can find via hat boxes that are scattered throughout the park, hidden in a similar manner as the Penko Artifacts. Once a hat is unlocked, you can then get your tour guide, Penki, to wear it along with the hat’s associated outfit. Be sure to take a photo of your guide too so as to add to your collection book.

Learning about the weird world of Penko Park is also made easy here. Not only can you learn about the wildlife via the comment or caption that goes with each photo you add to your collection book, but there’s also a good number of “info booths” that you can activate by using your Grappler. When activated, your guide will talk a bit more about the wildlife you’re about to see or that you’re currently seeing.

To be honest, Penko Park is perhaps THE best photography-based game that I’ve played and reviewed in my lifetime. The lack of freedom in moving about the park doesn’t feel at all restricting and, in fact, poses an additional challenge since you have so short of a window to capture the best possible photo. However, as eagerly as I am in waiting for a “Penko Park 2”, I think that the game still has some room for improvement, which the developers could definitely include in the sequel if they are planning one.

For starters, the game could make the signaling prompt a bit more obvious. The sound seems a bit soft and oftentimes, I’m way too busy trying to aim and throw a Penko ball, while taking the perfect 3-star photo, and ended up missing a turn because I completely missed the signaling prompt. Maybe the sound could be made louder and the signal could be placed higher up?

Talking about Penko Balls, I know part of the challenge here is to be able to charge and aim the Penko ball accurately while the tram is moving. However, I think it’d be nice to have an upgrade that shows the trajectory of the Penko Ball that the player can get with a Penko Stamp. It may not fit into the “realism” of the game but that can be easily explained away with some kind of special goggles or something.

As mentioned, Penko Park has plenty of artifacts and hat boxes for you to collect as you ride the tram across various locations. Unfortunately, unlike the creatures where the camera will let you know which poses or expressions you already have photos for, there’s no such thing for artifacts or hat boxes. Plus, the game doesn’t remove any of these after you’ve collected them, probably because some artifacts are tied to certain creatures so it’d make sense to keep the artifacts there. So, it’s fairly common for you to forget whether or not you’ve collected that particular hat box or that artifact and ended up wasting precious photo-taking time grabbing those items again.

Now, this might be intentional – to train your memory perhaps – but it’s nice to have collected hat boxes removed since they aren’t tied to any creatures. If the aforementioned goggles upgrade is added, then it’s possible to lightly mark collected artifacts by giving it a stronger, colored outline so as to differentiate it from the other, uncollected ones while keeping the realism of being a tourist at Penko Park intact.

Graphics/ Sound

Penko Park features a very unique style of art that helps it stand out from all the other similar “casual relaxing games”, which often use lots of pastels or may even contain vibrant colors. The color palette used here is more toned down, fitting well with the location, an abandoned wildlife park. The game also comes with plenty of ambiance and sound effects, though it has no soundtrack – not that it needed any. From the rumble of the “tram” you’re “sitting” in, to the occasional sounds that the creatures make, you’d feel very immersed in the game.

Conclusion

If you’re a fan of Pokemon Snap but feel like it could have been so much more, Penko Park is the perfect example of how a photography-based “rail-shooter” should be done! Not only does it feature some creepy-cute creatures, including the rare and elusive, for you to photograph in their respective natural habitats, but there are also multiple ways you can interact with them in order to get them to show various poses and emotions that you can then photograph as well. Ultimately, the goal is to fill up your collection book with photographs of the creatures, Penko artifacts, and of course, your stash of hats for your Penki tour guide.

Penko Park is a game that we can wholeheartedly recommend. The game unlocks new locations and features at a comfortable pace, doesn’t outstay its welcome, and best yet is a unique adventure to experience!

New Game Added: Penko Park

by Aethyna Sep 29, 2022

Visit the unique Penko Park, and fill up your collection book with photos of the most amazing creepy-cute creatures in this Pokemon Snap-inspired, collectathon-based “rail-shooter”! There are lots of ways you can interact with the wildlife, as well as plenty of artifacts and hats to collect, and new locations and upgrades to unlock.