Penguin Hideout's Title Screen
Penguin Hideout Gameplay
Penguin Hideout Cartridge
Genre: Arcade/Puzzler
Developer: Thin Chen Enterprise
Release Date: 1992
Rating: 4/10
Penguin Hideout is a arcade Puzzler released in 1992. It was developed by Sachen, one of the most prolific developers for the Supervision platform (as well as a bunch of unlicensed games for other systems that clueless relatives might have ruined your Christmas with).
One curious aspect of this game is that the Sachen logo appears before the game starts and yet the title screen displays "Thin Chen Enterprise". This matters very little as Sachen is just a brand name for Thin Chen.
Despite Sachen's track record of developing stinkers with a few hidden gems in the mix I'd absolutely love to give Penguin Hideout a glowing review. After all, the fundamentals of Penguin Hideout are that of an extremely fun arcade puzzler. But I just can't, Penguin Hideout's mistakes are far too numerous to consider it to be a "good game".
Before I dunk on Penguin Hideout I'd like to talk about the positive aspects of this game:
First, Penguin Hideout's gameplay is extremely fun and challenging. In this game you're a penguin tasked with moving some gems to the stage exit. You can do this by pushing and carrying them. Unfortunately however there are a variety of obstacles in your way. Firstly, snowballs. These blocks can be pushed into each other to remove them from the screen or pushed across the screen, they cannot be carried. At the start of the game the screen is filled with snowballs. Next are the ice blocks, these blocks are much like the snowballs with the exception that they cannot be removed from the screen. Neither the ice blocks nor the snowballs can be carried.
The final obstacle in your way are three seals that roam around the screen seemingly randomly. If your penguin comes into contact with them you loose a life. The seals are also capable of pushing snowballs into you, thus killing you. They cannot push gems or ice blocks however. If killed the seals respawn back at the corner that they came from.
So what is a penguin to do when faced with seals out for blood and an objective to get gems to the exit? Push snowballs and ice blocks into the seals while attempting to move the gem to the exit of course! What exactly the penguin needs these gems for is never made clear throughout the course of gameplay, I can only conclude that it's for some manner of private arctic museum exhibition.
This is the basic gameplay loop of Penguin Hideout and it lasts for 50 levels, each with different layouts of snowballs, ice blocks and gems. There are no power ups but frankly the game doesn't really get stale as there's enough variety from the different stage layouts. Furthermore, the fact that the seals can't push certain blocks provides a fun and interesting tactical element to the game as you plot what the best way to block the seals from attacking you as you make your way to the exit.
Another surprisingly good (by Supervision standards) aspect of Penguin Hideout is it's soundtrack. It's not that it has particularly exceptional soundtrack, more so that it doesn't have much of a soundtrack at all. Besides a simple jingle for events such as starting the game, starting a new level or getting a game over all you'll hear is a simple track featuring a basic 8-bit drum beat, this adds tension during gameplay. At a conservative estimate, this is at least a trillion times better than the ear splitting tunes usually found in Supervision games.
Unfortunately, this is where my positive thoughts about Penguin Hideout end. It must be said that the actual quality of the graphics in this game is fine. The penguin looks like a penguin, the seals look like seals (and not the pink humanoid creature that appeals on the games cover art and the nightmares of any children unfortunate enough to see it). Albeit the snowballs look like boulders for some reason.
The problem is that there's so much happening on screen at once so quickly that it's near impossible to make anything out when the game starts due to the Supervision's terrible screen ghosting. This is a problem that perhaps could have been mitigated by having less on screen and slowing the pace of the game (as Crystball, another action game, does). While it's possible to adjust to the terrible ghosting in this game you'll still be flying (or waddling) blind for the first few minutes of gameplay since you're not going to know what's going on. Furthermore, even when you do adjust to the ghosting you'll still regularly loose a life because you lost track of your penguin is or where the enemies are.
Additionally, in Supervision style the sprites on screen are constantly flickering. Although this is less noticeable on real hardware and doesn't effect the gameplay all that much.
Another issue with Penguin Hideout is with its gameplay: it's possible to move the ice blocks into a position that blocks the gems, making the level impossible to complete. Not only is this possible, it's incredibly easy. The only thing that you can do when this happens is pause the game and select the "die" option, you'll have to do this until you run out of lives as the stage doesn't reset after you die. This is an extremely frustrating issue that makes it essentially impossible to play this game for points since you can easily trap yourself in a position where you have to waste all of your lives. In my opinion, this issue could have easily been mitigated in one of two ways. The first way is that the game developers could have made the game easier by allowing the penguin to pull the ice blocks, thereby making it impossible to get trapped. Another solution would have been allowing the player to reset the stage without any life penalty, this would have preserved the game's difficulty while mitigating this frustrating issue.
The only saving grace here is that Penguin Hideout has unlimited continues and allows you to start from the level you died on when you run out of lives, albeit without your previously earned points. You can also choose to start from a series of preselected stages by pressing select on the title screen.
In conclusion, Penguin Hideout provides a fun tactical puzzler that avoids a lot of the pitfalls of other Supervision games. Unfortunately however it falls victim to the Supervision's blurry screen and a game breaking issue that could have easily been mitigated. As such, although I enjoy this game I'm forced to give it a 4/10. If this game were on a system with a less blurry screen and it wasn't so easy to trap yourself Sachen may have had a 7/10 or even an 8/10 on their hands.
Review published 24/10/2023
This review is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Credit must be given to Immy if this work is distributed.