United Penguin Kingdom Review

United Penguin Kingdom is, at its core, a very simple game; what can you expect? It’s a simple city builder where you make an expanding metropolis for a society of penguins. As someone who began her obsession young with the likes of Club Penguin, I was intrigued. After all, who doesn’t like penguins?

If you are three seals or an orca in a trenchcoat, unfortunately, you aren’t welcome in this conversation. But I’ll get to that later. First, let’s talk about what United Penguin Kingdom is about. The truth is, there isn’t any overarching story about this society, nor are there any key characters for you to root for. Unlike some other city builders, this is a relatively bare-bones game that just has the overarching goal to become King of the Penguins. This was the cue for me to get my straw hat and embrace my Monkey D. Luffy vibes to take on this role.

To become King of the Penguins, you need to increase your reputation, which can be done by doing different tasks assigned to you. These tasks appear every month, and in them, you need to unlock different elements from your science tree, build specific buildings, and harvest a specific number of materials. The materials you can harvest include snow blocks, ice spears, plastic, wood, garbage, metal… you know the drill. Another way to build your reputation amongst the other penguin civilisations around you is to increase your education and happiness. To increase happiness, you need to build entertainment facilities such as ice rinks, and education can be increased by building schools.

However, it’s not quite that black and white, and it’s a feature that isn’t explained much in the three stages of tutorials you can play before beginning the game. While it expands on the mechanics of United Penguin Kingdom’s city builder, it doesn’t explain how the science tree and the badges have much of an impact on your reputation. It fluctuates, and while you would think that city building is the main focus, you’ll also have to contend with waves of seals and orcas targeting you. The seals will take your food and if you don’t assign a penguin to your watchtowers, you will struggle. Of course, you’ll have to put the towers as close to your food stores and the boundaries of your civilisation, or else you’ll have to rebuild a lot.

Multiple watchtowers are essential to face off against the orcas, especially as they have so much more HP when compared to the seals. Sure, the seals are a pain, but if you don’t have more than one watchtower on the edge, you’ll struggle until you finally build an ice cannon, which can only be done when you earn enough science points to unlock it, and this can be as far as Year Three or Year Four on your map.

You can choose from multiple maps, but for my playthrough, I thought I’d choose the most basic map. Unfortunately, I’m a pretty haphazard city builder and didn’t start organising my city properly until later. But why? Why would you do that, Bex? The answer to that is simple: I have no thoughts. I just wanted to accomplish my tasks, but you can’t really condense your buildings together. If you want to conserve space, you need to buy new areas, which are limited based on the type of settlement you have. As I reached the City stage, I was able to unlock two of the platforms to try and increase my standing before the King until I finally gained enough power — ahem, reputation — to usurp him.

I’ll be honest, it did get a little bit repetitive after a while. Once I was done with the first few years, I was in the swing of things. Every few months, an orca will try to destroy one of my border buildings, and the seals will steal my food. However, the seals aren’t the best at what they do, and for each seal killed, you get one gold. For an orca, it varies between 20 and 30, and once it’s dead, it won’t bother you again until the next attack.

As there isn’t any plot, I figure that United Penguin Kingdom is a pretty easy game to tune in and out of when I’m doing multiple tasks. When I want to turn my brain off, it’s great. I don’t really have to think about it, and I just need to build and make my penguins go to school and be happy. I’ve given up on understanding how the reputation system works, but it’s a great distraction for anything else.

While a lack of plot might frustrate some players, it’s essentially a cosy little penguin city builder. Considering it’s only £12.79 on Steam, it’s not breaking any barriers of the genre, but it’s not bad. It’s just a simple little United Penguin Kingdom.