United Penguin Kingdom

Чесно? В мене змішані відчуття від цієї гри, при тому, що я грав у демо (в демо окрема сторінка, там теж є відгук) й воно мені сподобалось, повна версія проста й дуже, невимовно довга та нудна. Але ж почну з самого початку: уявіть айдлер, що чомусь постійно потребує вашої уваги. Є враження, що гру робили з потенціалом додати мультиплеєр чи просто надихалися мобільними іграми з мікротранзакціями, бо попри увагу до деталей в візуалі та величезну купу всього в сенсі механік, досліджень та будівель, тут фактично нема чого робити, тобто в грі немає балансу, незалежно від рівня складності всі механікі лишаються такими самими, ви банально десятки хвилин сидите й чекаєте, поки накопичиться ресурс А, Б та В. При цьому мені за 10+ ігрових років навіть максимальну кількість пінгвінів в поселенні не вдалося збільшити: в них абсолютно все є, але ні. Й так з купою всього, гра, розтягнута на десятки годин, де частина механік не працює, й ще частина довільно перестає працювати. Оце мені найбільше муляло, наприклад на 2 рівні поселення я з легкістю зміг підняти одну з вимог, потрібну для значка, тоді як на максимальному рівні вона лише мінімально коливалася, що б я не робив. Дослідження так само просто жеруть час та ресурси, тоді як треба навмання дослідити десятки островів, щоб знайти потрібні будівлі (є посібник українською саме по дослідженнях, зберіг мені купу часу). При цьому не буду кривити душею, медитувати на пінгвінів мені зайшло, будівлі виглядають кумедно, там навіть тіні нормально прикручені й сонячні панелі рухаються за сонцем, але ти тупо сидиш й втичиш в монітор, допоки не з'явиться чергове повідомлення про щось, де зазвичай треба лише натиснути "ок". Переклад українською можна зрозуміти, хоч він і машинний, але є й я з ним грав без якихось проблем. Загалом взагалі рекомендувати гру не хочу, але відгук дійсно радше нейтральний, бо брав зі знижкою, повну ціну гра не вартує точно, зважайте на це.

Clearly this game was not play tested. The most obvious reason is the whales. On normal difficulty they attack almost monthly. The problems with that are you cant unlock the defense for these until the second year. So until you do unlock the Cannon, plan on having to rebuild a building every time a whale attacks. Had they play tested this, they would have realized the whales should damage buildings instead of destroying them. Also there is no reason to have the whales attacking so often so early on. It would have been so easy to increase the number of attacks based on the number of buildings that are water dependent. When you play something like Timberborne and then this, you understand the game industry is exactly that, an industry. There are companies that still believe getting it out there is more important than making sure it's good. The idea is cute and the potential is there. If you don't mind having to rebuild your buildings (including having to rotate them) and you don't mind being punished with absolutely no way to protect yourself, give it a try. If you do try it, invest in the science points early and unlock the cannon as quickly as possible. To the devs: Honestly, did you guys actually have anyone test this game? And if so, did you not listen to them when they said it was frustrating and boring? If you're going to try to copy something, make sure you take the best parts. The balance in the game is nonexistent and the goals you lay out force the player to repeat actions that typically are not part of a city builder. It is one thing to have to rebuild because of neglect, it's another when you're just being punished with no way to protect yourself.

Abandonware.

The game is not updated for years and the achievements are to much work - due to macro management and very fast reduced expired reputation. Could be fun if the developer would care about the game and fix it.

Cute city builder reminds one of Club Penguin. Relaxing backdrop. point and click. Addicted.

Its more frustrating then fun sadly.the biggest letdown for me is the constant rebuilding and replacement of buildings. instead of able to drag them to other places or just upgrade them. Its a bad design choise in my opinion.

At some level this just feels like a generic city builder with a penguin skin on it. Unfortunately that's a big part of why I would not recommend this. There are plenty of city builders out there that do it better. Frankly, there is nothing about this game that truly has anything to do with penguins. You are just building a series of very human like buildings. There do not appear to be any unique penguin mechanics to be found. Admittedly I have no idea what that would even be? I have to compare this to Timberborn as I feel that game did a good job of making it feel 'unique' to beavers. Sure, a good deal of it is unrealistic but at least it had some hooks that made it kind of feel like something a beaver might do uniquely. I dunno, if you want a pretty generic city builder with a cute penguin theme, perhaps this is for you. Also as someone else pointed out, some of the initial text makes it sound like the penguins are very peaceful but you pretty immediately start murdering seals and killer whales. I get that it's for defense but still. I found myself bored and disappointed after about 20 minutes.

Thought the game looked good and unique but after putting a few hours in to it it's just gutless. glaring UI issues aswell as poor QOL choices make this game more tedious than fun. Inability to upgrade buildings or move them might seem like a recurring issues in every negative review but that's because the tech to do that has existed for 20 years and not putting it in this game with the way the map changes just feels lazy. The whales can get f*cked they are some of the worst enemy design i've ever seen (not visually they actually look really good) but they just don't work in a fair way. They attack often and do real damage to your colony long before you unlock the ability to fight back so I hope you enjoy building the same buildings every 3 minutes. With an Indie dev I could look over the poor design or lazy enemys or uniteresting loop but they've made several games now and they've been round the block a few times. No excuses to queef this out There are much better alternatives made at the same time with the same price point.

I think the penguins might be specieist? The game opens with a proclamation of being strictly nonviolent and then proceeds to teach you how to murder seals for trying to steal food. Is seal-murder not violence? And speaking of seals, are they also sapient or is that reserved for the emperor penguins? What happened to the other penguin species? UPK doesn't really aswer any questions one might arrive at while overthinking the premise. That is not the problem with this game. I can't quite put my finger on what the problem is. Perhaps it's the lack of an overarching narrative or stakes. Usually, when I play a management game, I set out to play one level and before I know what happened it's five hours later. With UPK it was the opposite: I played for less than three hours but it felt like an eternity. The novelty of managing a city of penguins wore off within the first few minutes and the game progression didn't feel meaningful enough to keep me hooked.