Pingus 13Mb
I’m re-posting this from Week 17 (Here) as it’s such a good game and screenshots weren’t available in the forum way back then two years ago. It was also posted at the time at the bottom of a list of quite a few games. The review is largely that given by Softpedia, as it’s a good review.
The game is basically unchanged since 2007, except for some fixes to make it compatible with more PCs. It’s available for Windows, Linux and Mac.
Pingus, the brain-cooling experience! Many levels later in the game or from the custom set certainly aren’t easy, sometimes far from it! Ingenuity, thinking out of the box etc are needed, sometimes in great profusion! Basically it’s an enhanced Lemmings, with penguins having assignable abilities, over and above those available in Lemmings.
“Pingus is a lemmings-like puzzle game, which, although based on a very well-known idea, namely that of combining certain abilities to reach an exit, manages to keep you on your seat in front of the computer, scenario after scenario.
If you’re not familiar with Lemmings type games, you have to manipulate the environment to get hordes of them home. They vary in types, with differing skills and abilities. In Pingus, you have a set number of penguins depending on the level and you have to save some in order to get to the next level. Penguins appear at a certain point of the map, and you have to guide them carefully until they reach the exit. To do so; every particular mission provides certain abilities that you can equip the penguins with, in order to get past obstacles that stand the way. For instance, you may sometimes need to equip your penguins with floaters (little propellers mounted on their head), so that when they reach a gap, they gently land on the ground, and not hit it at great speed and die. You can also make the penguins jump over gaps to reach a specific point, or better, build a bridge over the gap and not have to worry about making sure every penguin jumps over. Do something wrong and there’s a fair chance none of the penguins will make it to the exit!
Other situations, like when the exit is lower than the area where the penguins are generated and there's no way to jump or land with a floater, leave just the possibility of digging. Digging is more specialised in Pingus, as there are four kinds of digging. The first is pretty basic, simply a digger, transforming a penguin into a cute, very well equipped drill worker that makes a vertical hole from the point where it is standing until there's no soil left to go through, or it reaches a piece of steel. Another kind is the miner ability, much like the digger, but digs at 45 degrees.
The basher is the third ability, to create tunnels horizontally through the ground for the penguins to pass through, starting from where you equip a penguin with this ability, and ending either on the other side, with the penguin safe and sound, or stopping when reaching steel. The fourth and final way of clearing obstacles is trickier to use. This is called a bomber, and it pretty much says all about it; when you select the bomber ability and equip a penguin with it, it doesn't explode right away, but instead a timer is triggered and, when it runs out, kaboom! This is a sacrificial ability, as there is no way to save the penguin after you make it a bomber. There are many levels when there is no other way to complete the mission than by using one or more bombers.
There are other abilities as well, but you can discover these for yourself and find out how best to use them. One consideration - every time you don't know how to find a way through a given scenario, try to think of how you can combine abilities because, more often than not, the key ability isn’t always the most obvious one or ones.
Pingus has great, albeit 2D graphics. The entertainment comes not from superb landscapes (though they are sometimes fantastic) or appealing effects, but from the contentment you feel when you finish each level. Some of the animations are great too, the floater being one of my favorites.”
Pingus is Open Source, includes a level editor, and a multi-player option. There are extra levels in two folders in the data\levels folder, playable (120 levels) and wip (100 levels) (work in progress). The latter are suitable for using as starting points in the level editor, whereas most of those in the playable directory should be working but might be very easy as they are, very difficult, or could possibly just be incomplete. The easiest way to try these extra levels is to load them into the level editor and click on the play button.
You can play windowed or full screen and you use the mouse to play. You can move the screen with the mouse at the edges, as many levels extend above/below/left/right of the visible at the time screen area. The game comes with music and some limited sound effects.
There’s a worldmap and secret levels as well. Pingus has twenty or so levels on the Tutorial island which are comparatively easy, though increasing in difficulty as you progress, and eight Halloween maps where you are completely on your own in solving them. Some of the later levels are plain pig difficult! . . . Although it could do with more default levelsets, it’s a really great game!!
If it keeps you up past 2 in the morning . . . !
Home Page HERE
Download HERE
