''Crazy Penguin Catapult'' is an

action-adventure The action-adventure genre is a video game hybrid genre that combines core elements from both the action game and adventure game genres. Typically, pure adventure games have situational problems for the player to solve to complete a story ...

mobile game A mobile game, or smartphone game, is a video game that is typically played on a mobile phone. The term also refers to all games that are played on any portable device, including from mobile phone (feature phone or smartphone), tablet, PDA t ...

developed by Sumea and published by

Digital Chocolate Digital Chocolate, Inc. was a video game developer and publisher headquartered in San Mateo, California. It was founded in 2003 by Trip Hawkins, the founder of video game companies Electronic Arts and The 3DO Company. The company focused on devel ...

for

Java ME Java Platform, Micro Edition or Java ME is a computing platform for development and deployment of portable code for embedded and mobile devices (micro-controllers, sensors, gateways, mobile phones, personal digital assistants, TV set-top ...

mobile devices in 2007, and later ported to Microsoft Windows and

iOS iOS (formerly iPhone OS) is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone; the term also include ...

. The game revolves around courageous

penguin Penguins ( order Sphenisciformes , family Spheniscidae ) are a group of aquatic flightless birds. They live almost exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere: only one species, the Galápagos penguin, is found north of the Equator. Highly adapt ...

s fending off their territories from invading

polar bears The polar bear (''Ursus maritimus'') is a hypercarnivorous bear whose native range lies largely within the Arctic Circle, encompassing the Arctic Ocean, its surrounding seas and surrounding land masses. It is the largest extant bear spec ...

using a

catapult A catapult is a ballistic device used to launch a projectile a great distance without the aid of gunpowder or other propellants – particularly various types of ancient and medieval siege engines. A catapult uses the sudden release of store ...

. It is reminiscent of '' Yetisports'' and is believed to have inspired the famous ''

Angry Birds ''Angry Birds'' is a Finnish action-based media franchise created by Rovio Entertainment. The game series focuses on the eponymous flock of angry birds who try to save their eggs from green-colored pigs. Inspired by the game '' Crush the Castl ...

'' mobile game which it predates by two years. A direct sequel titled ''Crazy Penguin Catapult 2'' was released on June 20, 2009, also on J2ME and iOS. Four smaller spin-offs followed, including a

Facebook game A social network game (sometimes simply referred to as a social media game, social gaming, social video game or online social game) is a type of online game that is played through social networks or social media. They typically feature multiplayer ...

''Crazy Penguin Wars''.

Gameplay

''Crazy Penguin Catapult'' / ''Crazy Penguin Catapult 2''

Each level has two stages: the first sees the player try to use a catapult to fling penguins through a gap in the wall. Those that make it through are then brought into stage two, which has the player drop the penguins into an area filled with polar bears, the aim being to knock each of them out using the diving penguins. Polar bears are usually found hiding behind ice block structures, which penguins may have to break through with their bouncy bodies. Each penguin has a limited number of bounces. The intro cutscene, much like ''Angry Birds''s, shows polar bears who have kidnapped and caged several penguins. Given player's performance, the number of beaten bears attain up to 3 stars in each mission, which can eventually unlock permanent upgrades, like fire rings which put penguins on flames to melt through ice, rubber penguins upgrade which gives two more bounces, or twins, triplets and quadruplets, which add up to the total number of catapultable penguins. At the end of each of three sections of the world is a boss fight against a bear with more

health point Health is an attribute in a video game or tabletop game that determines the maximum amount of damage or loss of stamina that a character or object can take before dying or losing consciousness. In role-playing games, this typically takes the for ...

s than an usual one.

''Crazy Penguin Party''

A collection of

party A party is a gathering of people who have been invited by a host for the purposes of socializing, conversation, recreation, or as part of a festival or other commemoration or celebration of a special occasion. A party will often feature ...

minigame A minigame (also spelled mini game and mini-game, sometimes called a subgame or microgame) is a short game often contained within another video game. A minigame contains different gameplay elements, and is often smaller or more simplistic, than th ...

s released in 2009. It consists of six minigames, played against a computer or up to four other players with fast completion in mind: * Free Fall - a

skydive Parachuting, including also skydiving, is a method of transiting from a high point in the atmosphere to the surface of Earth with the aid of gravity, involving the control of speed during the descent using a parachute or parachutes. Fo ...

race through boost rings into a pool * Rocket Science - a

jet pack A jet pack, rocket belt, or rocket pack is a device worn on the back which uses jets of gas or liquid to propel the wearer through the air. The concept has been present in science fiction for almost a century and became widespread in the 1960s. ...

race across dangerous water gaps while having to take breaks to recharge it * Cliff Hanger - a ''

Doodle Jump ''Doodle Jump'' is a platforming video game developed and published by Croatian studio Lima Sky, for Windows Phone, iPhone OS, BlackBerry, Android, Java Mobile (J2ME), Nokia Symbian, and Xbox 360 for the Kinect platform. It was released worldwid ...

''-esque platformer where the penguin bounces off napping polar bears and springs * Diving - an

underwater diving Underwater diving, as a human activity, is the practice of descending below the water's surface to interact with the environment. It is also often referred to as diving, an ambiguous term with several possible meanings, depending on contex ...

race while escaping a giant octopus * Crazy Spin - an

ice skating Ice skating is the self-propulsion and gliding of a person across an ice surface, using metal-bladed ice skates. People skate for various reasons, including recreation (fun), exercise, competitive sports, and commuting. Ice skating may be per ...

race with a

spinning Spin or spinning most often refers to: * Spinning (textiles), the creation of yarn or thread by twisting fibers together, traditionally by hand spinning * Spin, the rotation of an object around a central axis * Spin (propaganda), an intentionally b ...

penguin involving timed inputs * Blowfish Rodeo - a

blowfish Tetraodontidae is a family of primarily marine and estuarine fish of the order Tetraodontiformes. The family includes many familiar species variously called pufferfish, puffers, balloonfish, blowfish, blowies, bubblefish, globefish, swellf ...

-riding race where timed puffing up of the fish accelerates the duo The tournament mode is played on a tile-claiming board, where each player has to play a random mini-game to claim a tile. Collecting 75 stars along the path gains the player a bonus turn. Players can beat each other's records to overwrite a tile as their own, and the first to claim four differently-colored tiles wins the game.

''Crazy Penguin Assault''

Penguins in this 2011 game infiltrate the

Arctic The Arctic ( or ) is a polar region located at the northernmost part of Earth. The Arctic consists of the Arctic Ocean, adjacent seas, and parts of Canada ( Yukon, Northwest Territories, Nunavut), Danish Realm ( Greenland), Finland, Iceland ...

territories threatened by polar and

panda The giant panda (''Ailuropoda melanoleuca''), also known as the panda bear (or simply the panda), is a bear species endemic to China. It is characterised by its bold black-and-white coat and rotund body. The name "giant panda" is sometimes use ...

bears. The campaign mode is much like ''

'' where a flock of penguins with different characteristics get to knock out all bears in each level, launched from a

spruce A spruce is a tree of the genus ''Picea'' (), a genus of about 35 species of coniferous evergreen trees in the family Pinaceae, found in the northern temperate and boreal ( taiga) regions of the Earth. ''Picea'' is the sole genus in the sub ...

tree by a rope. There is also a "frenzy" mode where the player instead strategically plants dynamite into structures to make them collapse into bears.

''Crazy Penguin Freezeway''

A 2011 ''

Frogger is a 1981 arcade action game developed by Konami and manufactured by Sega. In North America, it was released by Sega/Gremlin. The object of the game is to direct a series of frogs to their homes by crossing a busy road and a hazardous ri ...

''-style game where the penguin has to cross a river and enter an

igloo An igloo (Inuit languages: , Inuktitut syllabics (plural: )), also known as a snow house or snow hut, is a type of shelter built of suitable snow. Although igloos are often associated with all Inuit, they were traditionally used only ...

, while avoiding a polar bear which throws

snowball A snowball is a spherical object made from snow, usually created by scooping snow with the hands, and pressing the snow together to compact it into a ball. Snowballs are often used in games such as snowball fights. A snowball may also be a larg ...

s and sometimes blocks the way. The penguin can pick up fishes from some floating platforms, throw them at the bear, and sneak into the igloo while the bear is busy eating.

''Crazy Penguin Wars''

The last entry to the series, introduced to

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

and iOS in 2012, was an

online multiplayer game A multiplayer video game is a video game in which more than one person can play in the same game environment at the same time, either locally on the same computing system ( couch co-op), on different computing systems via a local area network, o ...

heavily inspired by the ''

Worms Worms may refer to: *Worm, an invertebrate animal with a tube-like body and no limbs Places *Worms, Germany, a city ** Worms (electoral district) * Worms, Nebraska, U.S. *Worms im Veltlintal, the German name for Bormio, Italy Arts and entertai ...

'' series. Penguins could use a variety of weapons to deal direct damage, collapse structures, sink other players into water, off the cliffs, and cause fall damage. New weapons required their recipes be researched with various combinable ingredients in order to be crafted.

Reception

''Crazy Penguin Catapult'' was received with generally positive reviews. An

IGN ''IGN'' (formerly ''Imagine Games Network'') is an American video game and entertainment media website operated by IGN Entertainment Inc., a subsidiary of Ziff Davis, Inc. The company's headquarters is located in San Francisco's SoMa dist ...

review compliments the music and effects as "very well done" but also that "music does loop quite a bit and may feel too repetitive to some players." Pocket Gamer considers the catapulting part "a bit weak", but the addition of the strategy mode to have bulked the game out as "attractive and pleasantly playable package". TheAPPera calls it "a quirky and addictive game involving throwing penguins off catapults and targeting angry polar bears. Top off with the cute soundtrack and effects, and you get one insanely fun game!" Airgamer verdicted that "All animations are lovingly designed and look very funny." ''Crazy Penguin Catapult 2'' saw similar success but was criticized for lack of innovation. Gamezebo rated the

version of ''Crazy Penguin Wars'' 4 stars out of 5.

References

{{Reflist 2007 video games IOS games BlackBerry games Facebook games Windows games Digital Chocolate games Action games Artillery video games Video games about birds Video games about bears J2ME games Penguins in popular culture