A harsh wind howls over the Antarctic.
asserted
wind → howl → Antarctic
Scattered Nazi polar exploration camps are in turmoil, corrupted by the eldritch forces their expeditions sought out deep into the tundra.
asserted
expeditions → corrupt → tundra
Oblivious to it all, a solitary penguin glides belly first along the ice before flying into an airborne spin reminiscent of Nintendo character Mario.
asserted
penguin → glide → Mario
Origame Digital's "weird fiction" game Penguin Colony explores colonial myth-making and the eldritch horrors of HP Lovecraft through an unusual perspective; that of a carefree penguin.
asserted
game → explore → penguin
Naphtali Faulkner, a Ngāi Te Rangi game developer based in Melbourne, sees no issue with the tonal dissonance here.
"
asserted
Faulkner → base → dissonance
The penguin is having a great time because it's supposed to be there," he says.
asserted
he → have → time
It's these European guys who don't belong there who are having the worst day of their lives."
asserted
who → belong → lives
Each of the penguins who call Antarctica home are playable: baby penguins able to slip into narrow crevices, a teleporting penguin, or any number of waddling adults, all of them indifferent to the horrors inflicted on the fascist humans around them.
asserted
all → call → them
Colonial myth-making
Penguin Colony addresses revisionist histories at the heart of settler movements.
asserted
Colony → address → movements
Faulkner cites the example of Celtic New Zealand, a pseudoscientific alternate history that claims Anglo settlers predate Māori populations.
uncertain
settlers → cite → populations
In the game's Antarctic setting, Nazis' search for relics that support Aryan race myth-making leads them to the unknowable monsters from Lovecraft's 1930s novella At the Mountains of Madness, who they foolishly mistake for an ancient Aryan king.
asserted
they → support → king
"They just make that [history] up.
asserted
They → make → history
The game's story is about exploring how they do this and the tools and mechanisms that allow this colonial myth-making to happen," Faulkner says.
asserted
Faulkner → explore → this
He sees the same myth-making applied to Australia's origin story.
asserted
making → see → story
Reinventing Lovecraft
Drawing on the writing of HP Lovecraft in a game critiquing racist pseudo-histories seems paradoxical.
asserted
Drawing → reinvent → histories
The American author, best known for creating the monstrous Cthulhu, was a notorious racist.
asserted
author → know → Cthulhu
Adaptations of his work historically dodge the issue, but Faulkner sees it as inseparable from Lovecraft's stories, the way his unknowable monsters colonise the world, and his overtly xenophobic depictions of Indigenous populations and subservient slave races, such as the giant amoeba-like Shoggoths that appear across his bibliography.
asserted
that → dodge → bibliography
"Most adaptations are trying to scare you with gore or tentacles or otherworldly looking stuff.
asserted
adaptations → try → gore
That's not the scariest thing about Lovecraft," Faulkner says.
asserted
Faulkner → say → Lovecraft
"The scariest thing about Lovecraft is how it makes assumptions about things and all the white characters just nod along with it."
asserted
characters → make → it
An Indigenous approach to game design
Faulkner describes the dominant mode of "human-centred Silicon Valley design" in video games as a flawed, complacent approach that spoonfeeds unchallenging "content" to players.
asserted
that → describe → players
Citing Wiradjuri professor Norman Sheehan's framework of "respectful design", which underpins his approach to game design, Faulkner states: "Indigenous knowledge says human beings don't create knowledge between their ears: the thing between their ears is a sponge that sees things out in the world and absorbs them."
asserted
that → cite → them
The story of Penguin Colony, delivered through narrative vignettes, is fragmentary, opaque, and — most shockingly of all — partly missable.
asserted
story → deliver → all
Game objects, often called "collectibles", are usually clearly marked and precisely quantified.
asserted
objects → call → ?
Here, they're not so easily discovered, although your direction is always implied by the direction of the wind, a deliberate move to recreate the mystery the medium once held pre-social media.
asserted
medium → discover → media
"When players realise that their playthrough didn't give them everything, but it did give someone something else, I think they're going to view the world [as] a little bit bigger than they thought it was before.
asserted
it → realise → world
Faulkner recalls playing Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2004.
asserted
Faulkner → recall → 2004
Enterprising players around the world suspected Bigfoot was in the game.
asserted
Bigfoot → suspect → game
They were wrong, but that didn't stop players searching every corner of its 36 square kilometre map to follow what proved to be a delusional breadcrumb trail.
asserted
what → stop → map
"It's a very Lovecraftian idea," Faulkner says.
asserted
Faulkner → say → ?
"Most Lovecraftian stories are an academic or a researcher finding an eldritch truth and trying to come to terms with whatever the hell it is.
asserted
it → find → terms
The only way you can do that is by telling players to go and role-play that outside of the game.
asserted
you → do → game
If you tried to gamify that with stats and numbers, you would never get the same emotional feeling."
Old souls finding the new in an emerging medium
Faulkner was inspired by the work of the Japanese game studio FromSoftware which, through action games such as Elden Ring and the Dark Souls series, have used difficulty, complexity and deliberately obscure storytelling to make communities work together to decipher their games.
Faulkner, who describes himself as "an old Souls-head", hopes his game can challenge players and inspire similarly enduring debates — without the infamous difficulty of FromSoftware games.
asserted
game → try → games
He sees Penguin Colony as testing players in ways they're not used to experiencing.
asserted
they → see → ways
For him, video games are an emerging art form yet to live up to its full potential, captured by a commercially driven American design sensibility.
asserted
games → emerge → sensibility
The Aporia