When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works

Home / Reviews / Apps and Games / iPhone & iPad / Finger Pengo review

Finger Pengo review

Waddle this way if herding penguins is your idea of fun

No, it’s not an X-rated version of your favourite plasticine penguin TV show, but instead a game involving a penguin who has inadvertently donned a pair of time-travelling headphones.

You must guide your beflippered friend through five different eras from Jurassic to Space age (via Sailing, strangely enough). Dragging a finger over a tile in the direction you want Pengo to turn drops a block for him to bounce off. If you neglect your block dropping duties, the little guy will just stroll off the edge of the board and you’re back to square one, literally.

Each level has a “goal” square that you need to get to, and there are lots of coins in between for you to collect, earning you more stars. These coins and stars are for the kudos hungry among you, as all you need to do is complete each level in an era to progress to the next.

At first, the game is frustratingly difficult. We felt like an actual penguin would do a better job of hitting the squares, and just keeping up with the little guy was a frantic task. With a little practice, though, we were soon be predicting his path up to as many as 10 blocks ahead like some sort of Jedi.

Each era brings with it a new set of objects, from jet packs which shoot you over gaps and through blocks, to wormholes and conveyor belts.

The whole game is very well crafted – we didn’t encounter a single glitch and barring a few poorly spelled achievements that popped up, the game is very polished and has bags of character.

Once you get the knack it’s not particularly challenging, but is addictive enough for you to see it through to the end of the 100 levels.

And it’s nice to see a happy bird in an app for once. They’re all angry or incontinent these days.

Stuff Says…

Score: 4/5

Profile image of StuffTV StuffTV
Enable referrer and click cookie to search for eefc48a8bf715c1b 20231024b972d108 [] 2.7.22