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| The Entertainment Review |
| Genre: Strategy Developer: Brain Toys Publisher: Crave Entertainment |
Crave Entertainment paved the way for a new genre of game, real time strategy developed specifically for children with a taste for the
genre. “Defendin’ De Penguin” is a well thought out tower defense style game that is geared towards both context and design towards
the younger gaming crowd.
The story of “Defendin’ De Penguin” tells the story of Little Blue, an energetic and lively little penguin who is bound and determined to
stop the animals in his snowy kingdom from stealing his village’s fish. One day he stumbled across a way to protect his kingdom after
he hits a crab with a snowball which forced the crab to drop the fish he was trying to steal. Profi Penguin, an inventor and schemer
witnessed this defensive move that Little Blue made with the snowball and began inventing towers to use Little Blue’s techniques in
fending off enemies and saving their food. Little Blue is asked to help out and test Profi’s new inventions and new towers are
developed throughout the course of the first level as new enemies are introduced to the players.
The overall game play is very simple, considering it is designed for children to play. A line of animals including wolves, foxes, crabs,
walruses and more move towards the village in an orderly path trying to reach the houses where all the fish for a community of
penguins. Players are given the task of setting up towers that will stop or at least slow down the enemies as they approach the village.
There are different types of towers that use certain types of ammo and deliver different damage types to the enemies. Snowball Towers
deal general damage while Icicle Towers are piercing and Ice Cube Towers deal out blunt damage to enemies. Some enemies are
more vulnerable towards certain types of attacks, meaning those are the types of attacks that will be needed to defeat the enemies.
Little Blue is used to navigate around the map and get power-ups, as well as fish at the ice holes to raise the reserves of fish in the
village. Little Blue can also be sent to the different towers to help increase the tower’s attack statistics a little bit.
The primary way to play the game is through Story Mode which takes the player from one village to the next, defending the penguins
from the fish-hungry animals making their way to the village. Each village has its own map, each which has 10 increasingly difficult
stages associated with it. New towers are built by the professor as players move through the levels, and Profi Penguin will add
upgrades to the towers along the way. Each tower is built using silver coins that are collected by both defeating attacking animals and
picking up random coins dropped by enemies that have already been defeated. Fishing must occur in each level also because if the
village’s supplies of fish are depleted, the level is over and players need to start over.
There are two parts of the game that could get to be frustrating for players as the game progresses. First, the distribution and
acquisition of coins in the game, which are the only way to build new towers, is different than in other real time strategy games. In most
games, there is a constant way to earn currency that can be used towards building different infrastructures. In “Defendin’ De Penguin,”
since the only way to earn coins is by killing enemies, if players have build a layout of towers that doesn’t work and enemies are able to
get through without dying, players don’t get more coins to build the necessary towers to succeed and therefore are forced to start the
level over again once the animals have stolen all of the fish in the village. The second frustrating part of the game is tied into this circle
of failure because coins are carried from stage to stage within each specific map. This means that for players that had a faulty strategy
three stages earlier, that have to misallocated their towers earlier in the map will have to start the whole map over again and work out all
of the issues that they had. This can be angering and frustrating for those players who are at map 3-8 and they are forced to go back to
3-1 to fix the problem.
The controls of the game on the Wii are very simple. Moving around the map is controlled with either the D-Pad on the Wii remote or
use the nunchuk. Pointing with the Wii remote will control where Little Blue moves to or where you place your towers. The build menu
is brought up with the a button and selection of towers is fairly intuitive from there. It would be thought that bing on the Wii, this game
would have had something interesting with the motion sensitive controls. However, there wasn’t really anything exciting about the
controls and although the manual says that players need to nunchuk to play, the D-Pad on the Wii remote works as well.
“Defendin’ De Penguin” is a great game that is easily accessible to the younger gamer who may not be completely familiar with the
often difficult genre of real time strategy. Crave Entertainment has done a great job of bringing this type of game to a younger
generation by creating a story that is not only cute and cuddling, but is fun and exciting, and is playable by any gamer. The replayability
for adults is very low, but again, this is a game meant for kids. Where this game may continue to entertain children time after time,
adults may want to look into a more mature game in this genre.
genre. “Defendin’ De Penguin” is a well thought out tower defense style game that is geared towards both context and design towards
the younger gaming crowd.
The story of “Defendin’ De Penguin” tells the story of Little Blue, an energetic and lively little penguin who is bound and determined to
stop the animals in his snowy kingdom from stealing his village’s fish. One day he stumbled across a way to protect his kingdom after
he hits a crab with a snowball which forced the crab to drop the fish he was trying to steal. Profi Penguin, an inventor and schemer
witnessed this defensive move that Little Blue made with the snowball and began inventing towers to use Little Blue’s techniques in
fending off enemies and saving their food. Little Blue is asked to help out and test Profi’s new inventions and new towers are
developed throughout the course of the first level as new enemies are introduced to the players.
The overall game play is very simple, considering it is designed for children to play. A line of animals including wolves, foxes, crabs,
walruses and more move towards the village in an orderly path trying to reach the houses where all the fish for a community of
penguins. Players are given the task of setting up towers that will stop or at least slow down the enemies as they approach the village.
There are different types of towers that use certain types of ammo and deliver different damage types to the enemies. Snowball Towers
deal general damage while Icicle Towers are piercing and Ice Cube Towers deal out blunt damage to enemies. Some enemies are
more vulnerable towards certain types of attacks, meaning those are the types of attacks that will be needed to defeat the enemies.
Little Blue is used to navigate around the map and get power-ups, as well as fish at the ice holes to raise the reserves of fish in the
village. Little Blue can also be sent to the different towers to help increase the tower’s attack statistics a little bit.
The primary way to play the game is through Story Mode which takes the player from one village to the next, defending the penguins
from the fish-hungry animals making their way to the village. Each village has its own map, each which has 10 increasingly difficult
stages associated with it. New towers are built by the professor as players move through the levels, and Profi Penguin will add
upgrades to the towers along the way. Each tower is built using silver coins that are collected by both defeating attacking animals and
picking up random coins dropped by enemies that have already been defeated. Fishing must occur in each level also because if the
village’s supplies of fish are depleted, the level is over and players need to start over.
There are two parts of the game that could get to be frustrating for players as the game progresses. First, the distribution and
acquisition of coins in the game, which are the only way to build new towers, is different than in other real time strategy games. In most
games, there is a constant way to earn currency that can be used towards building different infrastructures. In “Defendin’ De Penguin,”
since the only way to earn coins is by killing enemies, if players have build a layout of towers that doesn’t work and enemies are able to
get through without dying, players don’t get more coins to build the necessary towers to succeed and therefore are forced to start the
level over again once the animals have stolen all of the fish in the village. The second frustrating part of the game is tied into this circle
of failure because coins are carried from stage to stage within each specific map. This means that for players that had a faulty strategy
three stages earlier, that have to misallocated their towers earlier in the map will have to start the whole map over again and work out all
of the issues that they had. This can be angering and frustrating for those players who are at map 3-8 and they are forced to go back to
3-1 to fix the problem.
The controls of the game on the Wii are very simple. Moving around the map is controlled with either the D-Pad on the Wii remote or
use the nunchuk. Pointing with the Wii remote will control where Little Blue moves to or where you place your towers. The build menu
is brought up with the a button and selection of towers is fairly intuitive from there. It would be thought that bing on the Wii, this game
would have had something interesting with the motion sensitive controls. However, there wasn’t really anything exciting about the
controls and although the manual says that players need to nunchuk to play, the D-Pad on the Wii remote works as well.
“Defendin’ De Penguin” is a great game that is easily accessible to the younger gamer who may not be completely familiar with the
often difficult genre of real time strategy. Crave Entertainment has done a great job of bringing this type of game to a younger
generation by creating a story that is not only cute and cuddling, but is fun and exciting, and is playable by any gamer. The replayability
for adults is very low, but again, this is a game meant for kids. Where this game may continue to entertain children time after time,
adults may want to look into a more mature game in this genre.
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