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Somewhere around 2007, obscure indie game dev studio Frogames released an FPS that, nearly 15 years later, would consume me.

for about a month or two, anyway.

this is my journey. and this was Sedna's world.

...Around 2020, I bought the bundle for racial justice and equality on itch.io.

It was a bundle that contained literally hundreds of indie titles on the site, for just five dollars. and the money all went to charity!

It was a ludicrous deal, but there were a couple cons about it.

For starters, this pack only offered the itch versions of these games. absolutely no steam codes, even if the games promised one with a purchase.

This sucks for multiple reasons. Why play a game on pc if it isn't on Steam?

Why play a game that doesn't have any steam achievements, or cards, or dumb little emotes I could grab for 200 steam points a pop?

It sounds insane to a lot of people...

I honestly almost didn't buy the pack because of it. But I still went through with it anyway, since there were a few notible games on there that i was getting for practically free...

(Night In The Woods, Nuclear Throne, A Short Hike, etc.)

so, what the hell, right?

A couple months after I purchased it, I decided to sit down and sift through every single game the pack had given me.

I bookmarked the ones that seemed fun to try out...

(there were a lot of games included that were either free already, physical rpg's, or not even games. )

And after I did THAT, I then downloaded all the ones I had saved, added them all to my steam library as non-steam games, and gave each one custom art.

I even had to make a large amount of the art myself, since some of these games were really not well known.

But after all that, I've actually only played a handful of the games that I bothered grabbing. But the last game I've played from that pack is one that still hasn't left my mind.

Penguin's Arena.

Penguins Arena is an FPS developed by Frogames studios.

In the game, there are 4 tribes. Each tribe has one player controlled penguin, and 2 other bots.

So, only four people could be in a match at a time. The main weapon in the game is the snowball, which has infinite ammo.

they have quite the knockback, as the only way to kill another penguin is by knocking them off the map and into the ocean.

If you die, but still have other penguins alive on your team, then you get "reincarnated"!

(which basically means you get to control one of your bots so you can keep playing.)

Once all your penguins are dead, your tribe is out.

On the brightside, when you die you get to control an angel above the map.

You can't fly around, but you can shoot great balls of light to help kill the other penguins faster.

There are some power ups as well.

There's the fish net, which is a sort of rapid fire version of the snow ball.

The bear treads, which give you better traction and makes you harder to knock off.

The fish bomb, which acts a much more powerful snowball with a big blast radious.

And the Big Bomb, which I'm pretty sure doesn't do damage to anyone? But it's good for blast jumping.

Lastly, there's this cracked, glowy, egg thing. It gives you temperary invincibility, making it so any snowballs that hit you just get absorbed instead.

There's also a secondary. If you right click near someone, your penguin will do a pathethic little punch.

So, that's the gist of Penguins Arena. Knock people off, throw snowballs, and be the champ.

But what if I told you there's a reason for all of this?

That's right. There's lore for Penguin's Arena.

So, because of global warming, the antartic is slowing diminishing, and land is running out.

Coincidentally, the same thing is happening within the virtual world of Penguins Arena.

The penguin tribes are horrified, not knowing what to do with themselves as they get pushed closer and closer to each other.

But soon, the penguin god, Sedna, comes down from the heavens, bringing a grave annoucement. She says that soon, there will only be enough land for ONE penguin tribe.

So the 4 tribes must now fight to the death to survive!

As frogames omminously puts it,

"And so the purging begins."

...Pretty grim set up for a dumb penguin game. But I suppose that's what makes it funny.

Now, It was obvious Penguin's Arena is a game that had long since grown dead since before I found out about it.

But I still wanted to give it a shot! So I downloaded the game and tried it out. I saw the intro movie, and tried to join a server...

Nothing.

There wasn't a single server to play penguin's arena on.

I couldn't believe it!

Even some of the most obscure gmod gamemodes. the most forgotten tf2 maps, the most abandoned half life deathmatches...

even those always have at least one or two servers! but ZERO servers?! It was appaling.

I tried doing some research. Suprisingly, penguins arena was also on steam.

I scoured the discussions page...

people tried making their own servers for everybody to play on. But they all seemed to go down for one reason or another.

It was weird that Frogames didn't have at least one official server to play on.

I found their twitter, and it seemed like they still somewhat cared about the game still.

They even tried holding an event for it on christmas eve, back in 2019.

But that was it, really. Besides some scattered steam discussion posts, nobody cared about Penguins Arena.

Or have even played it, it seemed.

I was distraught. Really, I was.

Seeing this dumb little game where you shoot people... as a penguin.

It broke my heart that there wasn't a way to play it.

...Okay, well, that's a lie. You can do singleplayer, which is just regular gameplay with three other bots,

so it's not like you can't experience penguin's arena for yourself still.

BUT.

There was no way to play with OTHERS. and that's what I cared about the most.

I couldn't play Penguins Arena with anybody. Just myself.

I was the last penguin standing, but at what cost?

I had to find a way to save the game.

Now, unfortunately the timeline of my journey's a little blurry. My memory fails me, even now...

So, bare with me if my tale appears vauge and not very detailed.

Anyways. The first step was for me to just, y'know. Host a server myself.

Thankfully, frogames had a pinned post on how to do exactly that in the discussions page.

Unfortunately, this page contained a truly damning task:

I would have to port forward.

I do not pride myself on being a very smart man. I don't know a lot about the deeper vaucets of video gaming.

I didn't know how to emulate games til somebody in my middle school art class was kind enough to teach me.

I didn't hack any of my consoles until just a couple years ago.

And the only way I was able to pirate something was by being directed over a discord call with a friend.

I've always had to be lead on by somebody else for me to do these things.

I've never tried to do them alone, because I'd be afraid of screwing something up.

But hey. If I could hack my 3ds, surely I could host a server for a 14 year old game, right?

So I figured there was no way I was going to host a 24/7 server on my actual computer. This poor thing's barely truding along as is.

So I tried to find another way to host a server.

As luck would have it, my brother had one or two laptops we were holding onto for "repairs".

They've been with us for years though, so I doubt the people that gave them to us are ever coming back for them.

So, I grabbed the most functioning one. It was a Toshiba, made in 2010 (I think), running on windows 7.

It's only issue, besides it's obvious age, was the fact that the battery was broken. The computer wouldn't stay on, unless it was charging.

This wasn't really an issue though, since it's not like i'd be moving this thing around a lot anyway.

My brother couldn't find the charger the laptop came with, but he had a adaptor that'd work with any, so that's what I ended up using.

At this point, I had to sit down and teach myself how to port forward.

I kept reading about how you need to be careful about porting, since it apparently might allow hackers into my wifi? So I was pretty nervous.

I didn't want to use an ethernet cable so I could be safer.

But how on earth would I ever be able to port forward on a windows 7 computer, without an ethernet cable?

...oh, there's a tutorial video explaining how to do just that.

how convienent.

After setting everything up, I started running the server, and raced back to my computer.

Immediately, I ran into a problem. When I scanned for global servers, nothing turned up. But when I scanned for Lan, my server popped up!

I could connect to it and everything, but I didn't know whether others could see it too.

So, I asked my friend to grab a copy of Penguins Arena on steam...

(don't worry, it was on sale for like, 59 cents)

and waited for him to check. Surely enough, nothing popped up on his end. So, I didn't make a public server.

I just made one that you could only connect to...

if you were connected to my internet too.

But I kept reading the guide over and over again...

Maybe if somebody else was on the same port, it'd show for them as well?

Surely others would be on that port if they were trying to play Penguins Arena as well, right?

There was only one thing I could do to find out.

I posted on the forums, declaring the opening of my new server. And for nearly 2 weeks, I left the laptop on.

All that time I spent the server running,

those penguin bots fighting each other again, and again, and again...

...

...Nobody ever responded to my post. Nobody ever told me if my server was even showing or not.

I'd scroll through the server log every night, and see nothing.

One day, I finally got around to it, and I shut down the laptop.

Penguinz 4 Lyfe was actually just 4 thirteen days or so.

...Yes, my server was called "Penguinz 4 Lyfe".

There's hardly any space to type out a name for a server, so it only showed up in the browser as "Penguinz 4".

To say I was crushed feels like an understatement. I really had failed.

My beloved funny penguin game... gone, forgotten to the world at large.

And despite my best efforts, I just couldn't save it...

Days turned into weeks, into a month or two. and suddenly during a call with friends, the topic of the game came up again.

Probably because of me.

So, on a whim I booted up the game again just to take a look at it, and wouldn't you fucking believe it:

There was a server.

The only post on the Penguins Arena discussions that's still worth noting is it's most recent one.

"Literally the only server".

Yes, it turns out I was not the only one trying to keep this game alive.

Now, before you get angry at my hypothetical incompetance: No, this server was not up and running during my porting escapades.

It just so happened that amidst my efforts, feardragon found out that his server was down again, and finally took the time to get it running again.

I was amazed. Immediately, I begged my friends to boot up Penguins Arena, and hop the fuck on.

It took a bit of time connecting, but once everybody was in it was incredible. albeit, a little chaotic.

I had to show everyone how to change their name and customize their penguin.

Also, one of my friends named themselves "Fraggot" as a joke...

(they're trans so that probably gives them the right to do that, I think)

and it somehow triggered some sort of slur detection the server had running, so they were banned for 5 minutes or so.

It was pretty funny. I mean, wow!

Who would've thought Penguins Arena would care so much about stopping the spread of hate speech online.

Sedna loves you all, no matter what gender, race, or sexuality, I suppose.

But yeah after that, it really was glorious. A full Penguins Arena server, surrounded by all my friends...

I don't know what happens to penguins when they die.

If there's a penguin heaven or hell.

but if penguin heaven is anything like what I experienced that day...

It doesn't sound so bad.

You can purchase Penguins Arena on steam here:

You can also grab a copy on itch.io for a dollar cheaper, which comes with a steam key!

Or hell, you might have it already if you bought the pack I got too. Check your library!

I think both clients still connect to the same servers too, so, hey. Maybe you don't even need the steam version and can just hand your code to one of your buds.

Don't pirate this lovely game. Frogames deserves every dollar from this wonderfully weird little shooter.

Special thanks to Feardragon7 for being the sole torch bearer for this game, and thank YOU for reading.

and now it passes.

I couldn't find anywhere to put this, but did you know that fucking oneyplays did a video on penguin's arena?? I had no idea until way later. Very odd.

Okay that's it for real now, bye.