Penguin Angel

Penguin Angel is a casual game for the iPhone. In the game, penguins have escaped from the London Zoo and are wandering the city streets, while at the same time - in a nod to Charles Fort's work on historical anomalies - strange objects are raining from the sky. The player takes control of the penguins' guardian angel, who protects them by pushing away falling objects before they hit the penguins. There are 3 levels of difficulty and 19 stages to complete.

The game uses the device's accelerometer as the control input. Players tilt the device up, down, left and right to control a guardian angel that flies above the penguins. The goal is to use the angel to push the falling objects away from the penguins. Each level is a timed stage, occurring in a different location in Victorian London. Players receive the "Perfect" badge if they complete a level without any of their penguins having been hit; this award carries over to later levels as long as no penguins are hit.

The game stands out because of its distinctive Victorian art style and quirky aesthetics. The art direction used original prints from the nineteenth century as the basis of the game art, from the characters to the backgrounds. The game levels progress through a series of street and city scenes, gradually leading to a cemetery in the final three levels. The falling objects also become increasingly menacing, with the bicycles and clocks of the early levels giving way to pianos, skeletal horses, and scimitars later on.

The game's idiosyncrasy comes through in other touches. The penguins, somewhat mysteriously, wear a variety of hats, sashes, and ties publicized in Victorian magazines. A peculiar comic figure, waving a wreath and a banner saying "Cheers!", pops down from the top of the screen after the player has pushed a certain number of objects away. The game's difficulty levels are not easy, medium, and hard, but rather "Easy-Peasy," Middling," and "Dreadful." The game also uses fonts typical of nineteenth-century publications.