Beginner guide: your first hour
Start by walking the shoreline colony until the stamina ring appears on screen, then follow the expedition's lights inland to the base camp. Do not try to climb every slope in your first session: the ring drains on steep ice and only refills once you are back on flat ground.
Penguin Colony does not hand you a tutorial, a map or a weapon. It hands you a penguin, a colony, and a human expedition that is already busy ruining the place. This is the short version of what to do in your first hour so you spend it watching rather than wandering.
Pick a penguin, then stop worrying about it
You are not locked into a class. The game lets you embody more than one penguin, and in the demo the differences are mostly physical. Players on the Steam forum have found that a baby penguin can squeeze through a gap in a fence that an adult cannot, which is the clearest practical use anyone has reported so far. Everything else about swapping reads as body size and the colour of your stamina ring.
- Coloured ring in the corner: your stamina, and it is different per penguin
- Smaller body: fits through fences and tight gaps
- Adult body: easier to read at distance, takes slopes in fewer moves
Swapping is free and instant enough that you should treat it as a tool rather than a decision. If a gap refuses you, shrink.
Your first twenty minutes are a walk
Start where the game starts you and walk the shoreline. Do not sprint for the horizon. The opening stretch exists to teach you three verbs without a prompt: waddle on flat ground, slide when you have room to build momentum, swim when the water is closer than the ice road.
Slide is the one players under-use. On any downhill run it is faster than walking and it costs nothing, which matters once you have learned what does cost something.
The ring in the corner only bites when you climb
The coloured ring is stamina. Players who tested it report that it only comes into effect when climbing steep hills, and that it refills once you are back on level ground or in the water. Flat ice, waddling and swimming do not drain it.
Follow the lights inland
The expedition's lights are the best navigational tool in the demo, because there is no map screen at all. Once you have the colony at your back and the expedition's work lights ahead, you have a line you can always walk back down.
Walk the line until you reach the base camp. That is where the demo's first big set piece happens and it is worth arriving unhurried.
Five things to do before you explore
| When | What to do | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Minute 1-10 | Walk the whole shoreline | Learn slide, swim and the feel of the ice |
| Minute 10-20 | Test one steep slope on purpose | See the ring drain and refill while nothing is at stake |
| Minute 20-30 | Follow the expedition lights inland | Establishes your return line |
| Minute 30-40 | Reach the base camp and watch | The demo's loudest sequence, best seen cold |
| After that | Pick one orb trail and follow it | Gives your wandering a purpose |
Mistakes worth skipping
Wandering without a return line is the number one complaint about the demo. The second is climbing everything in sight in the first fifteen minutes, which burns ring you will want later for a slope you actually need. The third is treating the humans as quest givers. They are not: they are the exhibit.
Once you have the camp behind you, carry on to the demo walkthrough for the order the set pieces come in, or read up on stamina and movement before you attempt a long climb.