Enjoyed Penko Park
I recently did another round of "game tasting" where I played a bunch of games I have on Steam for 10-20 mins, minimum. I usually come away from these experiments with a couple games I'd like to play for longer... but this time I played ten games from my family's combined library, and I only liked one of them.
The game I liked was Penko Park, a Pokemon Snap-alike set in a creepy abandoned animal park, like a kind of Jurassic Park for weird globby plant-and-animal critters, spirits, and odd-looking humanoids. It has a completely bizarre and absolutely compelling artstyle. I barely know how to describe it - everything has weird stippled-gradient textures on it, which I love. It's kind of "global village coffeehouse," but only for the textures? It reminds me of The Stinky Cheese Man, a little. Look at it:
I think the game looks incredible in motion and at large screen size. There's so much texture and the color design is fucking great. I really love the way this game looks!!
You ride a little cart around and take pictures of animals as they reveal themselves to you, very much like Pokemon Snap. The game gradually gives you access to a series of tools you can use to elicit unusual behaviors from each critter. Getting a photo of the critter in each of its animation states "completes" it.
The game is very simple and the number of critters to photograph is VERY large. I think that the most difficult thing the designers accomplished here was to very tightly dial down the route lengths through each section of the park so that missing a photograph of an animal isn't too disappointing. The routes are so snappy, the branching along each route is so varied, and there are so many Guys to photograph. Having to do routes back-to-back multiple times in a row in order to complete a critter is neither boring nor frustrating. I was really impressed!
Worship of the baby was very common among the older generation Penkis. Thankfully, it was forbidden after the great resocialization act of '53.
The game's tone is pretty odd - which I liked - and probably a deliberate attempt to distinguish itself from the cheery inspiration of Snap. The environment is littered with broken, ripped-up park signs, fallen over thanks to either rampaging creatures or neglect. Your tour guide is a cute, waifish little imp, but he has a creepy and discontented air to him that I enjoyed. The plot spends most of its time lightly hinting about how bad and evil the animal park was before it shut down - before hard pivoting to this in the final act, via a twist I won't reveal. A lot of the creatures are actually pretty grotesque [laudatory]. I don't know if all little kids would like this, but I think I would have loved it when I was eight or nine. I did like the Stinky Cheese Man, after all.
I actually hit credits on this game, which is crazy for something I picked up in a "game tasting" run. You can hit credits after a couple hours and then continue playing to complete your critter list.
Anyway... I recommend it! It's on Steam and Switch. If you ever thought, "someone should make a creepy-cute Pokemon Snap about how demeaning it is for the Pokemon to be stuck in the Snap park," this is the one for you!