Pengu is a free indie simulation video game that allows you to relax within a beautifully-atmospheric pixel-art world. Developed by Schwender.exe, Pengu stars an adorable little penguin living on a tiny island with a cottage. With only the directional keys of your keyboard, you get to guide your pixelated penguin to be able to fish and putter about in its home. Unlike other games that have fishing mechanics, Pengu is wholly played for relaxation. Much of your company is the environmental ambiance sounds—like the waves sloshing, the wind breezing through, the pitter-patter of the rain falling, and the cheery crackling of your fireplace. 

One with the sea

Starting the game shows the main menu and the basic tutorial of controls. Unfortunately, there is no text even with the menu, but the arrow symbols should be clear enough to indicate that your directional arrow keys—or the gaming WASD keys—can navigate the menu. It’s also easy enough to figure out that Left (A) and Right (D) are for walking, Up (W) is for interacting with the options or objects, and Down (S) is for exiting out of choices and fishing and making Pengu quack to keep things interesting. 

Fishing is simple: you only need to wait a bit and then win an arrow mini-game within the time limit when it shows up on the screen. Winning gets you a cutely-named fish in the game. You can even get new household items this way. The cottage has two floors: the already-opened first floor and a locked basement that needs a key first. The first floor has a fireplace you can light up and a container that tells you how many varieties of fish you have already caught. 

The longer you stay around to fish, the more items you unlock—although only a few are interactable. Pengu is first and foremost a relaxing game. There’s no rush to discover items for this tiny island. If you want, you can even just let the game run in the background while you do something else, letting Pengu take a break from fishing. This is a nice game to try out when you want to unwind.