Club Penguin: In-Depth Tour

In Club Penguin, even the servers are cute-- arctic themes abound with names like Snow Globe, Yeti, Flurry and Slushy. Little faces clue you in to how full the server is. Once you choose, the penguin world loads up right away-- the entire experience is admirably quick, and the interface is clean and user-friendly.

Hint-- best to pick a less-crowded server, because plenty of penguins means lots of overlap in crowded areas, and you might not be able to read conversations or penguin names. Once you're logged in, you're deposited in a random area of the Club Penguin map-- this is the Snow Forts area, where when I arrived penguins, some accompanied by pet Puffles, were already engaged in snowball fights.

The easy menu at the screen's bottom provides a space for typing text-- those using Ultimate Safe Chat mode, however, can choose some ready-made greetings and responses from a pull-up menu. There's also a wide variety of emotes-- happy faces, sad faces, hearts, flowers and a cup of coffee to hand a buddy when you're in the Town Square's coffee shop. Finally, you can pick some rather cute penguin animations-- wave a flipper, dance in place, or just have a seat.

From the looks of things, most of the other penguins are paying members-- their colorful avatars are decked out in all kinds of accouterments. A yellow penguin with a floral crown, a Hawaiian lei and a red Puffle asked me, "whant to be frieand?" And thus, a friendship was forged.

I followed my brightly-colored tour guide to all of Club Penguin's locations-- restaurants, shops and dance clubs, where penguins were mostly just milling about, occasionally chatting in broken grammar-- this is definitely a kids' scene, though to be fair, the text interface oddly doesn't recognize commas. At each location, there are minigames that can be played for coins. They're all fairly simple flash, using the mouse or arrow keys to a very basic extent. Some of the games are single-player-- like a point-and-click pizza maker-- while others require up to four penguins to join in, like with the downhill sled racer.

These kids are good at these games. During a sled race, they sped ahead of me-- while my little red penguin ended up face down over a log.

Minigames average a payout of anywhere from 4 to 100 coins per play-- gift shop items, like penguin clothes, range from fairly affordable (180 coins for a baywatch-esque lifeguard shirt) to pure status items, like 1000 coins for the inexplicable night-vision goggles. A few of these items, such as the inner tube, grant the user added functionality, like the ability to do a swimming animation while in water. Anyone can browse the item catalog, but only members can buy the items.

The coveted Puffle pets cost 800 coins to adopt, and their care is rather involved (think Tamagotchi toys)-- still, most users seem to have one following them around. If you don't care for your Puffle, it'll run away-- and then you've got to grind up to 800 coins all over again to get another one.

The games are simple and Club Penguin's not exactly the best conversation spot ("boy or gurl?"). But some of the most fun elements are in the periphery, such as the weekly newspaper full of tips, teasers about new games, a question-and-answer column, and user-submitted comics and jokes that are actually quite charming. Why do penguins only swim in salt water? Because pepper water makes them sneeze. The game tutorials are bright and cartoony, and the library full of click-through, penguin-themed storybooks is a nice touch, and for those for whom the novelty of navigating on foot has worn off, there's a map that lets you click quick to your desired destination, or back to your home base-- the personal igloo that every user gets, and members can furnish and decorate.

Entry, exit and re-entry is pleasantly easy. Club Penguin logs you out after ten minutes of idle time-- logout puts you (and your Puffle) in "pause mode," wherein your penguin and your pet will be exactly how you left it when you return for the next play.