As we get deeper into winter, the yearly onslaught of movies featuring furry, cuddly and often computer-animated animals will begin full-steam ahead. Watching these family-friendly affairs is a pleasant way to spend lazy holiday weekends, but for my money, penguins make for the most entertaining cartoon winter animals. If you feel the same, these five penguin-centric apps might help keep a smile on your face as the weather grows chillier.
Happy Feet Two: The Penguin App (Free)
Keep a little virtual pet penguin right on your iPhone with Happy Feet Two. You can pet, tickle and feed your penguin. The penguin will even repeat the things you say to it. You have the option of keeping your human-penguin interaction totally private and contained on your iPhone, but if you’re up for sharing, you can do that too. Happy Feet Two lets you upload your penguin videos right to Facebook. This way everyone can know how serious you are about your love of penguins and also the Happy Feet movie franchise.
Air Penguin ($0.99)
Air Penguin asks the vital question – what would happen if penguins could sort of fly and run across vast distances quickly? I don’t want to spoil the answer to that timeless question but at the very least, Air Penguin delivers a very fun game that sees your penguin running across icy terrain and jumping across crumbling ice blocks thanks to some intuitive tilt controls. While it is positioning itself as penguin-filled answer to Angry Birds, I think it looks a lot more like a racing game disguised as a platform title, not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Talking Perry the Penguin ($0.99)
I’m not a scientist, but I’m fairly certain it’s a fact that talking cartoon animals are too adorable to be ignored. The Talking Perry the Penguin app is an excellent case study in this observation. Perry will repeat anything you say, including even singing back music at you. You can also mess with his voice to give him a deep baritone or a high-pitched squeak. Either way, you’ll be powerless to ignore him.
Puzzling Penguins (Free)
For something more challenging that also involves penguins, I offer up Puzzling Penguins. This tricky puzzle app has you moving around blocks of ice in order to get a penguin from its starting position to the end goal of each puzzle. It still has the necessary cute-factor that all penguin-based apps must have, but it should also challenge players mentally, given there are over 100 levels to maneuver through.
About Animals: Penguins ($0.99)
If you’re looking for information about actual penguins, your app choices are surprisingly limited. About Animals: Penguins does a decent job providing videos, pictures and a Wikipedia page’s worth of information on the well-dressed animals. There’s even a news ticker that gives you the latest bits of info on everything penguin related. And don’t worry, there’s not a cartoon penguin in sight.
