Penguin Trek: a retro penguin typing game

How to play Penguin Trek

1. Choose a difficulty and a stage, or start with Easy stage 1-1, and press the space bar or tap the road to start running.
2. Watch the words above the holes, crevasses, seals and other obstacles coming towards Pip. The word you are typing has a gold frame.
3. Type the word before the obstacle reaches Pip: he jumps over holes and crevasses and throws snowballs at seals, bats and icicles.
4. Type the letter on a fish or a flag to catch it for bonus points. Every 5 fish give you an extra heart.
5. Avoid wrong keys and crashes: each one costs a heart, and with no hearts left the stage starts again.
6. Reach the GOAL banner to clear the stage. On the third stage of each area, beat the boss first by typing its words.

The word with the gold frame is the one you are typing; letters you have typed turn green and the next letter is highlighted. The road shows you about two obstacles ahead, so as soon as one word is done, your eyes can move to the next. At the top of the screen the REST meter counts down the metres to the goal, as in the classic penguin racers, and your score ticks up on the right.

Controls

• Keyboard: press Space to start running, then just type. On Hard use Shift for capitals and the punctuation keys , . ' ? !. Esc pauses the game; the pause menu also lets you restart the stage.
• Phones and tablets: tap the road to start and type on the on-screen keyboard below it. On Hard, tap ⇧ once before a capital letter.
• Phone held sideways: the buttons and counters move to the left, so the road and the keyboard get the whole width.
• Keyboard guide: on computers a small keyboard under the road shows the finger colours used in the Typing Dojo; on Easy it lights up the next key. You can turn it off in Settings.

Three difficulties: Easy, Medium and Hard

Each difficulty is its own expedition of 21 stages through the same seven areas, with its own stars and records. Stages unlock one by one, and Settings has an option to unlock everything.

Easy stages follow the Typing Dojo

Our free Typing Dojo teaches touch typing one pair of keys at a time. The first nine Easy stages of Penguin Trek use exactly the same order, so each stage only asks for keys you already know, with as many words as possible using the newest ones. Learn a step in the Dojo, then put it to work on the ice. For another typing adventure with the same lessons, try Jungle Jump.

Seven areas, twenty-one landscapes and seven bosses

No two stages look alike. Every stage has its own landscape, plants, weather, time of day and mix of obstacles. Pip's journey starts on the Antarctic ice, crosses the frozen sea and the snowy forests, heads north into green summer forests, flower meadows and a sunny desert, dives into an underground tunnel and finally climbs to the Aurora Igloo.

The road gets faster as you go. Each stage starts at 85% of its speed and speeds up twice ("SPEED UP!" and "FULL SPEED!") to 130% before the goal, and every stage starts a little faster than the one before. Each landscape has its own 8-bit tune: skating waltzes, a forest march and a mysterious cave theme, all composed for this game, plus a faster theme for the boss fights. After every stage the expedition map shows Pip walking on to the next station, with the stars you have earned and how far you are from the Aurora Igloo.

Obstacles, fish and flags

Endless Expedition

When you want a pure speed test, choose Endless Expedition in the stage list. The road never ends, the area is chosen at random, and the speed starts at the lowest speed of your difficulty and rises by one word per minute every 20 seconds. Count your words and metres until Pip has lost his three hearts, and try to beat your record.

Stars, score and typing speed

Score: every correct key is worth 10 points plus a streak bonus, a word without mistakes adds 5 points per letter, each obstacle cleared 20, each fish 100, each flag 50, each boss hit 150 and a beaten boss 1,000. Every heart left at the goal adds 200. Speed is measured in words per minute (WPM), with five correct keystrokes counted as one word, the standard used by typing tests. As a rough guide, 15–25 WPM is a beginner, around 40 WPM a typical office typist and 60 WPM or more is fast.

Badges and achievements

There are 25 badges to earn, for catching fish, jumping holes, beating bosses, typing fast and accurately, finishing every stage and going far in the Endless Expedition. Open the trophy button in the game to see your progress towards each one.

A short history of the penguin racers

Penguins and ice have a special place in video game history. In 1983 Konami released Antarctic Adventure for the MSX home computer: a penguin races across Antarctica from one research station to the next, seen from behind on a road that runs into the screen, jumping over crevasses and ice holes, dodging seals and grabbing fish and flags against the clock, to the tune of Émile Waldteufel's "The Skaters' Waltz". Its sequel Penguin Adventure followed on the MSX in 1986 and added new worlds such as the sea, forests and caves, bosses, a shop and several endings; it is often remembered as one of the first games Hideo Kojima, later famous for Metal Gear, worked on as an assistant director.

Penguin Trek is an original tribute to that era, written from scratch for Util.Ninja and not connected with Konami. It keeps the feel of those games, the road running into the screen, the bright colours, the REST meter, chiptune music and area bosses, adds rich modern landscapes full of penguins, whales, windmills, camels and cabins, and turns every jump into a typing exercise. The hero Pip, the artwork, the music and the sounds are all our own.

Why practise with the most frequent words?

A small number of words makes up a large part of everything we read and write. According to the Oxford English Corpus, the 100 most common English words make up about half of all written English. Words like the, and, you, that and have appear in almost every sentence you type, so typing them as quick, automatic movements pays off everywhere. Penguin Trek draws its words from a frequency list of about 2,700 common English words and 100 everyday expressions, and it asks for them under gentle time pressure, which is exactly how fluency is built.

Typing tips for a faster penguin

1. Home row first. Rest your fingers on A S D F and J K L ;; the bumps on F and J let you find them without looking.
2. Read the whole word. Look at the word, not the single letter, and let your fingers type it as one movement.
3. Look ahead. As soon as a word is done, find the next gold frame. The earlier you start, the more time you have.
4. Accuracy beats speed. A wrong key costs a heart, and a heart is worth more than a second.
5. Catch the fish on the way. Single letters are quick points, and every five fish give you an extra heart; type them without breaking your rhythm.
6. Use the opposite Shift key for capitals on Hard: right Shift for letters typed with the left hand, and the other way round.
7. Keep your eyes on the screen. If you need help, glance at the on-screen keyboard guide instead of your hands.
8. Short and often. A few stages every day build speed faster than one long session a week.

Frequently asked questions