| Pingus | |
|---|---|
Pingus in action |
|
| Developer(s) | Pingus developers |
| Platform(s) | Unix-like, Microsoft Windows |
| Latest release | 0.7.5 / October 25, 2011 |
| Genre(s) | Puzzle |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
Pingus is a free, open source computer game inspired by Lemmings and created by Ingo Ruhnke. It features penguins instead of lemmings.[1] It has been reviewed favorably by CNN.com,[2] about.com,[3] Unix Review,[4] and other publications.
Work on the game began in 1998. This game is the first Game of the Month by The Linux Game Tome, which has revamped such games as SuperTux, Super TuxKart, and Lincity. The first post-GotM version 0.6 was released in 2003 for Linux featuring new levels and a level editor. On February 11, 2006 the game began being ported from ClanLib to SDL. On August 27, 2007 version 0.7.0- the first version to use SDL- was released. In addition to Windows and Linux, the switch to SDL enabled Pingus to be easily built on other platforms- Including Apple's MacOS X. There was no level editor in the 0.7.0 release. On September 23, 2007 version 0.7.1 was released- with a new level editor. On October 31, 2007 version 0.7.2 was released with a set of Halloween themed levels. There is a Windows and an Intel OSX binary of 0.7.2 available from the Pingus website; there is a PPC OSX binary of 0.7.0 The latest version, 0.7.3 contains minor bug fixes, to allow the game to work better with GNU Compiler Collection.[5]
Pingus has 22 levels, all with a winter theme. Pingus 0.7.2 has introduced 'levelsets', which are list of related levels; levels in levelsets must be completed in order. However there are many more levels included with the game not accessible from its GUI, some with entirely different graphics. To play a certain level the location of the filename has to be given as commandline parameter. Example:
pingus /usr/share/games/pingus/data/levels/playable/cages.pingus
A Linux shell script that allows to choose from all installed levels can be found.[6]