One dawn. One cliff. One rockhopper penguin — and the sea coming in behind it.
You are a rockhopper (Eudyptes chrysocome), the penguin that climbs cliffs for a living, hopping ledge to ledge with both feet together. The rookery is at the crest, 173 metres up. The tide is taking the beach. Get there before the water does, and the first light finds you.
The lute
The cliff is seamed with lute — the ochre sealing-clay that oozes out of volcanic rock. Land on an ochre ledge and it cakes onto your feet.
- Caked feet hold on ice that would otherwise slide out from under you, and stick to the bare cliff wall, so you can cling there and kick off across a gap no hop could cross. The price is that every hop is short and every sidle slow.
- Clean feet hop far and high and sidle fast — and skate straight off ice.
- Shake sheds the lute where you stand. It costs you a beat, and the sea does not wait.
Bare rock dries the lute off slowly. So every ledge is a decision about how sticky you want to be for the next one — and the chimney two thirds of the way up is nothing but lute, walls and air, where the only way across is to stick to the rock and kick off it.
How to play
| Action | Keyboard & mouse | Touch | Controller |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sidle along the ledge | A / D | left stick zone | left stick |
| Hop (hold it for higher) | Space, W, ↑ | Hop button | A / Cross |
| Shake the lute off | Shift, X | Shake button | X / Square |
| Cling to the wall | automatic — airborne, sticky, pushing into it | ||
| Kick off a wall | Hop while clinging | Hop button | A / Cross |
| Pause | Esc | pause pip | Start |
| Menus | arrows + Enter, or click | tap the line | d-pad + A / B |
It plays the same on a phone held upright, on a laptop and on a television.
What to look for
- The two gauges on the left edge: how caked your feet are, and how far up the cliff you have got against how far the sea has come.
- The ice band around 40 metres, where clean feet are a liability.
- The chimney at 72 metres — two lute walls and nothing between them.
- The light line coming down the rock to meet you.
- The crest, where the colony is already on its nests and braying, and the sun clears the water behind you.
A run to the top takes about two minutes. A careless one takes rather less.
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