Club Penguin was a game that I only played on the DS lite when I was in elementary school, but in middle school some of my friends and I used to play it on the computer. As a buildabearville gal, I was not used to many things being locked off because you needed a paid membership to access them. On that site, it was a one time purchase of a bear and you were just about set for the rest of your days. However this site wanted you to pay 60 dollars a YEAR to access all of the things. Members got the best clothes, more puffles (pets), more furniture, larger igloos (houses), more money, more games, more spy quests, and just generally more everything.
In 2010-2011, you could still enjoy the game without a membership. However in mid-2012 the members got more and more exclusive items until nonmembers were basically only playing 30% of the game. On the DS games that they made, nothing ever changed, so after 2013 I stopped playing the online version and went back to the singleplayer DS version.
Flash forward to 2017. I haven’t touched CP in about a year when I hear that CP is closing for good. I pop on my old account, see how bad the “member/nonmember” segregation has gotten just in the year I was gone, and sign off. Nothing interesting is happening and there is no reprieve from the membership rules. Many games allowed everyone to enjoy everything while the game closed, but not Club Penguin.
I was not sad to see CP go, as it had already deteriorated since 2012 in my opinion. Then I heard that it was moving to a 3D mobile game. I got a little excited as I had been looking forward to a good mobile game for a long time. I preregistered on my phone and waited for March 31st to arrive.
As soon as the game alerted my phone, I downloaded it. I saw the cute tutorial with Captain Rockhopper and Auntie Arctic, saw how nicely the colors showed on my phone. But then they wanted me to move. This was the most annoying task, I swerved and dipped attempting to waddle around but it was a chore to simply walk straight. “Whatever” I thought, mobile joysticks were always irritating to me. I had to do a quest where I ziplined from the top of a lighthouse to the village square. As soon as my penguin finished the quest I got a popup saying that only members can use ziplines. I thought “Since when has CP limited moving?” The next thing that happened was that I leveled up. However all the things that I received had a lock on them. Only members can use emotes, only members can use blueprints to create their own clothes, and many other things. To rub salt in the wound, they forced you to create your own penguin outfit before locking it away.
Everyone was in the chat saying that they game sucked and that everything was members only. Membership is only 5 dollars a month, but if you pay for a membership you will be one of a select few and surrounded by nonmembers who can’t do anything that you can. Disney had already ruined CP but this Island game is simply an abomination and is worse than the DS lite games created 10 years ago.
Overall rating 1/5 (for nice graphics).