Hey Penguins!

As the spooky season comes to a close and Winter nears, let's go over everything that happened during our recent Halloween party! There is a lot to cover regarding the lore..

Before the party even started we saw teasers of a returning character from the Medieval Spellbound and Camp Penguin parties, which were posted over on our 𝕏 account. They depicted The Wanderer, who seemed like he was going to be the potential villain during the party.

With that being said, the party officially started on the 27th of October with Aunt Arctic telling us that the Penguin Band have mysteriously gone missing! She then mentions that Gariwald has been studying the ominous clouds that are forming over the haunted mansion, suggesting we go and investigate.

It's up to us to talk to Gariwald and figure out where the Penguin Band have disappeared to! This is where the main quest storyline starts. Our mission is to break through the forcefield, get into the mansion and save the Penguin Band. For the first task, we spoke to Gary about the situation at hand and he wants us to build a force field buster. We then search around the Mansion for the parts to build it, completing various mini-tasks to obtain them.

The force field buster successfully breaks through and then we are able to enter the mansion, and explore the many rooms to finally discover what evil is at play on the Island.

After breaking into the mansion Gariwald sends us to find 5 notes scattered around the rooms, which may give us a clue as to the enemies plans and who is behind the disappearance of the Penguin Band. The notes have messages written on them: "Its time. The life force is enough. When darkness falls, he will rise again to rule this haunted land. The living will tremble, and I will stand at his side." With each note containing a different haunting message, which hints at the return of a 'master' and that the Penguin Band have been taken to drain their life force.

After finding all five notes, we realise the plan is something to do with the tanks that are dotted around. However, it is too dark to see into them so we need to find the Ghost Goggles. To get them we need to find the keys to unlock the giant chest in the Foyer. Each key has a hint as to which room they are hidden in, and as we waddle around the mansion we find the tanks.

We now equip the Ghost Goggles, and looking into the tanks we can see the silhouettes of penguins inside them. Breaking the tanks to free the members of the Penguin Band from their demise, we then go through the hidden door to discover the terrifying truth.

The Wanderer was the villain behind all of the events after all and has successfully brought back his master, who is revealed to be Skip. Gariwald then sacrifices himself to save the Island from the evil hands of Skip, with a cut scene showing the finale.

Franky then thanked us for saving him and the other members, saying that they will be performing at the upcoming Fashion Festival this month. Gariwald will be now forever regarded as a hero for his actions. Alongside the main story there were also two side quests with Rookie and Cadence to complete as well as prizes to be won on the Spooky Spin (including the popular skeleton plushie) the festivities were endless!

The party wouldn't be complete without lots of mascot visits! This year we had visits from Rookie and Gary, with returning and new backgrounds. There were plenty of great moments with the community!

In our last recap for the Camp Penguin event, the poll was: Do you want to see interviews with people who worked on the events? and the majority of people voted yes! So welcome to the new segment 'Behind the Beak!'. This time we'll be interviewing Ninoo, who was the art director for the Halloween Party.

"-Sure! When I designed him last year, I wanted to design a type of character we never really got in Club penguin before. I thought it would be neat to give him personality in his design even if his face is partially covered by the hood: that's why I gave him glasses, white streaks and this mischievous but tired face. Since we've already got beards on penguins, I thought it would be a neat addition to have characters with stubble! I also imagined his design without the cloak last year (which isn’t the redesign we used for the Halloween event) just to imagine more about his personality. I like to think of him as someone really dedicated to his research since he would do anything to reach his goal and turns more and more tired and a bit insane. I thought it would be cool to have this kind of researcher/nerd vibe while being different to Gary. That’s probably why I draw him most of the time being annoyed or a bit malicious, he’s not inherently evil, but he’s twisted.

I also was thinking about characters I enjoy in other media. I saw a lot of people comparing him to Simon Petrikov or Jonathan Sims, which are characters that I like haha. I hope I’ll get the chance to design more characters in the future or bring back the Wanderer even if he’s kind of… out of the picture for now lol."

"To be honest I didn't know I'd be taking that role for the party, but I'm glad I got the chance to do it! I'm used to doing art direction on other projects (especially games) I'm working on but it's the first time I'm doing it on a fan-project such as New Club Penguin! It was interesting and I'd love to redo that if given the chance to do better."

"I think my favorite part was thinking about environmental storytelling? For example in the Ghost Lab, I changed the colors to make it match Skip, just to give a clue towards who The Wanderer was bringing back. I also wanted to scatter pages everywhere, so the player could understand the Wanderer was kind of going crazy about bringing his Master back.

I think what was challenging was making concessions, you have an ideal idea in mind of what would be the perfect thing but you can’t fully reach it. You have to scale it down while making sure to keep a certain global quality to make it match to what’s doable at this right moment. You can know what’s doable by taking count of your current skills, the time you need to allocate to learn new ones, taking care of your physical and mental health, and it’s even more true with New club penguin since it’s a project we all do on our free time and we all have obligations... Even if a part of me wishes I did more, I’m happy with the final result and on top of that, all the new things the team learned this month, such as our first ever original music & our first 3D character (Shoutout to the new 3D team!). We can definitely do even more memorable events with what we’ve learned and it was really wonderful to see everyone’s reaction to it! :)"

"If I’m being real, I talked about it to my roommates so much because I was just shocked by what I had to storyboard and draw. Gary is my favorite character so it makes sense I also like his family a lot, it was a bit heartbreaking haha. Also while drawing it I felt bad having my piece of Gary merch next to me, not nice sending his great uncle into the underworld.

But ehm… It was a bit fun to see people’s reaction to it and it was worth living the Gary plush judgmental stare."

Thank you for the interview Ninoo! We can't wait to see what you do next.

And finally, our poll this time is: Would you like to see the original music from this years Halloween Party on streaming services? (Spotify, Apple Music etc.) Answer below!

As always, we hope you enjoyed this years Halloween event, keep your eyes open for upcoming updates and the Fashion Festival! And if you haven't already, be sure to join our Discord Server and follow us on our socials to stay up to date with everything New Club Penguin.

Waddle On!

Amy