Chapter 10

Mini-games

Waddle Inn has games to play with other penguins: ice fishing, snowball fights, belly-slide races, bowling, snooker, a pub quiz, bingo, an ice die and a fish machine. Some of them pay a few Krill, and once in a while a little pile of Krill turns up on the floor of a public room.

Where to play

Every game is played with furni, and you’ll find all of it in the Games tab of the Shop. In a room of your own you can set up any of these games for your friends. The Inn’s own Krill prizes are only paid in its public rooms, though. Fishing is the exception, since you fish on your own: a fish pays wherever you catch it. In an igloo, the owner can put Krill on a game with a prize pot.

Playing with game furni

Click a piece of game furni and its info panel shows a button to play: Fish here, Roll, Pull the flipper, Bingo card, Grab snowballs, Bowl or Play snooker. Double-clicking the furni does the same. Your penguin walks up to it first, so you can click it from across the room.

Unlike lamps and other furni, game furni works for everyone, in any room. You don’t need build rights to play.

Fishing Hole

Snow Pile

Red Team Pad

Start Mat

Checkpoint Gate

Quiz Puffin

Bingo Board

Ice Die

Fish Machine

Bowling Lane

Snooker Table

Ice fishing

The Frozen Pond has three fishing holes cut into the ice, each with a stool next to it.

1. Click a Fishing Hole and then Fish here (or double-click the hole). Your penguin walks to the hole, sits down and casts a line. A red-and-white bobber floats in the water.
2. Wait. A bar at the bottom of the screen says Waiting for a bite….
3. When a fish bites, the bobber dips under and the bar shakes: A bite! Reel in! Now click Reel in (Space) or press Space, quickly.

If you strike in time, your catch appears on a card: the fish, its weight and the Krill it’s worth. Click the card to put it away. Strike too early, or wait too long, and The fish got away. Either way, your penguin casts again by itself. To stop fishing, just walk away.

What you can catch

Herring

Arctic Cod

Icefish

Golden Herring

Crystal Squid

Every kind of fish you’ve landed goes into the fish log on your profile card, with how many you’ve caught and your heaviest one. Landing one of the two rare catches earns you the Angler badge.

Snowball fight

The Snowball Arena has a red base on the left and a blue base on the right, each with two Team Pads and snow piles.

1. Pick a team. Walk onto a red or a blue Team Pad. A ring in your team’s colour appears under your penguin, and the game panel opens at the top of the screen with the score.
2. Grab snow. Once you’re on a team, click a Snow Pile and then Grab snowballs (or double-click it). Your penguin fills its flippers with five snowballs, shown in the game panel.
3. Throw. Click a penguin of the other team. Your snowball flies to where they’re standing or heading. You can throw up to seven tiles, about one snowball a second.

A penguin hit three times is splatted and slides back to their own team pad. That’s a point for the other team. The first team to 10 points wins, and every penguin on the winning team gets 5 Krill. A new fight starts a few seconds later.

To stop playing, click Leave in the game panel, or simply leave the room.

Belly-slide race

In the Belly Slide Run, penguins race round the room on their bellies.

1. Line up. Walk onto one of the Start Mats just behind the finish line by the door. The game panel counts down from 10. Every penguin standing on a start mat when it reaches zero is in the race.
2. Slide. Your penguin flops onto its belly and slides twice as fast as it walks. Click the floor to steer, just like walking.
3. Pass the gates in order. The game panel says which lap you’re on and which gate is next: Lap 1 of 3 · Slide through gate 1 of 3. Gates only count in number order, so a shortcut past gate 2 doesn’t help.
4. Cross the finish line after the last gate. That ends the lap, and you go round again through all the gates. The race in the Belly Slide Run is three laps; whoever crosses the line at the end of the last lap first wins.

Shiny Boost Ice makes you slide even faster. Its arrows show which way the track runs. Once the winner is home, the others have a minute to finish. If at least two penguins are in the race, the first three get 8, 4 and 2 Krill, and everyone in the room sees the results. Winning such a race (or a snowball fight, or a quiz question) in a public room earns you the Champion badge.

The quiz

A Quiz Puffin stands by the wall of the Herring Bar. A little while after you come in, it asks one of over 200 trivia questions (about penguins and the poles, animals, geography, science and space, numbers, food, music, books, history, sports or the inn itself) and asks another one every minute after that.

Type your answer in the chat box. Capital letters, accents and punctuation don’t matter, “the” or “a” in front is fine, a plural counts as well, and numbers can be digits or words (“10” or “ten”). The first penguin with a right answer wins 3 Krill. Halfway through, the puffin gives a hint; if nobody gets it, it tells you the answer. Watch the puffin: it waves a flipper while it asks, scratches its chin over a light bulb for the hint, jumps for joy in a shower of confetti when someone gets it right, and shrugs with a red X on its lectern when time runs out. A puffin switched off by the room’s owner dozes behind its lectern.

Bowling

The Krill Bowl is down the cellar stairs in the snow in front of the inn. It has four lanes, and you can buy a Bowling Lane for your own room too.

Click a lane and then Bowl. Your penguin steps up to the front of the lane and a game starts; the Bowling panel shows the score card. Other penguins can join by clicking Bowl on the same lane, up to four of you, until the second frame starts.

When it’s your turn, two bars swing back and forth:

1. Aim: a marker swings across the lane. Click Aim or press Space to stop it. A little off the middle, beside the head pin, is the pocket, where strikes come from. Straight at the head pin often leaves pins standing.
2. Power: a bar fills and empties. Click Roll! or press Space to stop it. The green band rolls truest; too soft or too hard and the ball wanders off your aim.

The ball rolls down the lane for everyone to see, and the pins it hits knock over others. You get two rolls per frame to knock all ten down. A game has five frames, and the last one gives you bonus rolls after a strike or a spare, like the tenth frame in real bowling. Scoring works as usual: a strike counts the next two rolls on top, a spare the next one.

You have 45 seconds for each roll; take longer and you’re out of the game. Leave takes you out too.

In the Krill Bowl, each strike pays 2 Krill and each spare 1. If two or more penguins played, the winner gets 5 more.

Snooker

The Krill Café has a snooker table by the door, and you can buy a Snooker Table for your own room too. A frame is played with six reds and the six colours, by two penguins, or by one on their own for practice.

Click the table and then Play snooker. The Snooker window opens with the table seen from above, and a frame starts. A second penguin takes the other cue the same way, any time before the first shot. Your penguin walks around the table to wherever the shot is played from.

To play a shot when it’s your turn:

1. Ball in hand: at the start, and after the cue ball goes down a pocket, you place it yourself. Click anywhere inside the half circle behind the line, the D. Changed your mind? Move the cue ball picks it up again.
2. Aim: point at the cloth. A line shows where the cue ball goes, a ghost ball where it meets the first ball, and a short line where that ball goes on.
3. Power: press and hold the mouse button. The gauge by the cue rises and falls; let go to strike.

The balls roll for everyone in the room to see, in the window and on the table in the room. The rules are the usual ones, and Rules under the table in the window sums them up with the value of each ball:

• First you have to hit a red. Pot one and it’s worth 1 point, and you play again, now on any colour: yellow 2, green 3, brown 4, blue 5, pink 6, black 7. A potted colour goes back on its spot, and it’s a red again.
• Once the reds are gone, the colours are potted in that order, yellow to black, and stay down.
• Missing the ball you’re on, hitting another ball first, potting the wrong ball or the cue ball (an in-off) is a foul. Your turn ends and your opponent gets at least 4 points, or the value of the ball involved if that’s more.
• When you don’t pot, it’s your opponent’s turn. The window shows who’s up, the ball on and your break.

You have 60 seconds for each shot. Let the time run out and it counts as a foul; twice in a row and you leave the table. Leave the table ends your frame, and after the first shot that means conceding it.

When the black goes down, the higher score wins the frame. In the Krill Café, winning a frame against someone pays 10 Krill; a frame won because the other penguin conceded pays nothing.

Bingo

A Bingo Board has to be started by someone with build rights in the room, usually the owner, by clicking Bingo card on it. Everyone in the room then gets a card with nine numbers between 1 and 30, and the Bingo window opens.

The board draws a number every few seconds. Numbers on your card light up as they’re drawn. When you have a full line (a row, a column or a diagonal), the BINGO! button lights up: click it, or shout bingo! in the chat. The first penguin to call it wins the round.

Penguins who arrive later can join a running round by clicking Bingo card on the board. Bingo pays no Krill of its own (only an igloo’s prize pot can); it’s for parties and room events.

The ice die and the fish machine

The Ice Die rolls a number from 1 to 6: click it and then Roll. The die tumbles and then announces who rolled what, so it’s handy for settling arguments and for your own room games.

The Fish Machine in the Disco Floe spins three reels of fish, krill, shells, ice cubes and the odd golden herring. Click it and then Pull the flipper. Three of a kind is a jackpot, and three golden herrings is a golden jackpot. It’s just for fun, though: the fish machine never takes or pays Krill.

The krill hunt

Every now and then, a little glittering pile of Krill appears on the floor of a busy public room. It doesn’t happen often, about once every twelve minutes while penguins are in the room, so keep your eyes open. The first penguin to walk onto it gets 1 to 3 Krill. If nobody notices it, it disappears after three minutes.