Penguin Fury Review: An Update Made Me Like It Even More

How we played: I played Penguin Fury on a Windows 11 PC (Intel Core i9 14th gen, 48GB of RAM, Nvidia RTX 4060) in two sessions: a pre-release build on Oct. 10, 2026, for our hands-on preview, and an updated pre-release build on Nov. 5. Steam logs 2.4 hours of play across both. The developer, exklusiva, provided the Steam key and did not see this review before publication. Every gameplay screenshot is from the Nov. 5 session.

When I first played Penguin Fury in October, it beat me 27 times in under two hours, and the furthest I got was the third wave. When I came back to an updated build on Nov. 5, I still lost every run, but something had changed. The penguins the shop offered me hit harder, the deadly red circles gave me time to step out of them, and in my best run I reached round 4.

I enjoyed it more than I did a month ago, and that is the short version of this review. For anyone new to it, Penguin Fury is a roguelite auto-battler from exklusiva, a solo developer, and it launches on Steam on Nov. 6, 2026. You recruit a squad of penguins, they fight waves of seals on their own, and your job is to choose who to hire, which upgrades to take and how to spend your fish between rounds. When a run ends, you start again, a little stronger than before.

A month later, the game plays fairer

The biggest difference between my two sessions was the quality of the penguins on offer. In October, the random picks often felt weak. On Nov. 5, the shop kept handing me penguins with strong attacks. One of them bit straight through a seal and then bounced into the next one at an angle.

The red seals’ spears changed, too. In October, they marked red zones on the ground that ended my run if I stood in one, and they appeared so fast that getting out was hard. In the updated build, those red circles formed more slowly, which gave me a moment to move.

Steam had no patch notes for these changes when I checked on Nov. 6, so they come from my own play rather than an official list. The numbers from my two sessions point the same way.

The update also made the shop easier to read. In my preview, I wrote that pointing at a penguin made it wiggle but showed no stats, so I learned each role by trial and error.

After reading that, the developer told us our feedback had already changed how the shop shows information about each penguin. On Nov. 5, the game showed a panel with a penguin’s health, speed, damage per second, attack speed and traits, such as “marksman” and “gunner.” It is a small change, but it made my choices feel deliberate rather than lucky.

Builds that snowball

Those clearer choices matter, because once the squad is working, Penguin Fury becomes a game of stacking bonuses. Leveling up offers three upgrades, such as 12% more penguin damage, 10% more critical chance or 6% dodge, and some level-ups include items like Krill Oil, which adds 10% penguin damage. Class counters on the right of the screen, such as “athlete 3/4,” track how many of each type you have fielded.

On top of that sit Arcana cards, which change the whole run. In one run I was offered Iron Hide (two extra max HP but 8% less dodge), Pummeling Whetstone (30% more penguin damage for the whole run) and Bloomtide Feast (two extra fish per pickup and a wider pickup range).

Jokers, which you buy with fish, add the big multipliers on top: First Blood, Cold Snap, and Apex Era, which promises 25% more team damage if you own any Era 5 penguin.

When those pieces line up, the game takes off. My best run on Nov. 5 lasted 1 minute and 38 seconds, scored 83 kills and reached a 22x combo, with a penguin called the Ripper doing 1,112 damage on its own. The end screen even gave that run a label, Icarus, with the note “22x combo, then fell.”

Losing still pays

That run still ended on the “You Died” screen, like every run I have played, and Penguin Fury makes that screen worth reading. It shows how long you survived, your kills, your best combo, which penguins did the damage and even a “corpse flight” distance (my record is 15 meters).

Every death pays out KrillCoin for permanent upgrades, and the game has an achievement for dying 25 times, called Persistent, which unlocked during this session and paid 45 KrillCoin of its own.

Losing that often is also the one thing that could put some players off. After 2.4 hours across two builds, I have not won a run. The updated build is clearly kinder, but Penguin Fury still asks you to lose a lot before it lets you win. If you want a roguelite that hands you an early victory, this is not it.

Verdict

Penguin Fury does what the best roguelites do: it makes “one more run” feel like a reasonable decision at any hour. The penguins have charm, the build systems are deep for a game this size, and the updated build answers two of my October frustrations: the shop now shows penguin stats, and the red zones are easier to escape. The difficulty is still steep, but it now feels fair.

The game costs $5.99, and the developer says it will be 20% off for its first two weeks, according to a Nov. 1 post on the game’s Steam page. At that price, it is easy to recommend.

How we test: our hardware, the “How we played” box and how we measure PC performance are explained on our How We Test page.