Memory from the Past,  Mountains Monday

Club Penguin’s Puffle Bowling

January 11, 2021 /

For today’s Mountains Monday, I wanted to share one of the test mini-games from Club Penguin! These were games which never actually made it to the island, but they had a lot of development, and penguins could access it between 2011 and 2013 through a secret on the blog.

One of the most famous games developed was Puffle Bowling! The concept was quite simple: you’d use your mouse to dodge obstacles, a bit like Sled Racing, and at the end, you’d try to hit some bowling pins and knock them over. However, it was the idea of using puffles as a bowling ball which became quite…memorable.

  • Puffle Bowling
  • Wii Sports Bowling (inspiration)

Although it’s become fairly iconic within the community, very little has been known about the story behind it…until now! I was very fortunate to be able to speak with Aaron Hibberd, who developed the game.

Given it was released at a point where bowling on Wii Sports had been incredibly popular throughout the world, you might not be surprised to hear that was its inspiration! However, Aaron also kindly shared the story behind the game and its experimentation.

It was inspired by the bowling game in Wii Sports that came with my Nintendo Wii! It’s one of about 30 prototype games I made with this kind of art. I would just mess around making prototypes of my ideas, experimenting and doing the art myself, and then some of them were chosen to be developed into actual games

-Aaron Hibberd

There’s something really cool about the story behind these little, and somewhat silly, games which have become iconic throughout the community. I’d like to give a massive thank you to Aaron for taking the time to answer my question, and I hope that you enjoyed this post!

Waddle on!

-Torres 126

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