Penko Park

Penko Park is a short, charming exploration game in the lineage of Pokémon Snap, set inside an abandoned wildlife park slowly being reclaimed by its strange inhabitants. You ride a vehicle along a fixed track through each area, but the photography itself is freeform — you control where the camera looks, when it fires, and how you respond to whatever moves into the frame. The creatures range from cute through unsettling, and the park has a tone that swings between welcoming and quietly haunted depending on which section you're rolling through.

The core loop is observational. Better shots — well-framed compositions, unusual poses, secret behaviours — score higher in the guidebook, which records each species you've documented and their various observed states. Interacting with the world is part of the toolkit: a grappling hand lets you pluck objects out of the environment, trigger reactions, and unlock new paths through the park. Hidden routes branch off the main track and reward thorough exploration with new species and additional photo opportunities.

Ghost-o-Vision unlocks partway through the game and adds a parallel layer of inhabitants who only appear when the camera is in the right mode — a spooky realm overlaid on the standard park, with its own photographable creatures and its own secrets. The art is hand-drawn and consistently appealing, the soundtrack carries a gentle melancholy beneath the cute surface, and the runtime is exactly as long as the central idea needs to land — which is part of what makes it work.