The Greatest Penguin Heist of All Time news & patch notes

Additions and Fixes

• Added color coding to stores to order and show items by status
• Forced Vulkan graphics on Linux because of incompatibilities with OpenGL that caused scenes to become invisible
• Added filter to only see open server (not password protected)

• Switched to DirectX 12 with DirectX 11 as fallback for old hardware
• Fixed Pongo City invisible walls
• Fixed Blizzard Speedway
• Fixed default graphics settings
• Fixed save system stability
• Fixed lighting in stores in Lobby

• Fixed and clarified weapon unlock och purchase
• Fixed Moonside gravity problems
• Fixed UI inconsistencies
• Fixed downed text not disappearing after being revived

NOOT NOOT!

Penguin Heist is out of Early Access! A big thanks and shout-out to everyone who has supported us during these years, you made this possible.

What's in the game now?

• 20 heists - each one with its unique theme and challenges

• 3 survival levels, a pizza baking level, and your trusty Penguin Village level

• 177 items ranging from a humble household items to a weapons of mass destruction

• 192 clothing items to fit your style

• 30 skins for your penguin

• Over 1.5 hours of music

• A full story from beginning to the very end

• Massively improved graphics and network performance

• A completely new UI-system

• Full controller support

• Almost complete Steam Deck support (we'll get it 100% working and verified soon)

We're going to be an high alert the coming time for bug reports, so don't hesitate to report anything out of the ordinary.

We wish you all happy nooting and shooting!

Noot noot, everyone!

Finally, after all these years we're releasing Penguin Heist. We've had to deal with terrible bugs, reworking large parts of the game, and ripping our hair out at the most stupid issues... but we're finally done.

What will happen to Penguin Heist now? We will fix any significant bugs for a while after release, then we'll continue on one of other projects lined up for the future. We've already been working on other things during the development of Penguin Heist, so it won't be long until we're releasing new things.

It's been a pain and a pleasure. All your nice words and playthroughs filled with laughter have all made the hair-ripping bug hunting and long work days much more bearable. The full release notes will be available on launch day.

See you later, Nootinator

Hey everyone!

We've been releasing some patches for the game before the big update, that will mark the end of Early Access. A lot of things have been improved, and soon we'll bring full controller support along with full Steam Deck compatibility. All of this is done in advance in small updates so we can be sure it will work on launch day.

Additions and Major Improvements

• New non-directional lightmapping and optimized packing to save memory (expensive these days) while looking pretty much the same. Also increased sample counts for higher quality.

• Better lightmap filters and compression to get rid of artifacts and seams.

• Pre-generated item icons that look better and make things run faster.

• New fog that blends with the outlines

Fixes

• Fixed fog not being visible.

• Fixed tutorial not being completable.

• Fixed slide visuals

• Fixing housing mode and property spawners

• Fixed some random floating particles

• Fixed some weapon visuals that had disappeared

• Fixed a ton of tiny other things

We'll be back soon with more updates, and soon enough the big update will arrive. Until then. we will have to noot on.

Noot noot!

Noot noot!

This is a preview patch of the next update, featuring a new networking system. This mainly changes how data is sent and processed. There's universal way of doing this, it all depends on the type of game, how fast things happen, and if you want to have reliable results (like for e-sports). We wanted to push this out before anything else, since there have been some connection issues.

Why another networking system? Unity and networking solutions evolve all the time and so does our knowledge of networking, and we want to do the best we can. We've found a networking solution that makes things much smoother and uses around a tenth of the data as before.

Apart from that, the two final levels are almost done along with the full soundtrack. These will be released soon, marking the end of Early Access.

See you there!

Fixes

• Upgraded Unity to comply with the latest security patches

• Improved pjysics networking for grabbing objetcs and penguins

• Fixed broken blueprints (firework)

• Fixed shop items not being available until reset

• Made enemies a bit more aware of their surrounding

• Fixed pop-up texts in Penguin Village

• Fixed some lighting issues caused by the switch to the new water

• Fixed daily challenges scaling issues on certain resolutions

• Fixed sliding UI

• Fixed missing pink textures in Penguin Village and for certain items (hacking pad)

• Fixed smoke bomb

• Fixed that the fairy attacking you and the fairy wand not dropping

• Fixed dancing mini-game

• Fixed clothes not resetting

• Fixed missing Pingizo statue

• Fixed lifting mini-game

• Fixed occlusion culling artifacts

• Removed some floating items in Penguin Village

Fixes

• Fixed lighting issues in Pumpkin Harvest, Pongton, and Et tu, Bingus

• Fixed not being able to toggle outlines off

• Fixed enemies could see through walls

• Fixed not being able to enter stores in Penguin Village

• Fixed killing off all pongies after end of round

• Fixed that exfil can freeze the game

• Fixed housing mode not opening on "H"-key

• Fixed underwater shader activating in the wrong places in Penguin Village

Fellow nooters!

The latest big update is here, meaning we're soon done with Early Access. It has taken a lot of time, but we felt it was necessary to get it right. Now we have the best and latest in networking, the penguin have been re-rigged, all procedural animations have been redone, and the UI has been remade as well, just to name a few. The game has been plauged by jank for quite some time, and this has finally been resolved. There's still some jank, but it won't ruin every playthrough like it sometimes did before.

One of the best things about this is that we can add pretty much any gamemode without worrying about how much it will break, as well as more advanced features, vehicles, you name it. We could have chosen to just release as is, but we just couldn't do it.

What's left now? The soundtrack and new sound effects are around the corner. Then we'll improve and add more vehicles to all the maps. Finally, we will release the final two story heists and perks. That will be it for Early Access.

Additions and Changes

• Completely redone all networking

• Remade penguin animations

• New and improved UI (that scales properly with most resolutions)

• Reworked all interactables (buttons, vehicles, etc.)

• Upgraded to Unity 6 with all rendering improvements

• Optimized rendering and lighting

• Optimized almost the whole codebase to make everything run as fast as it can

• New water shaders

• New explosion shaders

Fixes

• Fixed all the UI problems we had before with misalignments, messed up scaling, and interactions not working

• Fixed the graphics menu that was previously broken

• Tweaked audio streaming to reduce glitches and stutters when different sounds play

• Fixed UI scaling

• Fixed UI scaling when switching between resolutions

We will return soon with news and more updates for the game.

Noot noot!

We're a few days away from release of the latest update, and we'd like to check with you before release so that everything is in order. If you feel interested, head on over to the testing branch. You find it by right clicking on the game in your Steam Library, going into properties, and then betas. In the drop-down you select "testing branch".

This update is running on completely different systems, so all networking is new and we want to see that there are no weird issues popping up for anyone. If everything looks good by the weekend, we'll release the update on the main branch along with the annoucement.

We'll see you at the full annoucement soon!

Fixes

• Fixed outline smoothing - the lines are less jagged and the general intensity is more balanced
• Fixed switches not working for clients in multiplayer
• Fixed interactables not working after being downed
• Fixed lightmaps in The Nile
• Fixed white floating blocks in The Nile
• Fixed blacked out buttons in UI
• Improved multiplayer synchronization reliability

New Features and Major Changes

• Overhauled the rendering system and shaders to increase performance
• Optimized level geometry (FPS more than doubled in several levels)
• New outlines that are faster and look better
• New music player that switches between calm, area, combat, and boss music smoothly depending on the context
• Removed terrain foliage in favor of prefab foliage, which is what Goldflipper Base and onward has been using

Fixes

• Fixed (most) missing materials found in several levels
• Fixed tree leaves textures that weren't compatible with the outlines effect
• Fixed terrain textures on all levels to ensure smooth transitions
• Fixed uneven/impassable terrain in important areas of levels
• Fixed floating trees and bushes

Additions

• 4 new heists!
• Logging Camp: Infiltrate the main base of the Iron Flipper located upstream of a logging community
• Jade Mountain: Discover the secrets of the fish worshipping temple town located on islands in the air
• Wildest West: Transport a valueable train of aquanite from the mountains, through the western wastelands, into a swamp port by the sea
• Fish City: Infiltrate the this modern city
• 25 new items/Blueprints!
• A ton of new clothes and cosmetics :)

Fixes

• Updated terrain shaders to run much faster, resulting in significant performance boosts on all levels
• Fixed settings for realtime lighting for higher graphics settings and enabling realtime shadows
• Fixed a bug where some objects could not be interacted with
• Fixed some misbehaving items like the Radio
• Partly fixed occlusion culling issues (when your camera is very close to the ground or a wall, objects seem to dissapear)
• Fixed a lot of other tiny bugs

New Features

• Added a new Intro Cinematic!
• Added Billiards Mini-Game
• Added Minecart Mini-Game
• Added Soda Machines that sell soda!
• Added the ability to purchase pizza in Penguin Village
• Added an interior to Chef Panguino's Pizzeria
• Added Pongus Fresh (Soda)
• Added Pongus Sour (Soda)
• Added new stars to denote highest finished difficulty of a level
• Added markers for Main Story missions
• Added music to the Flower Village in Goldflipper
• Added visual effects while under the influence of drinks
• Added two new robber cosmetics, in honor of a certain penguin robber
• Added the ability to purchase clothes in Penguin Village (without leaving the level!)
• Added SEVEN (7) new houses / properties
• Added ghosts that will occasionally spawn at Old Castle
• Added the ability to pick up dropped drones

Fixes

• Fixed melee weapons occasionally swinging through the body
• Fixed the duration for which scaling effects take place
• Fixed the sun affecting interiors in Penguin Village
• Modified the region list to be shorter and removed duplicates
• Fixed some items not dropping when consumed
• Fixed the zooming tooltip not diplaying correctly
• Boosted the effect times of Pongus Cola, Dingus Soda, and Pongo Juice
• Removed the ability to move during the intro
• Reduced the risk of the AI freezing
• Fixed the camera position in Old Castle
• Made Old Castle a bit cozier
• Fixed the drone breaking in the hand
• Fixed the drone exploding occasionally removing a weapon from your loadout
• Fixed chat messages sometimes not displaying after being sent

Link to purchase: Link