If you ever talked to me about "my favorite games", I have mentioned Club Penguin, a Flash-made children MMO launched in 2005, sold to Disney in 2007 and closed forever in 2017. The idea was very simple: you create a cartoonish penguin as an avatar, got to a island full of snow, fun and regulated chat messages and had fun! Or, at least, moderated fun, if you couldn't have the paid membership at the time. Poor penguin cannot buy clothes with imaginary money because they can't pay real money too.

Even never being a paid member, I completely loved Club Penguin. Gabriel here was a rat of 2000s children MMOs and no one could get in my heart like CP did. For so many years, I logged in at least once a month to check the new items, parties and activities. In fact, I played a lot even past 2017, in a lot of private servers created and maintained by fans during the years. At least, until Disney started sending THE LITERAL POLICE to close down servers and making almost every one desist of the penguin dream.

I would love to play again, but I can't, so remembering is the best way to do it for now. And I can't remember about Club Penguin without time traveling to December 2008. The first non-English CP servers were being launched... in Brazilian Portuguese! I got an email from Disney Brasil's newsletter at the time, created an account and that's it. My first penguin was born, and I started my Club Penguin journey in Christmas Party 2008.

So, yeah, Club Penguin and Christmas are the same in my tiny brain. And the blog is mine, so my "holiday special" will be about my favorite part of the game: minigames! They were smaller games that you could play for coins, and they were well integrated to the bigger plot and scenario (instead of just having a page with them, like Neopets). At least, 50% of my CP playing time was just on them. Some were specially great, some were like a rotten hot sauce pizza.

I'm inviting you to a trip through penguin memory lane in a special, too personal Club Penguin minigame definitive ranking. I'm not counting minigames exclusive to timed parties (like the The Fair ones), console or mobile games (like the EPF duology or Game Day) or the Club Penguin app version (that I never used). Only common, always available minigames on the web version. As criteria, I'm just using my personal taste, really. You may have a different list, and that's fine. You're wrong, though.

31) Paint by Letters

To be fair, I just discovered that this game existed when looking at Club Penguin Wiki for writing this article. Apparently, Paint by Letters was a collection of three typing games in form of books at Coffee Shop's Book Room, where you type the story and, sometimes, choose what to type to change the plot. And maybe some small puzzles too?

This minigame was only available in the English servers in Club Penguin, probably because of the focus on language — translating it would be a nightmare. But I mostly played CP in Portuguese and the game doesn't even existed to me. So my ignorance about is what make it in the last place. Sorry :(

30) Card-Jitsu Snow

To be able to explain this one, I will need to advance some context about a game that is way higher in the list. All you need to know (for now): Card-Jitsu was a digital card game on Club Penguin with a ninja theme, where you compete head-to-head battles using colored cards and a rock-paper-scissors mechanic using 3 elements (fire, water and snow). Got it? Right, back to the worse game.

After the success of Card-Jitsu, CP staff wanted to expand on the ninja storyline and created three original "spin-offs", each one inspired by an element. Card-Jitsu Snow was the last one to be released (in 2013) and it's also one of the most strange minigames on Club Penguin.

Instead of a multiplayer competitive game that used the Card-Jitsu cards in different ways, they just created a way-too-simple tactical RPG — their own bad version of Fire Emblem! You started a level with other two penguins, each one in a role with different abilities, and then just attacked evil snowmen. The cards were only used as a charged final attack! IN A CARD GAME SPIN-OFF!

I was in my Club Penguin semi-hiatus when this released, but I remember looking at it and just not having fun at all. The battles were boring, the Card-Jitsu inspiration was only thematic and the game was way more resource-consuming than the rest of CP, my computer at the time just couldn't even run it properly.

It's a shame because they invested a lot on explain the Card-Jitsu lore, including the origin story of Sensei, the NPC responsible to bring the card game to the island in the first place (more about him later). There's even a true final boss! But with a mediocre game, I just ignored it. It happens.

29) DJ3K

Probably a lot of people have liked DJ3K way more than me, but it never got me mostly by its simplicity and lack of objective. Launched in 2008, it was the first Night Club minigame. You started it and got your penguin behind the DJ turntable in the club: when you pressed the buttons, sounds and music started to be played. You continue to press, the remix continued to happen, your penguin gets happy and you get coins. That's it.

It was fun for the first 10 minutes and than just became boring for me. If you were a member, you could record the songs and use them as the background music for your igloo, buy new records to use in the remixes and even bring your yellow puffle with you... But I wasn't, so just pressing buttons was not that cool.

28) SoundStudio

Well, at least they tried, right? The LAST game ever released on the original Club Penguin was SoundStudio, in 2014, as a replacement for DJ3K. The idea was the same, but instead of a skeuomorphic DJ turntable interface, SoundStudio was literally a digital drum pad with musical and CP samples. How you play was the same, but it was way better to understand how the music was being done.

The selling point of SoundStudio was the recording: instead of just listening in your own igloos, penguins could "publish" their tracks to a public queue, that would be used as the actual soundtrack for the Night Club room! Like, everyone there could listen to the songs created by other players, which was really nice and impossible to do in the early years of CP.

And then, they locked this feature (in-game and inside the standalone app) behind the paid membership. So the (teenager at this point) me couldn't even show my art to the world! So, yeah, if you get an OK game and even put it behind real money, I won't love it.

27) Card-Jitsu Fire

Do you want more penguin ninja lore? Snow was the last, but Card-Jitsu Fire was the first elemental spin-off, launched in 2009. In a concept way more in line of I was expecting from something derived from a card game, Fire was a board game! Your goal was to compete with other players for energy when walking in stones at a volcano. Card-Jitsu battles (using the cards) would determine if you gain or lose energy in each turn.

I love board games, right? So why this is so low at the list, you can ask me? From all the tabletop experiences already made in the history of humanity until 2009, why, in the name of sanity, THEY CHOSE TO CREATE A ROLL-AND-MOVE ONE? You got a number from a roulette, walk that amount of stones, play a card battle and hope to get energy. I tried to play it more during my time at private servers some years ago and I couldn't last 3 games. At least, the Club Penguin version of Monopoly is able to finish a match in less than a week.

As a personal note, I remember playing A LOT of Card-Jitsu Fire on the original island when I was a child. Like, it was boring and I didn't liked roll-and-move games at the time, so why I played it so much? Searching about it, I remembered: this game was member-only BESIDES TWO WEEKS IN 2011. During the Card-Jitsu Party 2011, the game was available for everyone. 15 days and it would be gone forever again.

So, I played ONLY CARD-JITSU FIRE (and Water) for 2 entire weeks in my life, trying to get all the exclusive items. Yes, it was made a open-for-everyone game in 2013, but who cares? A Club Penguin minigame gave me Stockholm syndrome and I don't know what to do with this information.

26) Sled Racing

One of the five original minigames in Club Penguin from 2005, Sled Racing was one of the games that were always there. You could go to the Ski Hill, choose a sled run, wait for more penguins to show up and compete! The game was a simple autorunner and your goal was just avoid obstacles to not stay behind it.

Like, there was nothing wrong with Sled Racing. It was always available for everyone, it was easy to find people to play with and it's really thematic with a snowy island full of penguins. But the game didn't have much substance after two or three races, the amount of coins you get was little... With so much cool games in the island, I just can't bothered to play it that much.

25) Dance Contest

Launched in 2009 to finally give Night Club a real minigame, Dance Contest was a pure and simple Dance Dance Revolution clone. Some colored arrows go up, you press them following the music and you get points! There was only 6 songs to choose, and half of them were member-only, so I could only play 3 of them (Epic Win was my favorite). Not only the songs, but only members had online multiplayer and purple puffles dancing with you.

Well, if it was just a DDR clone, why Dance Contest is the worst Club Penguin minigame? Some years ago, in a private server, as a Stepmania and DDR keyboard scholar that I am, decided to get the AAA grade in every song of the minigame. I even downloaded a software to remap my own keyboard and getting a Flash game recognize the patterns I used in other games. As the DDR person inside my friend group, I went directly to Expert difficulty.

And then, after the first song, I discovered that IN EXPERT, ALL THE ARROWS WERE COMPLETELY RANDOM. Not only the same song would have different maps (because the algorithm would choose them at random), but THEY NEVER FOLLOWED THE SONG BEAT. It's the ONLY THING a DDR clone needs to do: follow the fucking music! Of course, other difficulties had normal beatmaps, but I didn't knew at the time?! I don't know how they messed it up, but Dance Contest lost a LOT of positions because of that.

24) Find Four

Have you ever played a board game called Connect Four? It's a classic! You drop colored tokens in a vertically plastic grid, trying to get four of your pieces in a line to win. If you don't, you could just open Club Penguin and play Find Four in the Ski Lodge. It's literally the same game, and it's incredible how they got away with it.

Like, it's was fun, people seems to love it, but... yeah, it was only an old board game that I never played physically. There's another board game version in this list that I loved way more, so I hope to redeem myself soon.

23) Bits & Bolts

Are you ready for an arcade triple feature? Since 2005, Night Club's second floor had arcade machines with exclusive games (and, after 2011, it officially became the island's Arcade). I never really loved them, and I would ignore them even more after July 2010, when they LOCKED LEVELS behind the paid membership. Yes, everyone could play all the levels before, and now it's just for members. Top weird decisions of the CP team, if you ask me.

My least favorite of the trio was 2011's Bits & Bolts, the last arcade machine released in CP. The idea was being a math game, when you had a target number and you had to count how many bolts were in the tiles and click on them until you have the sum equal to the target. I made it look a boring Tetris-like? Because it was. At least, the visuals were really cute and nice (I love a good orange and blue palette well used).

22) Astro Barrier

Continuing the arcade journey, 2005's Astro Barrier has a really cool concept (specially for one of the first five minigames in CP history). It was inspired by old arcade shooters, but transformed as a puzzle that required forward thinking and precision. In each level, you had only one shot per target and if you successfully shot a target, it would freeze and becoming an obstacle to avoid further.

I think what didn't click for me was, essentially, the arcade vibe of it. Not visually, but the idea of losing all your lives and restarting from the beginning. Some levels were really hard and could be frustrating. But the staff at the time was thinking of it and blocked all but the first 10 levels to non-members, so I didn't had this problem anymore. And I also didn't played Astro Barrier anymore, but it was only a detail.

21) Thin Ice

The best Club Penguin arcade for me, though, was Thin Ice! Released in 2006 (and featuring the first CP original song composed by the legendary Chris Hendricks/Screenhog), your goal was to move a flaming black puffle through ice levels, melting the ice with each move. It was way inspired by those one-line puzzles, when you have to find a path that can go through all the board without repeating a tile or getting stuck.

Two things made this game so far in the ranking, one is the already mentioned decision to lock 50% of the game behind a paid membership — I really loved playing Thin Ice so it was a bit of a bummer to me. The other thing was the really open levels, that just consisted of moving the puffle in a big square for so much longer that it needed, and then discover you messed up. Not great, but in good stages, it was a blast.

(Someone needed to do a spiritual successor to Thin Ice. Maybe I can do that...?)

20) Catchin' Waves

Not even the best surfing game on Club Penguin, Catchin' Waves was released on 2007 and became the great attraction of the Cove until the closing. You get a surfboard and go surf through waves, doing tricks and just surviving. There was a tutorial mode, a freestyle arcade mode and other, more difficult modes that asks for more control of the penguin.

I understand why the game exists, surfing is cool and radical, and we are cool children! But the execution was not very good: the controls were always strange to me, they didn't make sense and were way too slippery. It was never my choice to play during my time online, and I didn't even care too much when they also locked half of the game behind the paid membership. Nice.

19) Puffle Roundup

Puffle Roundup was always one of the most strange minigames for me. It was released in 2005, during the first year of Club Penguin, and then it looked like a first-year activity forever. Your goal was to push puffles into a pen using the mouse, while the pets run away from the cursor in a chaotic way. If you get all of the them until the time goes out, you win and start a new level.

I played it some times even after years of Club Penguin, but it's so fun to be just a simple game, with simpler graphics, in a platform that tried to be bigger each year. They even updated it with new puffle colors when they were released! Not an incredible game, but it was for me like a small piece of history in an avalanche of change.

18) Jet Pack Adventure

I don't like it that much, but I can't deny how iconic Jet Pack Adventure is to Club Penguin. Launched in 2006, your goal was to get a jet pack at the top of the Beacon and use it to travel until the Mine, at the other side of the island, getting coins in the process. Avoiding all the obstacles was the real challenge and the reason why I failed it so much.

It wasn't one of my favorites (I prefer the DS version because of the touch controls) and they also blocked FOUR LEVELS OUT OF FIVE behind the paid membership in 2010... but it was interesting and fitted well with Club Penguin's vibe and lore. I always loved that you lose the game before the ending, you came back to the game in the room you were flying over.

17) Puffle Rescue

The first on a new trilogy of "puffle minigames", Puffle Rescue was launched in 2010 and could be found inside the Mine. The basis of it is being a Frogger semi-clone: you navigate grid-like mazes, dodging obstacles and trying to get to the puffles at the other side to rescue them. Three modes existed (but two of them were members-only): rescuing blue puffles in frozen water, pink puffles inside dangerous caves and black puffles underwater, at risk of drowning. At least, this time, they don't removed free content: pink and black levels were always paid.

I remember fondly how Puffle Rescue was the first Club Penguin thing that couldn't run well in my old computer at the time (just like Card-Jitsu Snow). They were starting the "next generation" at the time, that would implicate in a totally art style in the next years. This minigame was the first that I remember looking and having a strange feeling about it because of more modernized (and less Flash) visuals.

About the game, the free levels were fine. I don't love the Frogger mechanic, but it worked well with the rescuing theme. And you could unlock a secret room during the game, so, it was a nice touch.

16) Hydro Hopper

Our third original CP game in this list, Hydro Hopper is way older than even the first Club Penguin prototypes ever created. According to the Club Penguin Wiki, it was the first Flash game ever made by Lance Priebe (CP's co-founder), that named it originally as Ballistic Biscuit, a way funnier title! Your goal is to maintain your penguin being pushed by a motorboat, avoiding increasing obstacles by moving and jumping with the mouse.

Just like Puffle Roundup, it's easy to know how old the game was, even looking nowadays. The Flash sketchy graphics, the simplicity of the gameplay, the silly jokes between levels... It wasn't bad, I don't played it that often, but ended up being overshadowed by a whole list of more interesting experiences that came after it.

15) Card-Jitsu Water

To finish the Card-Jitsu spin-off trilogy, let's talk about my favorite of the bunch: Card-Jitsu Water, released in 2010. Mixing the board game motif from Fire and the video game inspiration we would see fully in Snow, Water is a real-time race tabletop-like game. Stone tiles with elemental obstacles would be floating down a waterfall, and the goal was to use Card-Jitsu cards to remove the obstacles and be the last penguin standing (or the first to play the gongo).

Besides the more demanding graphics, this game was fun! Maybe it was just the Stockholm syndrome attacking again (I also played this a lot in that 2011 party), but the concept of actually using the cards for something new made sense. The idea of having the game on a waterfall was well used too, instead of being just a thematic background. I wish the interaction between players were more easy to plan, but it was, easily, the best ninja game after the original Card-Jitsu.

Though, it was only for members for a long time and I would have got more nostalgia for it without this limitation. So, 15th is a good place for it.

14) Spy Drills

The only thing more epic than ninjas in Club Penguin are secret agents. If you are familiar with post-2010 CP, you can remember the Elite Penguin Force (EPF), the current special agency responsible to protect the island and keep it safe. Although it was created for a Nintendo DS game two years prior, they became an integral part of the main game, including their own minigames!

Originally, EPF agents could participate in an activity called Field-Ops. Each week, they would receive a message in their spy phones, hinting a particular location in an actual Club Penguin room. When their penguin found the place, the phone would react and unlock a sci-fi, hacking-like microgame. Winning the game would gave resources for unlocking secret agent clothes and items. For lore reasons, the Field-Ops ended in late 2012.

Then, in the next year, they came back from the dead in the form of an actual minigame at the EPF Command Room: Spy Drills! Instead of the weekly location hunt, all the microgames were now available in only one interface, like a common Club Penguin minigame. You could choose one to train it, or go to a Challenge, trying to beat three in a row without failing.

I made them sound way cooler than they really was... Some of them were actually interesting, like The Navigator — that asks you to program commands to beat a maze — or Code Break — a simple but competent Mastermind clone. But at the same time, you have a memory game, a mathematical angle quiz, a rhythmic Simon Says and other simple things. I liked it more as Field-Ops than Spy Drills itself, but I like the recycling process! Content is content, you know?

13) Treasure Hunt

Remember when I said that party minigames would not be in the list? Treasure Hunt is the exception to the rule, because it was just available during some parts of the year since 2008. Specifically, this game was played in the Captain's Quarters of the Migrator, the pirate ship commanded by Rockhopper, one of the most important NPCs in Club Penguin. He would dock in the island multiple times a year (mostly during parties), bringing exclusive items and this minigame!

Treasure Hunt was a 2-player, cooperative board game about dig treasures in a grid covered by sand. A player would only uncover rows in the grid and the other player, only columns. The whole thing about the game is that each grid space had TWO layers of sand; i.e. a thing could only be fully found if both players coordinate their actions to uncover the same square.

The most common treasures were 1x1 simple coins, but 2x2 rubies (and even emeralds) could be also found. The players needed to pay attention to shiny symbols when uncovering the first sand layer: this would indicate something was there, at least a coin. In Christmas, they even changed the game visuals, swapping sand by snow and the treasures by holiday candies and ornaments.

I always liked to play some games of Treasure Hunt, probably because of its sporadic nature and being always a "new" thing to try during an event. But there wasn't a lot of coins to get from it, and the game was heavily based on luck and your partner's moves, so it was easy to get bad games just because you (or worse, the other person) tried the wrong lines.

12) Mancala

Now we got to games that I really liked to play in Club Penguin and I miss every time I remember of my beloved island. And, yes, I loved to play Mancala in the Book Room back in the day. Giving you the context that I didn't have at the time, mancala is, actually, a really old game. Like, history date the first mancala boards to 700 AD's East Africa. Although variations and variations of the game are part of cultures around the world, Brazil was not one of those countries... so I discovered this ancient game through a Flash children MMO.

It is, indeed, a fun game! Most of the versions (including CP's Mancala) is played by two people competitively, moving their pieces in a circular board, trying to capture more pieces than the opponent. The key mechanic of a mancala game (and used in a lot of modern board games) is sewing: you get all the pieces on a space in your side of the board and start distributing then in the next spaces in order, one at a time. Depending where you place the last piece, you can do different actions, like capturing.

Mancala was one of the five first games on Club Penguin and I'm really glad they put it in. If they have chosen any other classic game, like checkers or chess, I would probably have ignored it for years. But when they can introduce a child to a special part of another culture inside a cartoon penguin simulator, it has a great impact.

11) Smoothie Smash

Smoothie Smash was one of the games that I liked to play, but couldn't play much at the time. Released in 2012 at the Coffee Shop, it was the last minigame truly original to be introduced in the original Club Penguin (after that, we only had an EPF game, a ninja game and SoundStudio). The concept here was to create smoothies bouncing with your penguin butt in fruits that were passing in a conveyor belt. At the bottom of the screen, a customer would show what fruits you needed to "smash" and in what order to increase your combo. Even a survival mode with obstacles was available.

First, I need to recognize that ALL THE EXPERIENCE HERE WAS FREE. It was the ONLY GAME in years to be released with all content for free and paid members, and it was just cool. Thank you, gang! Second, it was also one of the newest games, so my computer couldn't handle it very well... In a mechanic of rapid thinking and combos, it wasn't a good match.

But I played Smoothie Smash some years ago in private servers and it was genuinely fun. Trying to find the next fruit to bounce without losing the combo, trying to catch extra time, it was a blast! I would love to see this concept revisited by someone, including new mechanics in the mix (!) to make the experience more interesting after some time.

10) System Defender

At the time, I could imagine a lot of ideas for the first, exclusive EPF minigame... but I could never guess it was a tower defense. System Defender was launched in 2011 as the first storyline in EPF in-game lore, and could only be accessed in the EPF Command Room by secret agents. The idea was to simulate a defense system for the agency computers, using an almost cyberpunk aesthetic. In each level, your goal was help EPF agents to destroy bots that are trying to corrupt the EPF Mainframe using special tech cannons.

The best way I can describe System Defender is "your first tower defense game". You only had three types of cannons/"towers", three types of enemies and the bosses were just bigger robots. Energy was the main (and only) resource that could be used to build new cannons or pay high for a upgrade cog. They were even color-coded to help understand the synergy: the red cannon/robot had average stats, the yellow ones were faster and the purple ones were slow (but more powerful).

I really liked to play this game back in the day, even with half of the levels behind the paid membership. Secret agent things were my favorite at Club Penguin, and having the characters talking and discussing the attacks during the matches was the cherry at the top. My only problem is my completely incapacity of playing tower defense games, so I didn't finished most of the levels.

09) Aqua Grabber

Launched in 2008 in a event to rescue the parts of Rockhopper's ship when it collided with an iceberg, Aqua Grabber is, to me, one of the most complete mini-games in Club Penguin. Your goal is to use a submarine to navigate the seas under the island to get treasures, controlling the air inside it. Although a lot of levels were planned, only two were actually released (and one of them was also money-blocked in the 2010), what is a shame, because it had a lot of potential.

The exploration factor of Aqua Grabber was the best for me, with different objectives and ways to explore the same level. The gameplay was simple, but the controls were well made. I remember trying for hours to get a secret bigger fish in one of the levels, because you needed to get a secret bait, and then get a smaller fish, and then try to "catch" the big fish. Even for not-secret goals, there was some puzzles involved. I really wanted more of Aqua Grabber...

08) Pufflescape

In 2011 (at the middle of my CP frenzy as a child), they started a Beta Team feature in Club Penguin's website. The idea was to test features and minigames in a prototype phase together with the community. I played most of them at the time, and the only one I could remember of liking was Rollerscape, a puzzle-platformer featuring the recent discovered white puffles. Your goal was to control it inside a rolling ball to get all the berries in a ice maze. You could even use the mouse to open/close obstacles, or use the puffle to push boxes and open new paths.

Well, this was the ONLY thing that was actually was put in the game coming from the beta features! Now renamed Pufflescape (and part of the "puffle trilogy") and featuring any of the player's puffles if they wanted, it was really fun! The extra levels were only available for paid members, but I played them on private servers over the years and they had cool designs too. Some of them needed more polish, but for a CP minigame, they found a formula that worked. Another one that I could get a spiritual successor easily.

07) Card-Jitsu

And the end of our ninja journey is the beginning. Released in 2008 and making everyone really cares for the not-secret-anymore Dojo, the original Card-Jitsu was a 2-player competitive card game inside (and outside) Club Penguin. As I mentioned, during the turn, each player would choose a card with an element and a power value, and they would win or lose in a rock-paper-scissors fashion: fire melts snow, snow freezes water, water puts out fire.

What makes it for me more interesting than your more common trumps games is how you would win a game of Card-Jitsu. Instead of just winning a certain number of turns, each card also had a border color. To win, you needed to get three cards of the same element or one card of each element, but IN DIFFERENT BORDER COLORS. It wasn't the greatest strategic game ever made, but this detail helped to allow interesting decisions instead of just playing your powerful card in hand every turn.

Power Cards also were an important part of Card-Jitsu: they were really powerful, had original, exclusive animations and rules that affected the game, like blocking an element in the next turn, or making lower values win elemental ties (instead of higher). The only problem here is how you unlocked new cards during some years: you needed to buy actual, physical Card-Jitsu collection cards and use codes to unlock their digital versions. It was a little frustrating to play against an American child with money and see their collection of Power Cards...

Even with all that, Card-Jitsu was really fun! The progression in your "ninja journey", getting colored belts like some real martial arts, was engaging and a cool way to show your mastery to other penguins. To became a real ninja, you needed to beat the CPU in the form of Sensei, a really hard card duel. It was so successful that I understand why three spin-offs were released after that.

06) Cart Surfer

Now THIS is the best surfing activity in Club Penguin. Forget the water and go to the Mine, because Cart Surfer was always fun. Your penguin just go on a cart mine and your goal is to do a lot of tricks to get points, combos and coins. Released in 2006, it felt as a simple game (because it was), but has all the things that made Flash games addicting in the first place.

It had a easy game loop to understand, and less courageous people could just turn and finish the game without going after a lot of tricks. But understanding the 10+ tricks available, when do them to maximize the points and not crashing at the same time... uh, it was good! My favorite was Cart Grind, that you could do instead of turning. Simple, but effective: Cart Surfer deserves a spiritual successor too.

05) Bean Counters

Our top five starts again in the Coffee Shop for the last Club Penguin original game for the list. Bean Counters released in 2005 as an action-focused minigame, where your goal was to catch coffee bean bags being launched from a truck and stack them to restock the shop.

Of course, anvils, fishes and other strange obstacles would also be launched and needed to be avoided. If you stack a lot of bags in your penguin without unload them in the shop, you would also lose a life.

Just like Cart Surfer, it had this Flash game vibes with a simple gameplay and visuals, but it was really well executed. Using the mouse to move the penguin made it respond well in harder levels, when they are so much things at the screen. And I would love to have this same mechanic in a more intricate game, with more challenge instead of just catching the same bag...

...BUT WE HAVE. Bean Counters is one of the two only minigames in Club Penguin to have a "candy secret variant", activated finding a special button in the title screen. Introduced in 2011, Jellybean Counters have the bags full of colored jellybeans instead of coffee. Instead of just stacking them, you have to pay attention to the right colors too! Putting the wrong jellybeans in the stack would make you lose a life. This version was not that accessible (for colorblind people), but it was my preferred way to play.

04) Pizzatron 3000

Name a more iconic Club Penguin minigame than Pizzatron 3000. I'm not gonna wait because you can't name a more iconic CP activity. The heart of Pizza Parlor since 2007, this was always a blast to play (and SO HARD OH MY GOD). Empty pizzas were passing through a conveyor belt and you had to run with your mouse putting all the toppings correctly, following the recipe at the top.

It's hard to explain why this minigame was so cool, because it is a little too simple in concept. But after the 10th pizza, the belt starts to accelerate and you just ignore everything around you to get five squids and hot sauce in some seconds. It was really hard to finish everything without mistakes, but the fun is to try. Doing no mistakes would reward tips and more coins at the end.

But even harder is the Candytron 3000, the another CP's secret candy variation (in fact, this one came first). Activated in a hidden lever in the title screen, the machine starts making sweet pizzas, with chocolate, marshmallows and jelly beans. It was faster, but more rewarding. I never did a perfect game on the candy mode, however. One day, wko knows?

03) Puffle Launch

I know that I've been harsh about minigames with content locked behind the paid membership... but Puffle Launch was too cool to not be in the top 3. Launched in 2011, it's our last game of the "puffle trilogy" and one of the best ever made on Club Penguin. A red puffle want to recover all the berries stolen by Klutzy the Crab and is going fully radical to it: using cannons!

The easy way to explain is imagining a level full of those Donkey Kong Country barrels (that launch you in a direction), but with free air movement! When flying, you can change the trajectory of the red puffle, so you can do a lot of cool tricks bouncing in the obstacles. There's no place in a level you cannot reach with enough momentum and control mastery. And they know it, because there are a lot of berries on stupid locations, outside the main path.

To me, Puffle Launch is one of the only Club Penguin minigames that could be its own game and be an amazing package. Yes, it's foreshadowing again, because the game was released as the first CP mobile app later that year. In fact, that's how I started to love it! In 2022, I found an APK to the (now delisted) app and mastered it. It was an literal blast and I just wanted to play more.

(Someone MUST do a spiritual successor to Puffle Launch. Maybe I have to do that...?)

02) PSA Secret Missions

If I need to chose one thing to prove how fun and incredible was the secret agent content in Club Penguin, this (not mini)game would be it. Way before the EPF, there was the PSA, the Penguin Secret Agency. As old as the island itself, penguins could enlist to be a special agent and maintain the order. But, in 2006, everything change with the launch of the first PSA Secret Mission.

Instead of in-game events with little puzzles like the EPF had years after, all the PSA Secret Missions were point-and-click games! Looking into rooms, searching for items, solving puzzles, talking to other characters: Club Penguin did its own Monkey Island, in a smaller scale, of course. The agents even had their secret way of communicate in the form of the Tic-Tac-Toe Code, also used for puzzles during the missions.

Because of the heavy focus on story and plot of the genre, the lore behind the PSA and its agents were, for a lot of time, the most detailed part of Club Penguin. It was the first time we would be introduced to iconic characters, like the PSA scientist Gary the Gadget Guy — and even CP's own great evil, Herbert P. Bear, a polar bear destined to destroy the island at any costs.

Ten missions were released from 2006 to 2008, mostly focusing them on your start as a secret agent and the first attacks from Herbert. In 2010, the awaited Mission 11 was released as "The Veggie Villain", that resulted in a big impact in-game. No spoilers, but this was the last mission of the PSA, and after that, the EPF assumed the role of island protectors.

Those missions were so different and well made they even inspired two Nintendo DS games made in the Club Penguin franchise. The second one, Club Penguin: Elite Penguin Force: Herbert's Revenge, was literally based on the PSA missions: more than half of the game are just ports of the original PSA missions. I always find that really lame, but now, with the original CP popped out of existence, it's probably the most accessible way to try them.

01) Ice Fishing

Remember when I said this list was deeply personal? The PSA Missions were, by far, the coolest minigame in Club Penguin history... but if there is one that I played more than any others, it's Ice Fishing. Released in 2006 for the Ski Lodge, it was my favorite CP minigame and I even can't explain why!

Your goal was really simple: just fish. You could move your mouse up and down to catch the fish with your hook, and then click outside the water to remove the prey. Obstacles would appear to make you lose baits (your lives), and they would keep coming during 5 levels of difficulty. At the end, if you were smart, you could use a normal fish as bait for Mullet, the big boy!

It had that Flash game vibe so right, and it was so responsive to play. After some years playing it, I could do a lot of almost "tricks" with the line, catching a lot of the fish in situations that seemed impossible. In 2008, a members-only special fishing pole could be acquired, and harder gray fish would also appear. Fortunately, in my private server years, I could also play with them, and I love it. Ice Fishing is just so cool, and I would pay for a game that replicate that same feeling nowadays.

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There was a lot, huh? If you played Club Penguin at some point in your life, I hope to have helped you navigate in memories, remembering the cool times in that loved island. And if you never played CP in your life and just read until here out of pure morbid curiosity... it's impressive and scary how much content a 2000s Flash online game for children could have, right?

I will talk more about CP in the future (because I miss it so much), but that's it for now. Happy Christmas for you, your family and our penguins. Waddle on!