Penguins wander around your desktop and engage in activities such as reading and skateboarding!

Screenshot of WinPenguins 1.0 running on Windows 10

• WinPenguins runs on Windows 10 and Windows 11.

Download and run WinPenguins from the Microsoft Store here.

Alternatively, download a standalone WinPenguins executable for your platform here.

• Position the cursor or a window over a penguin to explode it.
• Position the cursor over balloons to pop them and cause the penguin to tumble!
• Use the arrow keys or WASD keys to change the direction of Skateboarder Penguins.
• WinPenguins creates a penguin icon in the Taskbar Notification Area (located at the right end of the Windows Taskbar).
  • Left click to access Settings.
  • To shutdown WinPenguins, right click to open the menu and click Exit.
  • To take a screenshot, right click to open the menu and click Screenshot...

• Fixed location of Explosion sprite when on edge of screen.
• Improved error handling.
• Small bug fixes.

• WinPenguins now works on Windows 10 and Windows 11! (In Windows 8 and above, Desktop Window Manager (DWM) is always enabled which broke older versions of WinPenguins)
• Added new Large penguins (Bitmaps from Xpenguins). Toggle between Small and Large penguins in Settings.
• Added new Super Penguin (Bitmap from Xpenguins).
• Penguins can now walk upside down and skateboard upside down! (New sprites)
• Penguins can now climb down and skateboard down. (New sprites)
• Created new bitmap sprites for Large Santa Walker penguin and Large Santa Climber penguin.
• Added new Exit animation for Walker penguins (Bitmap from Xpenguins).
• Created new bitmap masks for Skateboarder, Skateboarder Climber, Splat, and Exit sprites so they now work with Alpha blending.
• Penguins now fall in through the top of the screen rather than materializing out of thin air!
• Tumbling penguins can now transform into Skateboarder penguins on impact.
• Balloons are now only popped for Ballooner penguins when mouse is over balloons area of sprite.
• Smoother transitions between different penguin types.
• Added DPI scaling support.
• Fixed a bug where sometimes the splat animation could be offset to the left or right instead of being central.
• Fixed a bug where splat penguins would transform back to life on shutdown.
• Fixed a bug where penguins would sometimes splat when transitioning from a Climber to a Walker.
• Fixed a bug where Tumbling penguins would only turn left on landing.
• Fixed a bug where Reading penguins would read in mid-air in situations where there was no longer a window to sit on.
• Fixed a bug where penguins could transform into Santa penguins even with Santa penguins disabled.
• Fixed a bug where Climber and Skateboard Climber penguins would always tumble when hitting a top right corner.
• Fixed a bug where a falling penguin would tumble instead of climbing when hitting side of window.
• Fixed a bug where WinPenguins would sometimes not shutdown if a penguin was in the exploding state.
• Fixed a bug with balloons not popping on mouse over.
• Fixed a bug where screenshot would not be saved if the BMP bitmap file format was chosen.
• Fixed an issue with sound clipping when multiple sounds are played at once.
• Instead of drawing on the desktop window, penguins are now drawn on a new transparent overlay window.
• Migrated from ANSI to Unicode.
• Migrated to superior Pseudorandom Number Generator library.
• Removed winmon.dll dependency.
• Removed old unused code.
• Improved performance.
• Fixed lots of resource and memory leaks.

• Clone the respository (git clone https://github.com/ricky65/WinPenguins.git).

• Open the Visual Studio solution winpenguins.sln in the root.

• Run WinPenguins: Ctrl + F5 or Debug > Start Without Debugging menu.

• Debug WinPenguins: F5 or Debug > Start Debugging menu.

• For a default debug x64 build, the winpenguins.exe binary is located in \x64\Debug.

Thank you to Michael Vines for creating the original version of WinPenguins.

WinPenguins is a Windows API rewrite of the X-Windows application XPenguins. The XPenguins homepage is located at http://xpenguins.seul.org/, and was written by Robin Hogan.

The penguin images were taken from 'Pingus', a free lemmings clone for GNU/Linux (http://pingus.seul.org), and were designed by Joel Fauche.

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

WinPenguins is released under the GNU General Public License Version 2. See the file COPYING.txt for details.