Hello and welcome to this long essay about why puffles are my favourite pet design in video games and how they literally changed my life as an artist. So before I start yapping I’ll divide this essay into a few topics:
Brief explanation of club penguin
Puffles and their first introduction
The journey
Puffle creatures
How puffles impacted my art and overall design choices
My relationship with CPPS and puffles
Closing thoughts

Brief explanation of club penguin
Club Penguin was a MMO game developed by New Horizon Interactive Studios released in 2005, in 2007 the game was bought by The Walt Disney Company. The gameplay was fairly simple, consisting of creating your own unique penguin character and roaming around the island, being able to play minigames and earning coins to buy new clothes and decorate your igloo, there was also a membership feature that allowed players to unlock extra features like more clothing and igloo options. Unfortunately Club Penguin was discontinued in 2017 so Disney could work on Club Penguin Island, a mobile and rebooted version of the original game (that was discontinued a year later, in 2018.).
Puffles and their first introduction
Puffles are native creatures of the island and were first introduced to the game in late November 2005, the first puffle ever seen in the game was the pink one, located in the snow forts.

They became adoptable in 2006, and introduced care dynamics that consisted of stat bars that the player had to maintain. If the user was inactive for too long or didn’t take proper care of the puffle, it would run away, leaving a postcard to its former owner.

There were 4 different puffles introduced when they first became adoptable, being the blue, pink, green and black, with future updates there were more puffles added to the game, adding up to 45 different puffles.
When I first started playing Club Penguin the puffles were probably my favourite thing and I made it my goal to obtain every puffle available in the game. This task I imposed on myself made my love for those creatures rise and the grind for every puffle ever became a serious thing for 7 year old me. I would be dreadful when I lost exclusive puffles events and would spend all my little kid brain on cool names for my favourite colours. Before the game shut down I ended up really close up with my objective, only missing the Blue Crystal and Alien puffle (I wasn’t playing the game that much when they came out, so I lost their events.).
The journey
‘The Journey’ started in 2012 and was the era where Club Penguin went through some design changes and between those changes, the iconic puffle design was revamped.
Honestly I didn’t play Club Penguin much before The Journey happened as I was pretty young, but still it had some impact on me. I used to play the DS game (Hebert’s Revenge) and it was a big part of my childhood so the old graphics are very dear to my heart, so when I started playing the usual Club Penguin the new look of it did catch me a bit of guard. But still I do think that both the designs post and pre the changes in The Journey are key elements of my childhood and my love for the game, so I really like both art styles and think they’re both iconic.
Puffle creatures
Alongside The Journey, the puffle creatures were introduced to the game in 2012, they were basically the same thing as regular puffles, but most were based on animals or fantasy beings. The puffle creatures played a HUGE role in my puffle obsession, specifically the dinosaurs puffles from the Prehistoric Party from 2014. This whole event changed my perception of life, and the addition of the puffle creatures was a whole game changer for me when I was a kid. I really loved it
How puffles impacted my art and overall design choices
Puffles were definitely my favourite pet I had in all of the video games I used to play, and this love for them really changed my views as an artist. Nowadays I really look forward to designing my characters for people to see them the same way I saw puffles back in 2013, simple yet extremely captivating and interesting. The colour palettes are probably one of the best features in puffles, and I really love adding vibrant colours to my artwork because of those silly creatures who probably have no brain cells (actually they do and are able to communicate but shhhh…) I really don't have a way of explaining everything that Club Penguin and puffles inspired in my current art but still I’m very glad they did!
My relationship with CPPS and puffles
The shutting down of the Club Penguin servers destroyed me so much, I wasn’t even an active player anymore but I still enjoyed logging in my account and waddling around the island. The waddle on party was actually one of the most heartbreaking events I participated in all my years of playing Club Penguin and I still cry nowadays seeing footage of the last few minutes in the official game server. In the present day there are a bunch of CPPS out there and I really like that the game legacy is still alive and I myself play on a few private servers. I guess younger me would be shocked that all her hard work in obtaining almost every single puffle got wasted in 2017, so nowadays I mostly play in those servers to play ice fishing to get money to buy new puffles. In a quick resume, years have passed and I’m still trying to reach the same goal as a 7 year old me.
Closing thoughts
My end thoughts in this essay are basically that I really had no notion on how much impact Club Penguin had on me and how grateful I am to have had a chance to play this game when I was younger. Basically, I really love Club Penguin. Waddle on!