Welcome back to Behind the Journey, where we peel back the curtain and let you in on how some of Club Penguin Journey’s wildest parties come to life.
This time, we’re diving deep into one of the most chaotic, creative, and, well, foolish parties we’ve ever made. April Fools 2025. From the earliest concept meetings to the final polish, here’s how we built an interdimensional network of doors, disasters, and doodles.
It All Started with a Door
We had several different ideas when it came to April Fools 2025, but our team voted and landed on “Doors” as our main theme for the year. We wanted to go big!
So, our team laid out a plan:
“After settling on door portals being the main gimmick, planning for this party started with a long voice chat where we crunched out ideas together, roughly marking out each door, their connection points, and their corresponding effect on their respective room.
Effects on each room could be either environmental (ex: a door sitting in the water in the Beach would end up flooding the Plaza), from in-universe penguins interacting with and making the best of their strange situation (ex: utilizing the spotlight from the Night Club in the Town to start a concert in the Lighthouse), or incidental (ex: the door to the roof in the Gift Shop Office was planned to lead to the roof of the Ski Lodge, where you could overlook the Ski Village).
In addition to these rough concepts, the design team was given free reign to change rooms and incorporate gags however they pleased, provided they communicated with others whose room their own was connected to. Definitely one of the more intensive party planning sessions.”
Room Design Sketches
Each of these rooms was carefully crafted. Below are some rough sketches and personal insights from the designers themselves.
The Dock
“My first room, The Dock! This was a very simple idea, I wanted to reverse the Dock, and have it at an angle you typically don’t see it.
One of the more fascinating things about the original game’s PSA missions is seeing the literal fourth walls that we normally don’t see with Club Penguin’s top-down view. It’s weird to think that there’s a whole other side we don’t see.
I took a lot of reference from the PSA’s Dock, and tried to get it to look as accurate as possible. I hope you guys enjoy it! It still throws me for a loop myself.”
The Book Room
“The book room and coffee shop were my first ever rooms and I ran into a lot of challenges. This is what the book room was suppose to look like and be themed as ‘Rookie’s coloring room’ — that’s why the walls are sloppily painted white.
The easel didn’t make it into the final cut due to some issue developing it at an angle, which was unfortunate, but I’m happy I get to show what the room was suppose to look like.
Fun fact, this room is cursed and I almost had to completely restart it. The Rookie Doodle was the last thing I did, and because of the brush I used to draw Rookie it created thousands of symbols. I couldn’t figure out why the program was lagging so much, so I sent it over to the other designers and anyone that tried to open this file crashed their program or computer.
I was determined to save this room and it took me hours to convert this small Rookie drawing down to ONE symbol.
Lesson learned: Rookie’s power is unmatched.”
The Coffee Shop
“My original idea for the Coffee Shop was to theme it like Rookie’s Coffee shop, but due to the setback he caused in the Book Room I had to rethink it.
Now, I’ve seen how crazy you guys go over tables. The coffee shop bean bags? You guys loved those. But the PLAZA TABLES? Oh boy you guys were passionate about those.
So when thinking about a new idea for the Coffee Shop I thought ‘Well these guys love their casual seating, I’m gonna give them SO MUCH casual seating.’
I loved seeing everyone sitting in the coffee shop during the party and ordering their coffee.”
Here are a few other sketches of rooms that our team wanted to share with you:
Mascots: Rookie and Guy
Who’s this? Where did Jet Pack Guy go? What’s happening?
Following in previous year’s fashion, we wanted to bring a different mascot to April Fools. Many ideas were thrown before we got to… just taking Jet Pack Guy’s Jet Pack away and making him sad and concerned about it. ‘Jet Pack’ is literally in his name! What is he gonna do without it?
This led to an entire mascot arc throughout the party where Rookie and Guy teamed up to find the missing jet pack.
“During one meet, Rookie and Guy were trying to play Mancala together, but on the Mascot’s side of things, it looked like we had double the pieces. On the spectator’s end, everything seemed normal. Quite an oddity.”
“My favourite part of this year’s April Fools was watching Rookie and Guy search for the missing jet pack, so I’m really glad I got the opportunity to do Rookie’s mascot art for the party. He is very tricky to draw.
Another designer had a really cute idea for his giveaway background before I got started on it, so it’s based off of their initial sketch.
Also, he’s just standing in the back part of the Dock that you can’t see during the party. Maybe these doors really were behind the camera…”
The Rock Shop Owner
Among staff, the owner of the Rock Shop quickly became known as “the creature,” but their name is…
Pat. Pat the Puffle!
Pat uses all pronouns and loves working at the Rock Shop.
Here are a few fun sketches of our beloved friend:
The Rock Shop Owner however, is extremely curious about something…to quote him directly:
“Hey who ate ma rug”
The Box Maze
The Box Maze was a beast of its own! We designated two team members, and their sole purpose was bringing the box maze to life. Ideas came and went, but eventually we landed on what you saw during April Fools 2025, which reshaped what is possible within CPJ!
Let’s break this down into two key areas: Design & Development
Design
Our team set out to create an experience that broke the mold, and from day one, our designers were determined to go big. The result? A sprawling, topsy-turvy wonderland packed with imagination.
We dreamed up all kinds of wild ideas:
- A room-sized portal puzzle
- Doors that flipped gravity
- Walking on walls
- A whole bunch of mini-games and mystery objects
While not every idea made it into the final maze, the spirit of madness absolutely did. The Box Maze evolved in so many unexpected ways, and we’re excited to share a peek at where it all began. Here’s some early concept art that shows just how bold we aimed to go:
Here are some other maze concepts before we landed on our final design:
These early sketches only scratched the surface of what we dreamed up, but they laid the foundation for the maze’s final form.
From there, it was time to bring some of the madness to life. Let’s take a look at how those ideas transformed as we dove into development:
Development
The Box Maze didn’t just look wild; it functioned unlike any other room in our game.
To make it work, the development team had to:
1. Completely rework our physics system
- Different layers had to sync across multiple players
- Physics blocks needed to behave differently depending on which layer the player was on
2. Implement a dynamic camera
- This was the first room to feature a camera that follows the player
- It allowed us to break out of the traditional square Club Penguin room boundaries
After that came the fun stuff!
Puzzle pieces, maze challenges, and that massive slide. But at its core, the Box Maze was a technical milestone for Club Penguin Journey and a huge leap forward for how rooms can behave.
Wrapping Up…
Congratulations! You made it to the end! Take this super high-quality picture of the Box Maze that has more detail than you can see in-game, make sure you upload this one to the wiki and set it as your desktop wallpaper to keep the Box Maze’s legacy alive.
April Fools 2025 was an absolute blast and one of our most complex parties yet. Whether you were solving puzzles, meeting mascots, or just admiring the strange new angles of familiar rooms, we hope you had as much fun playing it as we had making it.
And if you’ve been paying close attention… you might’ve noticed the first clue toward our next party has already been unveiled in our latest newspaper!
Stay tuned for the next edition of Behind the Journey, we have plenty more secrets to share!
Until next time…Waddle on!
The Club Penguin Journey Team
