Welcome back to Behind the Journey, our ongoing peek behind the scenes at how Club Penguin Journey’s parties come to life.
2025 has been packed with incredible parties! We are sure you remember The Fair Games with its four amazing teams, the Penguin Play Awards full of glamour, or the unforgettable Holiday Jam. It’s time to pull back the curtain and see what’s been going on!
THE FAIR GAMES
Rooms
The rooms were fuuuull of creativity and tiny details that made each one special. One thing’s for sure: the rooms for every team were absolutely unforgettable! Let’s hear what the designers have to say about them.
”ALIENS AND MORE ALIENS, every poster in the Green Team Room is a reference to a movie or tv shows related to aliens or space… well… almost every poster.”
“The lava lamp took a lot of references, I had to watch a video of a real lava lamp for a long time to understand how they work, then had to try animate it without making it look weird.”
”Frutiger Aero meets Club Penguin! What a perfect combination. It was difficult theming this room because Frutiger Aero is normally so minimalistic. Since the theme needed to be apparent, I had to try to incorporate a lot of key factors of Frutiger Aero in the room without cluttering it too much. I’d like to think it came out pretty good!
P.S. Those random blue painted bananas were an inside joke between a couple of the staff.”
”For my theme, I really wanted to capture the essence of life. I know this is usually associated with the color green, but I often find it in yellow! As you can see from the sketch, the silly bee was a last-minute addition. If you enjoyed the bee, make sure to say ‘wow, I really enjoyed the bee from The Fair 2025’ and I will see your awesome message.”
Items
This party was filled with totally new items! From quirky outfits to fun accessories, there was something for every penguin around Club Penguin Journey to enjoy. Let’s see what the designers had in mind when creating these additions.
“I made sure every item was inspired by the aesthetic of the team for these, I think most of them are spot on.”
Catalogs
What would a party be without the catalogs? Probably the best part for many of you! Here’s what the designer shared about them:
“It was so fun making them different for each team and instead of making them just a catalog merging it into each team aesthetic, my favorite one is the blue team catalog.”
Backgrounds and Playercard
Time to check out Mascot playercards and their giveaways! This designer captures it perfectly, being one of our main mascot pilots. Here’s their take on it:
“I was in charge Rookie’s playercard+giveaway, and I campaigned for the duo giveaway with him and Auntie. Players sometimes ask why some mascot pairs have duo backgrounds while others don’t… Really, it only ever depends on whether a staff member is itching to do extra work for their favorite characters.
I started out my pieces by looking through the planned rooms for the party. Whenever I draw mascots, I always try to think about what they’re doing on the island and what their purpose is. Then, it’s about fitting as much of that information into the artwork as possible.”
More About and In Detail returns! Peek at extra ideas and sketches from our team in More About, and remember each party’s unique vibe In Detail!
More about the Fair Games
In Detail: The Fair Games
PENGUIN PLAY AWARDS
Dot – Mascot, Background and Playercard
This party was full of glamour and DIVAS. Does that word sound familiar? Of course it does!! One of our pilots REALLY popularized it made it very clear when they said:
”It was an absolute joy to accidentally increase the usage of the word ‘Diva’ on CPJ now and forevermore by about 300%. 10/10 would Dot again.”
Some of the messages from our beautiful community that captured our hearts during the meetups were:
”This feels like a childhood dream.”
”I’ve never talked with a mascot before my face hurts from smiling.”
Who doesn’t love Dot? She’s iconic, and of course, everything about her had to match! Including her background and playercard, designed by our talented designer who brought her Penguin Play Awards look to life.
“Dot went through a lot of iterations this party. I thought about giving her a formal outfit for her giveaway, either a custom one or one based off of her modern look, but I ended up keeping her standard outfit as she doesn’t have a lot of art in this era (plus, we already gave her a different outfit the last time she appeared during Medieval). Managed to slip in some sparkly eyeshadow for a bit of PPA glam, though! I ended up redoing her pose and customizing her signature to add more glitz as well.”
Costume Trunk
“For our version of the Penguin Play Awards we had a different catalog than what the Original Game had. Ours featured Fairy Fables, Underwater Adventure, Ruby and the Ruby, Squidzoid vs. Shadow Guy and Gamma Gal, and The Penguins That Time Forgot. In order for us to feature our plays in one catalog we had to recreate the whole catalog in “Figma” which is the software we use to create all our catalogs! I took all the pieces from the catalogs in 2009 and 2010 to create our own, I tried my best to have them one to one but if you look closely you can definitely see the differences.
Re-creating catalogs from the original game is a lot of fun, getting to take apart the original catalogs and seeing how Club Penguin’s designers pieced it all together to make it work is fascinating and I’ve even learned a lot about catalog design from it!”
Testing
As we’ve seen from previous Behind the Journey posts, it’s important to thoroughly test each party before releasing it! Here are some of the highlights from our extremely INTENSE testing:
In Detail: Penguin Play Awards
THANKSGIVING CODE
Before moving to the last party but certainly not the least important… let’s take a Thanksgiving break! Time to talk about the Pumpkin Pie pin.
Our team is always supporting one another and bringing creativity to the table. In fact, one of our moderators created the pin that was given out with the Thanksgiving code. They shared:
“For Thanksgiving, I wanted to create a pin that felt cozy, nostalgic, and instantly recognizable. That’s where the idea for the Pumpkin Pie Pin came from.
When concepting it, I thought about what Thanksgiving represents in Club Penguin Journey terms — our wonderful community coming together, warmth, and simple seasonal comforts. Pumpkin pie felt like the perfect symbol: classic and festive.”
HOLIDAY JAM
When do you think we started planning this party? I’ll give you a moment to think! We will discover the answer later. There are so many things to think about and polish together to make sure everything turns out in the best possible way, so let’s take a look at them!
Where Did It Start?
Many of our parties here on Club Penguin Journey are scoped out about six weeks prior to release. But what if I told you Holiday Jam wasn’t planned in the six weeks leading up to its launch?
The idea for Holiday Jam actually dates ALLLLLLL the way back to May of 2025. That’s over seven months before the party ever made its debut on the island.
We knew our Holiday Party would inevitably arrive in December, but many of you were also suggesting another Music Jam. At the time, that just wasn’t possible since our summer parties were already fully planned.
So our team asked a simple question. “Why not both?” And just like that, Jingle Jam was born.
About a month into planning, one of our designers spoke up and said, “Hey, if we are going to fuse Music Jam and Holiday Party, we can’t use the name Jingle Jam, that name is already being used by an organization that does fundraising for charities. So we need to come up with a new name.”
That comment sparked an entirely new idea. Instead of moving away from Jingle Jam, why not partner with them through Coins for Change?
We reached out to the Jingle Jam team all the way back in June of 2025. From there, it became a waiting game as we knew their fundraising event always takes place during the first two weeks of December, while our Holiday Jam naturally fit closer to the end of the year.
Rather than letting that timing stop us, we decided to adapt. Our team worked together to align Holiday Jam construction with the Jingle Jam fundraising window, ultimately tying it into Coins for Change.
We knew this approach would look a little different than usual, but we believed strongly in the charities and the organization behind them. After careful planning, creating our Tiltify campaign, and coordinating with the Jingle Jam volunteers, it was finally time to fundraise.
We set our goal at £1,000.00. With banners on our site and promotion across Discord and Twitter, we hoped we might raise even £100.00 for such an incredible cause.
What happened next completely exceeded every expectation.
Not only did you meet our goal, you blew it out of the water. You reached £1,000.00 in just twenty four hours.
And you didn’t stop there. You doubled it. You tripled it. Then you quadrupled it.
By the end of the campaign, our community had raised £4,790.00 for the eight charities represented through this year’s Jingle Jam fundraising event. All of this came from one simple idea and one designer speaking up at the right moment.
Thank you to every penguin who donated, shared the campaign, and supported Coins for Change. You turned a party concept into something far bigger than we ever imagined, and you reminded us why this community continues to be so special.
Rooms
There were so many rooms that truly shined on their own! We’ll dive into everything that went through the minds of the people who designed some of these rooms and the ideas behind them.
“If only we have had Behind the Journey in 2024 to showcase the concepts for said Holiday Party… oh wait we could show it here! Regardless, these rooms have kept similar designs, so have some extra sketches for y’all art enthusiasts as an extra present!
Granted these are a year late they still were quite the task for our team!
The Town and Plaza had the challenge of becoming larger rooms before we could even pan out the camera like with the Box Maze, so they were rooms that required a whole lot more planning and thus more detailed sketches to go along!
The Ice Rink was inspired by the Music Video of Cool In The Cold, so we tried our best to bring that Ice Skating Area to the game as a functional room, even including the needle to play some tunes on the ice!
And lastly, the Knitting Room! Originally thought out to be a more laborious and complicated room as you can see in the first sketch was later simplified down to a crafting system with materials and stations that we all know and love today! Except well… if you have to make 30 items for some gems heh…”
Items, Igloo Furniture and Transformation
“All four of these vinyls are based off the rooms their respective concerts took place in. For Cadence’s and Maxx’s vinyls, because their concert took place in the same room, I decided to make them parallel each other. Cadence is the sunset against the dark sky while Maxx is the rink’s reflection against the snow. They have a bit of their respective colors bleeding into each other’s frames to represent their rivalry this party.”
“Did you know? The car transformation we released for Coins for Change had to be recolored to match every custom color! This means editing the sprites and playercard images. You don’t think too much about it, but it can be a lot of work to get done when you realize how many custom colors CPJ has!”
Backgrounds and Playercards
“Early sketches of the BG (they started their “rap battle” a little more heated than how they ended lol) and Nutcracker (based on the Nutcracker Pin from the OG Club Penguin game)!”
“Originally, the giveaway for Cadence’s background was supposed to be the Playercard. A different designer had sketched up another concept for me to use, so I was going to try and follow it exactly until I decided to try and clean things up even more. I still think there’s so, so much charm in the first rendition, and I can definitely see myself rendering something similar to it in the future. When I ended up matching to OG’s style, I decided it would be more rewarding to see it being worn by players. So, I instead changed it to be her background to grab!
(P.S. I scrapped her having skates on because it was kind of jarring trying to make it work for her flippers/shoes)”
Map and UI
These were dreamy! Personally, I wish the party could last forever so we could just hang out in the Cove with this amazing map and UI. Incredible! Let’s see how it all came together.
“The map is pretty, right? Well, it’s a combination of effort between many designers over the years, since we reused some of the assets from the Holiday Party and Music Jam to make it come to life. It takes a lot of work to tint assets to match sunsets, though!”
“I got a little too eager about the idea of making a holiday-sky inspired UI for the Holiday Party and created an entire mockup… before the party planners could tell me we were, in fact, stealing Music Jam’s purple sunset skies!
It wasn’t difficult to switch out the colors of the gradient and stars, but the blue sky UI allowed many of the original UI assets to remain unedited, as their default blue and white blended with the new aspects well enough. The purple sky UI, in comparison… was an undertaking, to say the least! And we still missed a few spots! But I’m more than happy with how it came out, and seeing the players’ confusion turned to amazement in real time made it more than worth it.”
Crimson for Change and Concerts
“Helloooo Penguins, Holiday Jam was the first party I got to participate in leading! Taking on such a large party was a huge undertaking and our entire team truly did so much to bring it all to life, I’m forever proud of this party and miss it already! So much so that after the party ended I left the browser window open for 4 days just so I could still hear the music and see the beautiful purple interface, even with a big orange box on my screen saying “Lost Connection” 😭
I was all over the place but a few key things I’m really proud of is Crimson for Change, making DJ Maxx a waddling mascot, and how we brought the concerts to life with the Lightsticks and matching Shirts!
When going over with the team what mascots we should bring for Holiday Jam I had a “This may be crazy but….” moment and suggested DJ Maxx. This was a huge undertaking for our Mascot Pilots, seeing as DJ Maxx had no presence on the Original Club Penguin we had to build him up from pretty much ground one. It was super fun getting to build his personality with everyone, especially getting to decide the cursed choice of his go-to pizza being shrimp and marshmallow! Our pilots did an AMAZING job at bringing him to life, and I really hope you all loved him!”
“Crimson for Change has got to be one of the funniest things I have participated in so far in my time on CPJ. We knew we had to bring Treasure Hunt as it’s one of the STAPLES to Club Penguin Holidays but….Rockhopper was just on the island for Halloween without his ship, and he was a ghost. So how were we gonna do this? That’s where our lovely pirate Captain Crimson comes in! He was so kind to bring the migrator since he knows how much the penguins LOVE treasure hunt, he knew Rockhopper wouldn’t want them to go without it! As you also saw, from the goodness of Crimson’s heart he brought us so many FREE goodies! Maybe he really has changed… or has he?
The transformation of the Migrator and Beach and branding it “Crimson for Change” is something I had a lot of fun doing, hiding easter eggs like “Gem Sweet Gem”, flamingos with eye patches, “New Year New Me!” and even a portrait of Crimson himself, all while making it look like he had truly taken over the Migrator and painted the signs himself have been, while simple, my favourite rooms so far that I’ve designed.”
“Getting to bring our concerts to life with Lightsticks and concert shirts was fantastic. I had originally had the idea to just make a “CPJ” light stick with a special dance, and when I brought the idea to one of our designers that makes our dance sprites that’s when we came up with the huge idea to do one for every concert. This was a huge undertaking but I loved the end result so much, it really felt like a real concert seeing you all with your lightsticks jumping up and down and I hope you all enjoyed it just as much!!”
More about Holiday Jam
In Detail: Holiday Jam
Wrapping Up…
That about wraps up this behind-the-scenes look!
This wraps up our 2025 parties. A huge THANK YOU for all your support, and here’s to an amazing 2026 ahead!
From the bottom of our hearts, we hope you enjoyed all the work we’ve put into these parties. It’s definitely always worth going above and beyond to see you enjoy every little thing we’ve planned just for you. With much love and thanks from all of us here on the CPJ staff.
Until next time…Waddle On!
– The Club Penguin Journey Team
