[6] The gameplay is similar to that of the original Club Penguin, though it runs on the game engine Unity rather than Adobe Flash Player.

[7][8] Club Penguin Island received mixed reviews from critics[note 1] and many negative reviews from some of the original game's old players upon its worldwide release for lacking many features of the original version at launch as well as a lack of features for non-subscribers.

[2] The 1.8 update, released on November 30, 2017, received positive reviews for adding fan-requested features and launching a PC and Mac version of the game.

[9] Despite this, the continued negative perception among fans, and intense competition from other online games, as well as from private servers of the original Club Penguin and other former Disney MMOs like Toontown Online, resulted in Club Penguin Island becoming a commercial failure.

On September 27, 2018, Disney confirmed the imminent discontinuation of Club Penguin Island in a letter obtained by the website Kotaku,[10] as well as in an official blog post.

[12] On November 5, 2018, the final update, version 1.13.0, was released, which included an offline mode, effectively making the game still available as a single-player experience.

All users that were playing Club Penguin Island at the time received an error message telling them that the connection was lost.

[13] The game was originally known under the code name of Project: Super Secret, first used in 2014 and teased with sneak peeks in June 2015.

However, Project: Super Secret was initially said to be Disney Mix, with the game's actual development confirmed to have started in 2015.

If this was done, they would also receive the Alumni Jacket, with a number on the back displaying how many years the connected Club Penguin account has existed.

On November 30, 2017, the desktop version was launched as an open beta, allowing players to report bugs in preparation for a full release at a later date.

Club Penguin Island is divided into various zones and distinct areas and contains a variety of features.

Every time a player reaches a new level, they receive a reward in the form of a pack, containing various items, such as emojis or blueprints.

(short for episode) are activities in Club Penguin Island that players may partake in, and are received by talking to specific quest characters.

Adventures involve players traveling around the island, completing tasks, and solving problems.

Members have the ability to choose from many variants of igloos as well as purchase items from a full catalog of furniture, landscaping, terrain, interactives, and more.

Both members and non-members are able to purchase and use the party games Marble Hunt, Ink or Swim, and Fossil Four.

Although members gain additional features, players without a membership can obtain all event items whether they're a member or not, obtain wearable event shirts, customize certain items in the Clothing Customizer, play the first adventure of every quest giving character, use Party Supplies given to them by members, customize an igloo (of which anyone is able to visit) with any quantity from a selection of non-member igloo items, play all mini-games, use the jackhammer gear, buy and play party games, join tube races, waddle around anywhere on the island, chat with other players, reach the maximum Penguin Level, and take part in non-member Daily Challenges.

All players automatically received a free, unlimited membership on November 5, 2018, which would carry over to Offline Mode.

[6] Offline Mode was added to Club Penguin Island in the game's final update, and it was activated on December 21, 2018.

[16] A new feature called Debug Mode was also added, which is a tool that Club Penguin Island's developers used to test the game.