Penko Park is an adventure about exploring an abandoned wildlife park, taking photos of the weird and creepy creatures which you find. Like exploring a children's story book world, you collect these snapshots along with fur samples and fossils to add to your guidebook. Investigating further, you uncover the history of the park as well as hidden paths and secrets.

Although you don't control your movement through the world, you interact with nature using your grappling hook to pull things towards you and to inspect what you find. You can unlock different camera modes, such as Ghost-O-Vision, which can allow you to see creatures and areas which you can't normally see.

Penko Park is similar to a Pokemon game in that you travel around the park and discover new monsters to interact with. Each of the monsters in the park has a checklist of pictures you need to take with them in different locations and actions. Unlike Pokemon, this is a calmer experience with no fighting and a pacing you can set for yourself as you walk around the park and take photos of the unusual creatures in various eerie and diverse environments. This game is also more unsettling than Pokemon with darker and creepier monsters, rather than cute and colourful ones.