Professor Lupo: Ocean

Genre: Top-Down Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

Professor Lupo: Ocean, released in 2020 on PC, mobile devices, and Nintendo Switch, is a character-based Top-Down Puzzle game and sequel to the prior year’s Professor Lupo and His Horrible Pets, though due to this game’s much shorter length (40 levels compared to the prior game’s 100) and lower price, some will argue it’s perhaps more fitting to call this an epilogue. Taking place after the end of the prior game, players take the role of a clone waking up to find the space station of the titular mad doctor at the bottom of the ocean and still filled with strange and dangerous creatures. Somehow, they must find their way through the wreckage and get to safety.

The presentation here makes use of detailed 2D backgrounds and well-animated cartoony 2D characters, with plenty of green slime and fun death animations. This is joined by some decent voice acting and a subdued soundtrack, with a less tongue-in-cheek tone than the first game, but still with a similar style overall.

The gameplay here is fairly simple – you move your character around in corridors on the downed spaceship and open and close doors to proceed to the exit square in each of the game’s levels. Some doors can be opened remotely, while others require the use of computer terminals. Using this, and your knowledge of how the creatures behave, you need to safely get to the exit. In this sequel, there are new elements to consider, such as the way water currents flow when you open doors to underwater sections, and you must also consider how creatures act differently underwater and on dry land.

While it’s a simple premise, the different creature behaviors make for some good variety and some interesting puzzles. What’s more, players can control the game using traditional gamepad controls or gyroscopic pointer controls. The latter seem too imprecise to be reliable, but it’s nice that they’re included here all the same.

Unfortunately, this is once again all undone by one major problem – your character’s walking speed is torturously slow – the clone you’re controlling clearly isn’t in much of a rush to escape, and can’t be bothered to put any haste into her movements, despite her life being on the line. While this is surely an element of the gameplay, it nevertheless makes even the simple act of moving around extremely irritating, slowing the game’s overall pace and sapping the fun out of things.

Professor Lupo: Ocean is purely a game for players who enjoyed the original Professor Lupo game and want more, and I suspect those players will likely be satisfied with the new spin on the prior game’s formula. However, those who haven’t played the original game needn’t bother here. Not only would they be playing the epilogue to a story they haven’t seen, but the snail’s pace of your character makes this entire experience a slog. There are plenty of great character-based Puzzle games on Nintendo Switch, and you have better options than this.

tl;dr – Professor Lupo: Ocean is a character-based Top-Down Puzzle game and sequel/epilogue to the previous Professor Lupo game. This time, players take the role of a clone trying to escape from a crashed space station underwater trying to escape from hostile alien creatures and other dangers. Fans of the original game may find this to be a satisfying follow-up, but everyone else needn’t bother. Not only is the story directly tied to the first game, but your character’s movements are still agonizingly slow, killing the pacing and making this game almost unbearable to play unless you’re an especially patient and forgiving player.

Grade: C-

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