Ah, puzzle games, where the line between “I need a MENSA member to explain this to me” and “This is a fun challenge” is razor thin. Although a good story always helps. Professor Lupo and His Horrible Pets aims to put itself in the canon of memorable puzzlers with a charming graphics style, interesting story, and memorable puzzles.
The game puts players in the shoes of Intern, Professor Lupo’s hapless assistant charged with caring for the menagerie of dangerous alien creatures aboard the Aurora Space Station. Intern has been on the job for so long that he’s forgotten his own name. Unfortunately for him, he’s about to face the worst day of his life when the Aurora is boarded by a band of vigilantes whose goal is to punish the warlords of Earth by crashing the station down on them.
Intern would very much like to not still be on the station when that happens. Unfortunately for him, the creatures have largely escaped containment, meaning there’s a lot of hungry, ugly, dangerous monsters between poor Intern and his escape. Good thing the station’s trusty AI is there to help guide Intern in the right direction.
Sure, it’s cute. Right up until it shows off a mouth full of horrifying fangs and eats your face.
Professor Lupo and His Horrible Pets contains a hundred levels of puzzles to guide Intern through. A variety of optional collectibles add replay value to the puzzle rooms, but aren’t strictly necessary to complete the game. The levels are divided into five chapters of twenty levels each. While individual chapter puzzles gradually ramp in difficulty, each chapter introduces at least one new concept for players to deal with.
Unlike a lot of indie games, Professor Lupo is fully voiced for English speakers. The voice acting isn’t going to win any awards, but it’s solid and inoffensive. An atmospheric soundtrack adds to the overall play experience, and sound effect design provides some good sounds to the various monsters and other things in the station.
The main menu screen has a nice Easter Egg where the chatter with the A.I. changes over the course of the game. Not sure how accurate those stats really are though.
The game can be controlled with either a keyboard and mouse, or with a gamepad. Unfortunately, for a game which relies on increasing amounts of split-second precision in later game puzzles, the controls are also the biggest problem with this title. Put simply, they’re inaccurate. Using the gamepad to move the cursor and select where Intern should go is an incredible exercise in frustration. The keyboard and mouse provide a much better control option, but the response still feels laggy and imprecise. Further muddying the issue is questionable pathfinding decisions by Intern. Far too many times during this review I would find myself frustrated when Intern missed an exit by going the wrong way, failed to activate a computer because of a missed click, or simply took too long to change directions. What the game desperately needs is a path queuing system and a pause function so that players can plan out their route, tell Intern where to go, then make adjustments on the fly.
Timing puzzles like this get increasingly aggravating.
Control issues aside (which, admittedly, feels a bit like noting that a new car handles well, aside from a tendency to steer in the wrong direction and explode when it hits a wall) Professor Lupo has some pretty good moments. The design of the aliens is suitably weird, and while the story isn’t especially innovative, it’s at least interesting. If you’re going to borrow a few notes from other puzzle game stories, at least borrow from the best.
Fans of puzzle games looking for a new challenge may find something to enjoy here. Casual puzzlers will probably be better served to pass on this one, or wait for its inevitable inclusion in a future indie bundle.
Professor Lupo and His Horrible Pets was reviewed on PC. BeautiFun Games provided a review copy to Marooners’ Rock. More information about the game can be found on the Steam listing.
