Wuppo: Definitive Edition

My first impression of Wuppo was that someone had taken a Dutch children's picture book, run it through a political-chaos generator, and then asked it to be a Metroidvania. That description is not a complaint. The game starts you off as a round, multi-legged Wum who gets evicted from the Wumhouse after one too many ice-cream incidents, and from there the world opens up in ways that feel genuinely handcrafted rather than procedurally assembled. Popocity hums with citizens running on their own schedules. The train between zones runs on a real five-minute rotation, completely independent of the player. There is a theme park with a queue you must physically stand in. These are not gimmicks; they are a designer's way of insisting that the world exists whether you are in it or not. Gameplay is harder to pin down than the screenshots suggest. The main loop sits somewhere between a light Metroidvania, a twin-stick shooter, and a very weird point-and-click adventure. Your core weapon is the upgradeable Gumgumgun, which fires blobs of gum and can be modded with a rapid-fire module or other upgrades purchased with the in-game currency called Smurt. Combat against regular enemies is gentle enough that new players may underestimate what the bosses are building toward. Those boss encounters, scattered across locations like Bliekopolis and the cavernous tunnels deeper in the world, are where the game sharpens its teeth. Learning attack patterns matters; bosses like King Cone or the Fnakker squad demand real precision, and the post-game Boss Run mode chains 18 of them together on a single life, which is a separate, demanding challenge entirely. The Definitive Edition also includes multiple difficulty settings, including an Insane mode for players who want the whole thing to hurt. The world rewards curiosity in small, specific ways that I genuinely respect. Happiness functions as your HP, and expanding it means seeking out things that literally make your character happy, which could mean talking to an NPC a surprising number of times or collecting hidden filmstrip lore pieces scattered across each region. There is no map and no quest log, and the parrot companion who follows you around serves as a soft hint system when puzzles get genuinely obtuse. Some of them do. A mid-game stealth section arrives with almost no prior signaling, and certain item interactions require a level of lateral thinking that even attentive players may need a community guide for. The item inventory is also fiddly under pressure; equipping gear on your character's head is charming in concept but feels awkward when a boss is mid-pattern. These friction points are real, and impatient players will bounce off them. What holds everything together is the soundtrack and the art. Thomas de Waard's orchestrated score shifts register as you move between zones, from breezy and municipal in Popocity to something stranger and lonelier in the underground sections. The hand-drawn visuals have a squiggly, slightly uneven quality that some reviewers have found off-putting and others have called the best art style they have ever seen in a game. Both reactions make sense. It is not polished in the conventional sense. It looks exactly like the passion project it is, and that texture is part of why the world feels lived-in rather than assembled. If you need tight controls and clear waypoints, this game will frustrate you. If you are the kind of player who actually talks to every NPC and enjoys sitting at a fictional train station whistling (there is a dedicated whistle button), Wuppo: Definitive Edition is the kind of small, overstuffed world that you will carry around in your head for a while after the credits roll.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

Be the first to comment on Wuppo: Definitive Edition.