Cuphead is a run and gun indie video game developed and published by StudioMDHR. As the title character Cuphead, the player fights a series of bosses in order to repay a debt to the devil. The game was heavily inspired by the rubber hose style of animation used in cartoons of the 1930s, such as the work of studios Fleischer and Walt Disney Animation, seeking to emulate their subversive and surrealist qualities. Cuphead was released on Microsoft Windows and Xbox One on September 29, 2017. Praised for its art style and noted for its challenging difficulty, it was both a critical and commercial success, selling over two million copies by the end of 2017.
Video Cuphead
Gameplay
Cuphead is a run and gun game with role-playing elements, which features a branching level sequence and is based around continuous boss fights. Cuphead has infinite lives, keeps weapons between deaths, can continuously fire his blasts and has a quick dash ability that can be used at will. The player can also purchase more weapons and "Charms" (special abilities) from the shop using coins collected from the run-and-gun levels. Cuphead can parry certain enemy attacks to fill a "super meter" that allows him to use more powerful strikes.
After completing a level, the player will be ranked with a grade based on their performance, based on factors such as time taken to defeat a boss, damage taken/avoided, and number of parried attacks. The levels are accessible through a top-down perspective overworld with its own secret areas. The game also has a two-player local cooperative mode that allows another player to play as Mugman.
Maps Cuphead
Plot
On the fictional Inkwell Isle, Cuphead and his brother Mugman are two fun-loving kids who live under the watchful eye of Elder Kettle. Against the elder's warnings, the brothers wander into the Devil's Casino and play craps. When the brothers go on a winning streak, the casino's manager King Dice calls upon the Devil, who raises the stakes. If Cuphead and Mugman can win another time, they will own the entire casino; if not, the Devil will have their souls. Cuphead rolls snake eyes and he and Mugman must give up their souls. The brothers beg for mercy, so the Devil makes a deal with them: collect the contracts that signify his ownership of the souls of his runaway debtors by midnight the next day, and he might let them off the hook. They visit Elder Kettle, who gives them a potion that allows them to fire blasts from their fingers to aid in their quest.
The brothers travel around Inkwell Isle, earning soul contracts from residents who have lost their souls to King Dice and the Devil. Eventually, Elder Kettle tells the brothers that when facing the Devil again, they must "do the right thing". Once they make it back to the Casino, King Dice reveals that he too lost a bet, presumably about whether or not Cuphead and Mugman would be able to retrieve the contracts. He fights the two only to lose. The Devil then asks for the contracts and in return they will "join his team". At this point the player can choose whether to hand the contracts over or not. If they say yes, the Devil turns Cuphead and Mugman into his demonic lackeys and the game ends. If they say no, the Devil then battles the brothers in retaliation for being told that the whole deal is off. After defeating the Devil, the brothers toss the soul contracts in the flames and race home. They tell the residents that they are no longer under control of the Devil and they all cheer the brothers for their heroic deed.
Development
Cuphead was the first game by StudioMDHR, a Canadian indie game development studio consisting of brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer. Additional animation work was contributed by Jake Clark. Its development began in 2010 using the Unity game engine, and was developed from the brother's homes in Oakville, Ontario and Regina, Saskatchewan, respectively. The game was inspired by cartoons produced by the Fleischer and Walt Disney animation studios, along with cartoonists Ub Iwerks, Grim Natwick, and Willard Bowsky. Chad Moldenhauer called Fleischer Studios "the magnetic north of his art style", who particularly sought to mimic their "subversive and surrealist" elements.
The Moldenhauers watched 1930s-era cartoons in their youth, which Chad Moldenhauer describes as happenstance, based on gifts and VHS compilations. Among other siblings in their Regina, Saskatchewan childhood home, the two shared aesthetic taste and interest in gameplay. They attempted a game in the style of Cuphead in 2000, but lacked the tools to continue. The brothers decided to try again following the success of the indie game Super Meat Boy, which released in 2010. The character that became Cuphead descended from a 1936 Japanese propaganda animated film where a man with a teacup for a head morphs into a tank. The Moldenhauers emulated the animation because they found it strange, and "right away it stuck". Before settling on him as the main character, the brothers had created around 150 different character designs, including a kappa in a tophat and characters with a plate or fork for a head.
The animation techniques behind Cuphead are similar to that of the 1930s cartoons. Chad Moldenhauer, who had previously worked in graphic design, would hand-draw the animations and paint the backgrounds using watercolors, colorizing them in Photoshop. The gameplay runs at a framerate of 60, while the animation runs at 24, which is a film standard. Chad Moldenhauer also saw his process with its human imperfections as a reaction to the perfectionism of pixel art. Jared Moldenhauer worked on other aspects of the game, though they would discuss gameplay design together. Their studio hired a Romanian developer, a Brooklyn animator, and an Ontario jazz musician for the project. They sought to keep the recording processes of the time period as if the team were developing in that era.
The Moldenhauers described Cuphead as having a difficult, "retro game" core for its emphasis on gameplay over plot. Kill Screen described the developers as "obsessed" with run and gun fundamentals of "animations and exploits and hitboxes". Over the development process, they have made multiple revisions to many gameplay elements, including how gameplay actions feel at the edges of platforms and how long players are disabled after receiving damage. They planned multiple difficulty levels, and chose to abandon a typical damsel in distress plot for one where Cuphead perpetually creates trouble for himself. The developers planned to surpass the Guinness World Record for number of boss battles in a run and gun game by having over 30 to the record's 25. The game's implementation and visual design, combined with the limited number of people available to work on the game, proved to be StudioMDHR's biggest challenge, so the Moldenhauers had to go the extra mile to bring the game to life, even remortgaging their house in order to finance the project.
Promotion and release
Though the game was shown during the Xbox press event of Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014 to audience approval, Cuphead was not available to play and was estimated to be 40 percent complete. Cuphead was expected to be extended via expansion packs with 10 to 15 bosses each, similar to how Sonic & Knuckles added atop the Sonic series formula. Cuphead was released on September 29, 2017 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox One, with potential later releases for macOS and Linux. Cuphead is an Xbox console exclusive, and supports Xbox Play Anywhere.
Reception
Ben Kuchera of Polygon wrote that Cuphead was one of the five most interesting reveals at Microsoft's E3 2014 press conference, even though he knew little about the game apart from its aesthetic. He said it "stood out immediately" and that everyone in the website's press room viscerally reacted to the trailer. Cuphead won the IGN Best Xbox One game at E3 award in 2015. It was also nominated as "Best Independent Game" at the E3 2016 Game Critics Awards (though it lost to Inside).
Cuphead received "generally positive" reception, according to review aggregator Metacritic. The game has also been noted for its difficulty by several media outlets. Destructoid's Brett Makedonski welcomed the high difficulty, which he noted as "tough but fair". Based on "exhaustive" pattern recognition, he said it ultimately relied on muscle memory, rather than reaction. He thought structuring the game around boss battles was well executed, and that each boss encounter held "different and special and memorable" traits. Praising the 1930s aesthetics as cohesive, Makedonski found the jazz-based soundtrack to be "similarly fabulous". Despite dying 188 times in his playthrough, Ray Carsillo at Electronic Gaming Monthly felt no frustration from the difficulty, but rather motivation to "dig my heels in deeper". Carsillo lauded the "gorgeous" hand-drawn visuals, asserting that the only thing surpassing the artwork was the gameplay, which he said went "beyond pattern recognition". Peter Brown of GameSpot opined that combatting enemies provided a considerably rewarding experience. He described the cartoon aesthetic as charming, adding that it infused "color and expression" to the game. Further, he saw Cuphead as a "true recreation" of hand-drawn cel animation. Brown also relished how quick loading times proved beneficial to trial and error tactics.
Lucas Sullivan at GamesRadar wrote that Cuphead "stands tall among the best 2D shooters of all time", and agreed the gameplay challenges demanded patient pattern recognition to be accomplished, from which he said players would be rewarded "tenfold". Sullivan called the animation adorable, noting the wealth of detail present in the watercolor backdrops, and said it worked well with the gameplay. Like Carsillo, Sullivan claimed never to be frustrated with the difficulty. Giant Bomb's Ben Pack remarked that playing the game yielded one of his most enjoyable experiences with video games, citing the combination of "brutal" platforming and an "exceptionally well realized" art style. Writing for IGN, Joe Skrebels declared every scene a "masterwork" and commended the sound work, calling it an "ideal match" to the aesthetics. Platforming battles were seen as the most imaginative part of the game, and having no health bars for enemies its "smartest" and "most devilish" addition. Like Brown and Sullivan, Skrebels found the battles to be rewarding as well as "one of Cuphead's greatest strengths". Chris Schilling of PC Gamer expressed approval of the controls, saying that their "reliable jump and dash" led to more "nimble and responsive" handling. Disagreeing with Makedonski, Schilling explained that certain random elements meant "you can't simply learn patterns by rote and rely entirely on muscle memory". Chris Plante at Polygon commented that, at its best, the game serves to educate the player in strategy through trial and error. He enjoyed the parrying system more so than the various attacks, as it proved to be a "crucial" and "relatively forgiving" mechanic. Colm Ahern of VideoGamer.com wrote in his verdict, "Cuphead will best most games in how it looks and sounds, and defeating that boss that you once deemed unbeatable is glorious".
Conversely, Makedonski said the "eight-direction firing radius" was his least favorite system in the game, calling it "clunky and awkward". Even though Brown saw "the fear of the unexpected" as part of what made Cuphead thrilling, he disparaged the game's failure to identify progress and capability. Skrebels thought that the "run 'n' gun, left-to-right platforming" lacked inventiveness, while also subjecting the "parry system" and control scheme to criticism. Plante complained that the final bosses made Cuphead's greatest features less effective, and mentioned that the difficulty "eventually goes too far". Ahern agreed with Plante in his reproval of the final bosses, also saying that the challenge was "a step too far".
Unwinnable writer Yussef Cole wrote an essay titled "Cuphead and the Racist Spectre of Fleischer Animation", in which he thought that by using the rubber hose animation style, Studio MDHR also brought up the "bigotry and prejudice" which had a strong influence on early animation, thinking that Studio MDHR ignored the context and history of the aesthetic it "so faithfully" replicated. Cole identifies that much of the imagery that Studio MDHR took from the Fleischer style effectively carried the racial stereotypes of the 1930s Harlem and minstrel shows that the animation style was built on. Chad and Jared Moldenhauer had stated prior to release that they wanted to make an animation style that harkened back to 1930s cartoons without getting ties to racism or minstrel shows in them. Maja Moldenhauer further stated that all they wanted from the Fleischers was the animation style and visuals, and that anything else happening "in that era we're not versed in it". In response to Cole's essay, Brandon Orselli of Niche Gamer defended the game as a tribute to that art style, writing that it was not meant to deliver narratives, or "go anywhere beyond where it needs to go in terms of its basic and child-like storytelling".
Entertainment Weekly placed Cuphead at #5 on the list of its "Best Games of 2017".
Sales
In the two first weeks of release, Cuphead sold over one million copies worldwide. By December 2017, that number had risen to two million.
Awards
References
External links
- Official website
Source of article : Wikipedia
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