By Robert Dolen
A modern product of a time long gone, “Cuphead” is a joyously frustrating experience that somehow manages to test the peak of the player’s platforming skills in the cutest way possible.
“Cuphead” is an independent video game published by StudioMDHR Entertainment that encapsulates an art style reminiscent of and inspired by old 1930s cartoons, something never done before at such a professional scale.
Players take on the role of the brothers Cuphead and Mugman as they strike out in the Devil’s Casino and are forced to enter in a contract with the ultimate price: their souls. The Devil sends the two protagonists on a journey across the world collecting the Devil’s outstanding bounties with the toughest enemies.
The most iconic aspect of “Cuphead” is its art direction and atmosphere, and it’s executed perfectly. The art team at StudioMDHR hand-drew every single character, animation and background for “Cuphead,” an astonishing feat rarely seen or heard of in modern video games. If you’ve ever seen old footage of classic cartoons from early television broadcasts, “Cuphead” both looks and feels exactly like them.
The main characters, the supporting characters, the enemies, the bosses; every character is stylized with their own personality and it shows through in their appearance. Each level features truly beautiful watercolor backgrounds. Animated background characters contribute to a sort-of cartoon realism. In tandem with the old-style sound effects and swing music ensemble that composes the game’s original soundtrack and sound design, “Cuphead” manages to fully immerse itself in the time period it draws inspiration from.
What’s perhaps most impressive about this art style is its ability to balance multiple layers of animation and objects on screen without it becoming unplayable. It’s a testament to the mechanical and artistic development of the game to simultaneously project layers upon layers of objects on screen that produce a challenging but not impossible experience.
The vibrant colors and the flashy animations evoke a wild world full of wonder and unpredictability.
The cornerstone of gameplay in “Cuphead” is its unpredictability both in the traversal levels as well as the boss rushes.
The AI in “Cuphead” introduces very complicated randomization in enemy behavior that makes every moment of gameplay a mysterious challenge. Many bosses rely on creating hectic battle situations with multiple different projectiles and damage dealing area-of-effect attacks, meaning that some attack patterns back to back can be extreme. The player needs to flex their twitch-reflexes as hard as possible to be successful in this game.
Although it’s impossible to tell without extensive research, there were some instances where it did feel like certain attack patterns made avoiding danger impossible. For the most part, the systems in place for boss battles in “Cuphead” encourage frustration in tandem with implementing insane difficulty.
“Cuphead” is viciously unwavering in its dedication to emphasizing difficulty. The player has only three hit points (four if you unlock the special ability) for an entire level, with no opportunities to regain health until the level is finished. There are no checkpoints throughout any levels or boss fights, so if you lose, you have to restart from the beginning.
This uncompromising mission of perfection forces players to calculate every option in every situation from the get go, making the initial skill gap a bit high. Luckily the controls aren’t super complex, and the player never has to micromanage ammunition aside from their special attack gauge.
“Cuphead” scatters coins across stages and boss fights that you can find and use at the store to buy special attacks, abilities and stat attributions to help give you the competitive edge. There’s not a whole lot of balance in these skills, because there are very clear abilities that are much better than others and take priority.
Overall, “Cuphead” is a truly unique visual experience that in appearance looks very cute and fun, but under that soft imaginative exterior is an arduously entertaining test of skill for the player that encourages true optimization of reflexes and coordination.