Cuphead Hand-Drawn Bullet Hell

The vast majority of the time, for console gamers in particular, indie titles tend to slip under the radar. You may not have heard have Cuphead now but when 2016 comes around next year, expect to see gamers and critics alike stand up and take notice. Although the release date is still a considerable amount of time away at this point, there is definitely already a certain buzz around the title. This is symbolised by the fact that Cuphead won the IGN award for Best Xbox One game at E3 this year.

The way in which Cuphead manages to distance itself from the wide array of other indie games on the market is the almost neurotic level of detail and intricacy that has clearly gone into creating each and every level. If you needed any more proof of this, the two co-creators of the game remortgaged their houses in order to create it. Cuphead is the first game by Studio MDHR and production began way back in 2010. Inspired by some of the famous cartoon series of the 1930s, you control Cuphead or Mugman over the course of many all-action adventures as they try to repay the debt they owe to the devil by doing his bidding.

Keeping true to 1930s tradition, Cuphead uses age old techniques including cel animation and hand painted watercolour backgrounds to form aesthetically astounding worlds for you and your character to explore either in single player mode or with a friend in co-op. In Cuphead, nothing ever stands still and you will find yourself becoming quickly immersed in the surreal yet beautiful hand-drawn universe not too dissimilar to that of very early Mickey Mouse incarnations. The characters themselves have all been drawn by hand by Chad Moldenhauer and painted using Photoshop, the only major deviation from the process of the 1930s. Meanwhile, co-creator brother Jared along with a small team of experts worked on other aspects of the game.

The game itself is largely made up of boss battles that you must clear one by one in order to advance to new levels. In fact, Studio MDHR felt that boss battles were so fundamental to retro style run-and-gun games that they even went about trying to break the Guinness world record for the number of boss battles in a single game. The record currently stands at 25 but Chad and Jared aim to surpass at least 30. However, Cuphead and Mugman will have a plethora or weapons with which to wreak havoc on their enemies. By shooting accurately, an ‘EX’ metre will build up higher and enable you to unleash super attacks.

When playing the game, there is a strong and very real sense that anything can happen. One minute there may be two giant frogs launching projectiles at you, the next, you’ll find yourself in the skies or fighting demented vegetables. But putting the gameplay aside, it is the constantly brilliant and unique design of Cuphead that will keep gamers coming back for more. Its like nothing you’ve ever seen before.