Cuphead
| Cuphead | |||
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| Studio |
 StudioMDHR |
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| Publisher |
StudioMDHR |
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| Senior Developer | Chad Moldenhauer Jared Moldenhauer |
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| composer | Kristofer Maddigan | ||
| Erstveröffent- lichung |
Windows, Xbox One: September 29, 2017 macOS: October 19, 2018 Nintendo Switch: April 18, 2019 PlayStation 4 July 28, 2020 |
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| platform | Microsoft Windows , Xbox One , macOS , Nintendo Switch , PlayStation 4 | ||
| Game engine | Unity | ||
| genre | Shoot 'em up , jump' n 'run | ||
| Game mode | Single player , co-op mode | ||
| control | Mouse , keyboard , gamepad | ||
| system advantages preconditions |
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| medium | Download | ||
| language | Chinese , German , English , French , Italian , Japanese , Korean , Portuguese , Russian , Spanish | ||
| Age rating |
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Cuphead is a shoot-'em-up - video game , that of the Canadian development studio has been developed StudioMDHR Entertainment and published. In the role of the title character "Cuphead" (in German: Tassilo) the player fights against various bosses in order to settle a debt with the devil . The game is strongly based on cartoons from the 1930s, in particular on the work of Walt Disney and Max Fleischer and the surrealism used as a stylistic device. Cuphead was released on September 29, 2017 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox One . A version for macOS followed on October 19, 2018 . A port for the Nintendo Switch was released on April 18, 2019 and the video game was released for the PlayStation 4 on July 28, 2020 .
Gameplay
Cuphead is a shoot-'em-up game with a walk-through level selection, as is also found in games from the Mario & Luigi series. The individual levels consist almost exclusively of boss fights , which can be divided into several phases. The character can fire shots continuously and has a jump and swing ability that can be used at any time. The player can also buy new weapons and amulets, which can be paid for with coins found in the individual levels. Amulets give the character special abilities or additional life points. As the game progresses, the player unlocks so-called "super" attacks. A total of six weapons, six amulets and three "super" attacks can be earned. The characters have the ability to parry certain attacks. After five consecutive parries, the player can perform a “super” attack. The game also has a local co-op mode that allows a second player to be involved in the battles. However, this also makes the game more difficult.
action
On the fictional island of Inkwell Isle , which is inhabited by anthropomorphic objects, the two cups Cuphead and Mugman live as carefree children under the care of a cauldron called Elder Kettle . Contrary to the warnings of the boiler, the two brothers visit the casino of the devil , that of a tuxedo carrying cube called King Dice is headed. When the two siblings are on a lucky streak, he calls the devil who comes to the gaming table and wants to increase the stakes: should the brothers win again, he will leave the entire casino to them. Should they lose, however, they must give their souls to the devil .
Cuphead rolls a pair of ones and loses the bet. The cups have to give up their souls according to the agreement. When they begin to beg for mercy, the devil negotiates a deal with the two of them: they are to collect the souls of all the devil's debtors who have bequeathed them to him, and he may leave them both in peace. They go back to the Elder Kettle , who gives them a potion that they can use to fire shots from their fingers.
The brothers finally travel across Inkwell Isle and collect the debt contracts of residents who have also lost their souls to the devil. Once they have done their job, Cuphead and Mugman head to the Devil's Casino, where King Dice reveals to them that he too lost a bet against the Devil. It is implied that it was a bet whether the two could really do their job. He eventually competes against her in another boss fight and loses. The devil finally appears and orders the brothers to hand over the contracts and join his team. The player now has the choice to hand over the contracts or to refuse. When he hands over the contracts, the devil turns Cuphead and Mugman into his dark lackeys , and the game is over.
If the brothers refuse, they must defeat the devil in a final battle. After a comedically exaggerated battle in which the cups emerge victorious, the devil promises to let them go. They burn all the contracts they have collected and rush home. There they explain to the inhabitants of the island that they are now free and that the devil no longer has control over their souls. They are celebrated for their heroism and the game ends.
development
Cuphead is the first game from StudioMDHR Entertainment, an indie video game studio made up of brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer. They worked with Jake Clark to create the animation. Development of the game began in 2010, and the three developers worked on it from their respective homes in Toronto , Ontario, and Saskatchewan . The game was inspired by the cartoons of Fleischer Studios , Disney and the cartoonists Ub Iwerks , Grim Natwick and Willard Bowsky , especially with regard to their surrealistic elements. Chad Moldenhauer called the Fleischer Studios the " magnetic north of his drawing style".
The Moldenhauer brothers saw a lot of cartoons from the 1930s in their youth , which Chad Moldenhauer describes as a coincidence, as it was mainly about gifts and VHS compilations. Like some of their other siblings, they liked the aesthetics of the films and developed an interest in gameplay . The two tried their hand at a game like Cuphead back in 2000 but didn't have the tools to continue development. The brothers decided to try again after Super Meat Boy , also produced by an indie studio in 2010, proved very successful. The character of Cuphead is based on a 1936 animated film in which a man with a teacup for his head transforms into a tank . The Moldenhauers mimicked the animation because it struck them as weird and “stuck in their memory”. The brothers had previously tried their hand at a kappa with a cylinder , as well as characters with plates and forks as heads and around 150 other designs.
The animation technique behind Cuphead is similar to that used in cartoons from the 1930s. Chad Moldenhauer, who had previously worked as a graphic designer, drew the animations by hand and painted the backgrounds. He colored the characters in Photoshop . The gameplay of Cuphead runs at a frame rate of 60 fps, the animation at 24 fps. This is one of the differences between the game and traditional animation. Chad Moldenhauer saw his human error approach as a reaction to the perfectionism of digital drawing. His brother Jared Moldenhauer worked on other aspects of the game, while the gameplay was a collaborative effort. The studio hired a Romanian developer, an illustrator from Brooklyn , and a jazz musician from Ontario to work on Cuphead . According to their own statements, when recording the music, they tried to imitate the recording process from that time.
The Moldenhauers described Cuphead as a difficult retro game with an emphasis on gameplay versus plot. The US game magazine Kill Screen described the developers as "obsessed" with the basics of the shoot-'em-up genre such as "animations and exploits and hitboxes ". During development, some elements of the gameplay were completely revised several times, in particular the behavior of the character at corners and the time for which the player is unable to act after a hit. They planned several levels of difficulty and decided not to write a typical virgin-in-need story, but rather to make Cuphead himself the cause of his own problems. The developers wanted their game to enter the Guinness Book of Records by breaking the record for most boss fights in a shoot-'em-up game, which was 25 by getting over 30 bosses in the Built in game.
publication
The game was screened during the Xbox press conference at Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014 and was favorably received by the audience, but was not available for play. The game's artwork was around 40% complete in July 2014. Cuphead is expected to be expanded with DLCs that will each contain 10 to 15 bosses, similar to the games in the Sonic & Knuckles series. Cuphead was released internationally on September 29, 2017 for Microsoft Windows and Xbox One , and for macOS in October 2018. The game was released on consoles exclusively for Xbox, and supports Xbox Play Anywhere . The game was developed based on the Unity game engine.
reception
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Before publication
Ben Kuchera of American website Polygon wrote that Cuphead was one of the five most interesting announcements at Microsoft's press conference at E3 2014, although not much was known about the game except for the design. He wrote that it "stood out immediately" and that each participant responded instinctively to the trailer. The game won IGN's 2015 Best Xbox One Game at E3 award .
After release
Cuphead was largely positively received by the critics, with a rating of 89% (PC) and 87% (Xbox One and Switch) on the Metacritic site .
Awards
- Best Art Direction
- Best Independent Game
- Best Debut Indie Game
- Best Score / Music (nominated)
- Best Action Game (nominated)
- Outstanding Achievement for Character Animation in a Video Game (Hanna Abi-Hanna)
- Outstanding Achievement for Character Animation in a Video Game (Tina Nawrocki) (nominated)
- Outstanding Achievement in Animation
- Outstanding Achievement in Art Direction
- Outstanding Achievement in Original Music Composition
- Game of the Year (nominated)
- Action Game of the Year (nominated)
- Excellence in animation
- Excellence in Art
- Excellence in design
- Excellence in Musical Score (nominated)
- Excellence in Visual Achievement (nominated)
- Most Promising New Intellectual Property (nominated)
Game Developers Choice Awards 2018
- Best debut
- Best Visual Art
- Best Audio (nominated)
British Academy Games Awards 2018
- Music
- Artistic Achievement (nominated)
- Debut Game (nominated)
- Original Property (nominated)
- Best soundtrack
- Better than expected
Golden Joystick Awards 2017
- Best visual design
- Best Xbox Game of the Year
Global Game Awards 2017
- Best visuals
- Best platformer
Web links
- official website
- Cuphead at MobyGames (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Mike Suszek: 1930s cartoon-inspired Cuphead targeting late 2014 on PC . In: Joystiq . AOL Tech . January 4, 2014. Archived from the original on August 8, 2014. Retrieved on August 2, 2014.
- ↑ a b c d Clayton Purdom: Cuphead is roughly 40% done, but hey, it's gonna be a trilogy . In: Kill Screen . July 3, 2014. Archived from the original on August 2, 2014. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved August 2, 2014.
- ↑ Chris Kohler: This Is the Most Adorable, Brutally Difficult Game at E3 . Retrieved June 17, 2015.
- ↑ a b c Jenna Pitcher: Cuphead is a game. Watch it, view it . In: polygon . Vox Media . June 9, 2014. Archived from the original on August 2, 2014. Retrieved on August 2, 2014.
- ↑ a b c d e f g Clayton Purdom: Where Did Cuphead Come From? . In: Kill Screen . July 14, 2014. Archived from the original on August 2, 2014. Retrieved on August 2, 2014.
- ^ John Callaham: Check out how the Cuphead team brings its animations to life . Windows Central. April 13, 2016. Retrieved April 13, 2016.
- ↑ Charlie Hall: Cuphead wont be coming to Playstation 4 . In: polygon . July 4, 2017. Retrieved July 4, 2017.
- ↑ Ben Gilbert: Cuphead: Bringing 1930s style to 21st century games . In: Engadget . AOL Tech . July 10, 2014. Archived from the original on July 3, 2015. Retrieved July 3, 2015.
- ↑ Jonathon Dornbush: Cuphead Delayed to 2017 . In: IGN . Point Davis . October 11, 2016. Archived from the original on October 11, 2016. Retrieved on October 12, 2016.
- ↑ a b Cuphead for PC Reviews . Metacritic . Retrieved October 2, 2017.
- ↑ a b Cuphead for Xbox One Reviews . Metacritic . Retrieved September 29, 2017.
- ↑ a b 4Players review by Cuphead , 4players.de, last accessed on November 10, 2017
- ↑ GamePro review by Cuphead , gamepro.de, last accessed on November 10, 2017
- ↑ Gamestar review from Cuphead , gamestar.de, last accessed on November 10, 2017
- ↑ a b Joe Skrebels: Cuphead review . IGN . October 2, 2017. Retrieved October 2, 2017.
- ↑ PCGames review by Cuphead , pcgames.de, last accessed on November 10, 2017
- ↑ Ben Kuchera : Five of the most interesting reveals of the Xbox press conference . In: polygon . Vox Media . June 9, 2014. Archived from the original on August 2, 2014. Retrieved on August 2, 2014.
- ↑ IGN's Best of E3 2015 Awards . In: IGN . Point Davis . June 16, 2015. Archived from the original on July 2, 2015. Retrieved July 2, 2015.
