Cuphead
2017
- shooter
- platform
- adventure
- indie
- arcade
- action
- fantasy
- comedy
- single player
- multiplayer
The story
Cuphead is a run-and-gun action game focused primarily on boss battles. Its visual style is modeled after 1930s cartoons, using traditional hand-drawn cel animation, watercolor backgrounds, and original jazz recordings. Players control Cuphead or Mugman in single-player or local co-op, traversing themed worlds, acquiring new weapons, and unlocking super moves. The game includes both boss encounters and side-scrolling platforming stages.
What it’s like
Rubber-hose cel animation that wobbles and bounces like a 1930s short, set against watercolor backdrops of dusky carnivals, sea-bitten docks and storm-grey islands, all scored to looping hot jazz and vaudeville brass that sounds like a crackling gramophone. The palette runs warm and slightly sepia, with ink outlines and paper grain that make every frame look painted by hand. Movement has a snappy, elastic weight, and the sound of a shot or a dodge lands with a percussive click that rewards precision. Bosses arrive as huge, theatrical set pieces, often rendered as whole-screen spectacles of pirates, demons, sharks and grinning machines, so the mood swings between playful and tense in a single breath. Its intensity is cartoonish rather than gory: frequent deaths, a constant stream of projectiles and sudden fail states, but no blood and no real cruelty, with the sting kept light and comic. Pacing is brisk and punishing, a rhythm of sharp attempts, short respawns and hard-won victories. It suits a late-evening session with headphones, a stubborn streak of retry-after-retry patience, or an hour of couch co-op with a friend. It's for players who love hard run-and-gun challenge wrapped in a nostalgic, storybook charm.
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