Steam Rating: Overwhelmingly Positive (100,000+ reviews) | Metacritic: 88/100 (PC)
Developer: StudioMDHR | Release Date: September 29, 2017 | Steam Price: $19.99
"The Steam community simultaneously bestows Cuphead two honors it has earned completely: "one of the most visually stunning games ever made" and "one of the hardest games I've ever played." What's remarkable is how thoroughly the game earns both. The overwhelming positive score despite descriptions of twenty, thirty, fifty deaths per boss tells you everything: the difficulty is fair, the artistry is real, and the satisfaction of finally clearing a boss you've failed forty times is unlike anything else in gaming.
A Deal With the Devil: The Setup
Cuphead and his brother Mugman make a catastrophic mistake at the Devil's casino — they get on a hot streak, bet their souls, and lose. The Devil, King Dice as his emissary, offers an alternative: collect the soul contracts of all the debtors who owe him across Inkwell Isle. The brothers accept. The hunt begins.
It's a simple premise, but each boss encounter has its own backstory for why they owe the Devil. A pair of gambling frog brothers. An anthropomorphic potato king. A patchwork golem. A genie in an urn. Every enemy is a small character study embedded in their visual design and attack patterns — and every encounter ends with a moment of unexpected pathos as the former debtors are released from their contracts.
Hand-Drawn on Paper: The Most Extraordinary Art Direction in Game History
StudioMDHR — brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, building with a small team — did something no game studio had ever done at commercial scale: they drew every frame of animation by hand, in watercolor and ink on paper, then scanned and composited it into a game. The visual target was the Fleischer Studios output of the 1930s — Betty Boop, Popeye, early Silly Symphonies — reproduced with obsessive fidelity.
The result is staggering. Film grain overlays, simulated celluloid flicker, a sepia "old timey" display mode — Cuphead is not "art inspired by 1930s cartoons." It is a 1930s cartoon that you can play. The music matches: an original big band jazz and swing soundtrack recorded with live musicians, sounding as if it was pulled from an archive reel of Depression-era theatrical shorts.
The cost of this commitment was seven years. Chad Moldenhauer is reported to have sold his house to fund development when money ran low. This is not a side project or a stylistic shortcut — it is the work of people who refused to compromise on a vision, and the result vindicates every year of effort.
The Boss Rush: 28 Bosses, Each a Masterclass in Pattern Design
Cuphead's primary content is its boss roster — 28 fights in the base game, each comprising multiple phases with distinct attack vocabularies. Learning these patterns, internalizing them as reflexive muscle memory, and executing clean runs without getting hit is the entire game.
Early bosses that teach the fundamentals:
- ▶Goopy Le Grande: The gentlest introduction, a simple bouncing goop with a sneaky phase twist
- ▶Ribby and Croaks: The gambling frogs whose slot machine phase randomizes attack types
- ▶Hilda Berg: The first aerial boss — an airship-riding fortune teller that opens up the sky fights
The infamous gauntlet:
- ▶King Dice: The penultimate boss requiring you to defeat a sequence of 18 mini-bosses in a row
- ▶Dr. Kahl's Robot: A fan-favorite brutally complex fight against a giant mechanical contraption
- ▶The Devil: The final confrontation, a spectacular multi-phase spectacle worthy of everything the game builds toward
The typical death count per boss ranges from five to fifty, with some encounters breaking into triple digits for first-time players. And yet the "Overwhelmingly Positive" rating persists, because Cuphead is scrupulously fair. Every attack has a visual telegraph. Every hitbox is honest. When you die, you die because you made a mistake — not because the game cheated. That fairness is what transforms difficulty into motivation.
Weapons, Charms, and Build Customization
Between boss attempts, the shop sells weapons and Charms purchased with coins found in run-and-gun levels:
Weapons:
- ▶Spread: Close-range shotgun burst, devastating at the right distance
- ▶Chaser: Homing shot that auto-targets, freeing attention for dodging
- ▶Roundabout: Reverse boomerang projectile with unusual trajectory math
- ▶Lobber: Slow arcing ball that detonates on contact
Charms modify defensive capabilities:
- ▶Heart: Extra hit point at the cost of a super meter charge
- ▶Smoke Bomb: Invincibility during the parry animation — arguably the best charm in the game
- ▶Twin Heart: Extra two HP, recommended for learning new bosses
Choosing a loadout before each fight — considering what attacks a boss favors, how much mobility you need, whether the fire rate or homing matters — adds a light layer of strategy on top of the execution challenge.
Run-and-Gun Stages and World Exploration
Inkwell Isle's three islands connect through traditional run-and-gun platformer stages — shorter, more accessible than the bosses, and equally gorgeous. Forest paths, aerial balloon rides, haunted mausoleums: each stage is a set piece of 1930s cartoon violence that earns its own place in the game's identity.
These stages also contain the coins needed to purchase gear, making completion worthwhile beyond the S-rank chase. The overworld itself features light exploration with NPCs and secrets that add texture to the world's personality.
The Delicious Last Course DLC
Released in 2022, the DLC expansion adds a fourth island with seven new boss fights and a new playable character: Ms. Chalice. Her unique double-jump, parry dash, and extra HP fundamentally change her movement vocabulary relative to Cuphead. The expansion is sold separately but maintains the exact quality standard of the base game. For anyone who completes Inkwell Isle, it is non-optional.
Survival Guide for New Players
The most important thing to accept before starting Cuphead: dying is not failure. It is the intended mechanism of learning. Each death teaches you one more attack pattern. By death thirty, you know the boss well enough to clear it. By death fifty, you know it well enough to no-damage it.
Essential habits:
- 1Watch before reacting — identify the visual telegraph for each attack before trying to dodge
- 2Use Simple mode legitimately — it lets you see all phases without the full health requirement, perfect for learning
- 3The pink ghost parry is critical — any pink object can be parried for a super meter charge
- 4Co-op mode makes the game more forgiving — a friend's second life is worth dozens of solo attempts
- 5If you're stuck, try a different boss — you're not locked into any order until King Dice
The game has no difficulty setting in the traditional sense — Expert mode removes the timer and changes some patterns for the hardcore, while Simple mode removes a final phase and doesn't grant the "A" rank needed to unlock King Dice. The game gently steers you toward its intended challenge without forcing it.
Final Verdict: An Indie Monument
Cuphead is the product of two brothers spending seven years refusing to compromise. Every element — the art, the jazz score, the boss design, the mechanical fairness — was executed at the highest possible standard. The difficulty will not be for everyone. The patience required to learn twenty-plus boss fight patterns is genuine.
But for those who engage with it, Cuphead delivers something rare: the feeling that a game was made by people who loved what they were making more than anything else. At $19.99, there is nothing in gaming that provides this level of artistic and mechanical craft per dollar.
GamePeak Score: 95/100