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The sad thing is some parts seem very clever, like the trojan horse viruses in the cyber level, and the final space boss being revealed to be a cow, cause in all the oldies cows get abducted by aliens and experimented on. I think this cow got too strong for them and took over, which is really cute. It's a damn shame they wasted their ideas on something so unoriginal and poorly made
@@gabbyn.3049 Makes me wonder if they hit their kickstarter goal what they could have done. if only they were a bit more original,, it had so much potential if they just stretched a tiny bit more
Originally the cow was just a normal alien, but on learning of cows, he dedicated his life to become one. So naturally he went about abducting as many cows as possible to perform experimentation until finally he was successful and transferred himself into a cow's body.
16:57 This boss was actually supposted to have a fountain of youth theme, where he would start as old and grow younger with each phase. That also explains why does he turn into egg at the end. Tbh this could be so much more interesting than what we got, but it’s probably because they didn’t have enough money for the project
ooohh no, nonono, they HAD the time and money to do it, but they use it in changing artstyles, which does ABSOLUTEY nothing for the game, instead of FIXING the actual game, but idk, they saw it, and then said ''fk it, lets put some colors to make it look more interesting''.
@@Caliber30001actually the change in art style is a way to save money, since animation in those styles are cheaper and easier to do. Since it has less frames
Small thing. The part where he says "cartoon mozart" is actually Beethoven. He was such a gigachad, that he pioneered music while being deaf. He would play while sitting on the floor so that he could hear the piano through the vibrations in the ground. Yeah he is the GOAT
The fact Beethoven did all that while deaf is like a chef pioneering the art of baking while being unable to taste; legit super impressive. Not trying to sound mean here but it’s impressive how he could do all that while deaf by finding a solution no one would expect
To be fair, he only became deaf later in life. It goes to show that you don't have to hear the music anymore to compose, if you already know what you are doing. I think it was only the 9th Symphony which he composed while being deaf. It is also his most famous one, with the Ode to Joy. @@Beepers559
And even when he made music, he could continue to produce more and more since he can literally feel music. Beethoven is and was phenomenal for his time.
He was awesome. Back during his time I'm pretty sure not a single person would've expected a deaf person to be able to not only play but WRITE AND PRODUCE music, especially due to the general lack of treatments back then as compared to now. I'm sure he probably inspired many people in his time to power through and achieve their goals, despite any set backs they may see as preventing them. That man wanted to make music, and NOTHING was going to stop him!
Something to note about the original kickstarter stuff: when you look closely, you can tell that the trailer footage is made in like flash or some other animator rather than actual gameplay footage. So all the things that were "scrapped" from it were never actually in the game to begin with. Advertising your game like that is definitely... questionable, to say the least, but it explains a lot on why this game is the way it is. Honestly the fact that they managed to get close enough to that trailer footage that most people didn't notice is kinda impressive in a way (not even a lot of triple A games can manage that when they fake trailers, lol)
I mean considering that the enchanted portals devs literally didn't have the budget to make enchanted portals a better game the trailer could have been what they wanted it to really be only for the game in its final release to turn out not so good
@@georgiepig5726 clearly it was, yeah (and maybe if they reached their kickstarter goal they could've gotten closer). But typically it's never really a good idea to hook people in with a trailer that looks exactly like gameplay while actually being entirely pre-rendered (feels a little like smoke and mirrors, selling people on something that doesn't exist at all). Here it's more excusable since this sort of game is meant to be sold on the animation, which obviously made it into the actual game, but still.
Considering the main artist's tool of the trade was _actually_ flash back in 201x... Yeah, it being mocked up in flash and then served a lie would completely check out.
@@foojo9 They blink after every hit in this game too, they just _also_ blink completely white randomly, which looks bad but it's not like they don't blink after every hit. Idek what you're talking about
Yeah it's definitely undercooked and just a straight rip-off, but... there are some really neat ideas! And some lovely artwork, even if the art direction was just copied from cuphead, it's not easy to make. I kinda hope it's a somewhat bigger team that was working on this, so that the person behind the art and creativity can find a place on a proper project!
@@Kangaroodoo Apparently Xixo Games (the Enchanted Portals devs), are a Spanish studio consisting of only two people. That... makes me feel significantly worse about poking fun at them. This is honestly reasonably impressive for 2 people. I'm going to be honest I felt Skooch went a bit too hard here. There's some interesting ideas and concepts on display, and criticizing elements like "the frog isn't actually holding onto the vial" or "I guess they got lazy and made a ghost version of an earlier boss" is some seriously low hanging fruit.
@SBroproductions ah, thanks for looking into it. Yeah, I do feel like it deserves to be criticised for being such a blatant rip-off, but also that it deserves praise for the things it did itself. The video would maybe be less engaging? Not sure, I think it might have been sweet if he gave credit too (the potion example is such an exception to the rest that it is noticeable, because the other animations are well done). I hope the team will see the positive comments too, despite it now being "popular to shit on".
This game's certainly a game of all time and all that but like, I do genuinely like the idea of that trojan virus enemy. It really does seem like they had a few genuinely neat ideas, but just. Did not know what in the sam-hell was going on. Kinda unfortunate.
Having milk spilled in the background of the space cow boss fight made me chuckle. It's the milky way. I definitely agree with you the artstyle was definitely pretty good
Probably unpopular opinion, but this game looks like it could have been great given a lot more time and polish. It'd still be a Cuphead clone, but it has decent potential to be a decent game on its own if the devs were to work on it a lot more. The visuals are cute and unique at parts where it's more polished and the levels look creative enough. I feel like the game doesn't necessarily have to be as bad as it is, if it gets more care
it’s pretty obvious it’s because they didn’t get enough money form the kickstarter, 20k is shit for a budget of a game, the only thing that they can fix is having saves, that’s it, 20k isn’t enough to make a game. it’s not about “polishing” or “care” lol. it’s all about money here. it’s obvious that the devs tried making somehting good but got screwed over because they didn’t get enough to make a game.
@@poffy02 You're probably right in a sense, especially from their perspective, but I can't help but feel like it does still point some to care. I've seen fan games in the Sonic community done on a budget of $0 (literally can't charge or ask for direct donations for fan games legally) that had more polish than this game, and plenty of other indie games that seemed to be done on a similar budget to much higher quality. And even the Cuphead devs have gone into detail about the financial hardship they had to go through to get the game out the door. As much as I get it and them deciding to leave it like this was a reasonable decision from a personal time and stress persepctive, it's hard to give it a pass on budget alone- at some point it was a choice
Let’s be real, if the game was amazing, we’d be calling it a “Cuphead-like” and hoping that “Cuphead-likes” become the new “Roguelike” or “Metroidvania”. It’s a bad game, but not because it’s copying. That being said, I find this game interesting. I feel like a lot of indie developers struggle with art even though they have good programming skills. This seems like the opposite, a skilled artist who was an amateur programmer.
Ori and Hollow Knight are two examples of great games that borrow from each other but aren't clones. EP is a clone from Cuphead. So much is exactly the same. Shooting being an obvious example.
@thepotatoportal69 Ori 1 was awesome but the shooting was awful so they used elements of HK fighting to make 2 better. Having to find a map guy to get a map and the charms system too. Yes other games have these things but again, borrowing stuff from other games is fine so long as the game isn't a clone. I can only hope that Silksong uses elements from Ori 2 to be great. If it ever comes out that is.
This game started a whole ass discussion in the spanish community, and it's so funny because a lot of animations are straight up copy and pasted from Cuphead but there some serious mf like "Actually all art is derivative therefore this complete and utter knock off is actually ok"
what I don't understand is how they would pay the animators without funding. But looking at their business name, they could probably just ask daddy "Winnie the Pooh best leader" for a little more money. @@Skooch maybe the devs of this game actually care about their players and making good games for players, but they live in a communist hellscape. I guess we'll never know (at least not until the curtain call for this entire fallen world we live in)
@@noskalborg723The devs are from Spain, there are only 2 of them and after the Kickstarter failed I do believe they used an Epic Games Fund but I'm not 100% sure
@@Skoochit is bad but there is only two people working on it and this isn't the first time a game has been copied......... It's still hella over horrendously awful
Lol some of the art is quite charming (the trojan and the mosquitos with syringes are cute, also how in the frog kingdom there's a human princess that becomes a frog princess upon being kissed by one). If they had released this game for like, 2 dollars I actually might not have thought much. Feels like a pretty talented artist just tried to make a game way outside of their design scope and budget tbh. Also pretty sure he turns into a Roman at 17:00 because he's Chicken Caeser. Also I'm surprised his name is "Elbird Breastly", I mean "Elvis Poultry" was right there.
i agree, especially on the pricing bit. i feel like they knew better than to price the game at $24 when they knew it was not up to the same standard as cuphead. had it been five dollars or something, i'm pretty sure everyone wouldn't have been nearly as harsh
It’s hilarious how some people defend the game and say “it’s not a Cuphead knockoff because Cuphead didn’t invent the rubber hose style!” and while they’re right about the style part, they’re clearly missing the point that the game concept, structure, gameplay, animations, AND the art style are all extremely similar to Cuphead to the point where the game just looks like a mod. Definitely doesn’t play like a mod though. Yeesh.
Technically the gameplay mainly just the run and gun stuff and the art style weren't even originally made and done by cuphead cuphead only has the bosses gameplay as its own mainly unique to its own game and it having a similar art style to cuphead doesn't automatically make it bad which i kinda dislike thats one of the things used to hate on enchanted portals like yeah it ain't the best but cuphead didn't exactly originate the art style it uses thats the main and probably only thing i myself would defend enchanted portals on
It's an inspiration fan-made game. Just like those old fan-made games of FNAF, or would you consider those ripoffs as well? This game had potential, but so many people thought that it was a knock-out, so their funding didn't raise enough and they have to complete the game within a small amount of time they had with what they got as opposed to Cuphead.
@@cobbletarts Fan made games tend to be free for a reason. They want to provide extra fun without trying to infringe any rights or step on any toes. Most tend to also advertise the original property and say to please support it. They don’t really harm the main franchise/games in any way and actually can help make the interest in them last longer and not die out as fast. Now, ripoffs want to PROFIT off of someone else’s success. Cuphead did well, so these developers wanted to do the EXACT same styled game with only very minor “twists” to the gameplay and charge for it thinking they could make a quick buck while the game was hot. They even priced their game the same as Cuphead which is just laughable. Luckily, Cuphead will hardly be harmed by this at all because the internet did a great job of explaining that this game is a quick cash grab ripoff of Cuphead and that Cuphead and its DLC are much better and you should support them instead.
@@georgiepig5726 You missed the point, which is ironic because that’s what the comment you replied to is about. The reason it is a ripoff is because they did all the exact same things as Cuphead. Cuphead doesn’t have to own them. But Enchanted Portals still copied them. Period.
Is there ever any explanation for the characters just randomly switching forms during certain phases of the boss battles? i.e. them becoming squirrels during the final boss’ tree phase?
Apparently Enchanted Portals was only able to get funding because of grant money given to a couple indie studios, so I wouldn’t be shocked if either that or their publishing deal locked them into a short deadline.
When this game was announced I was one of the very first people to jump on it. Yeah it was obviously a Cuphead clone, but to me that just meant Cuphead had inspired its own subgenre. To me that didn’t detract from EP, it elevated CH. I made videos on it for reactions, trailer analysis, covering the Kickstarter, and I even interviewed Xixo themselves twice: once after the announcement and again following up with them after the failed Kickstarter. In fact, those interviews are still the highest viewed on my channel. They genuinely came off as passionate creatives who wanted to build something inspired by what they love. Unfortunately even back then I could tell their inexperience was leading to some poor decisions. When I asked them about what inspired their cool boss ideas they pretty much admitted they were just throwing whatever ideas they liked against the wall to see what sticks, which to me conveyed a lack of thorough planning. I had asked them if they’d promote the interviews, to which they said yes, but when I released said interviews and tagged them in the Twitter post all they did was “like” the tweet. When I asked if they were going to retweet it or promote it at all they responded that liking the tweet *was* their promotion, and while they were willing to (figuratively) sit down and interview with anyone who reached out to them, they weren’t going to actively bring attention to it. I still haven’t the foggiest idea why they made the decision to choose to squash free promotion (i asked why this is and brought up how they would repost fanart, to which they said if they shared one interview or news piece they’d have to share all of them and it would clutter their fans’ feeds with similar information they didn’t think was interesting, but they could pick and choose which fan art they liked). Then this odd mentality expanded soon after the Kickstarter failed and they ceased all social media presence for a long time, total silence. It led me to think that maybe the project had fallen through? Only for them to come out of nowhere and drop the next teaser with the native Americans that *really* wasn’t well received (side note: insensitive as it was, I don’t wholly blame them as they’re from Spain and totally divorced from American history. Not saying they couldn’t have done their research, but it’s more understandable as they didn’t have a relationship with the culture being depicted). After that, total media blackout *again* until, well, just prior to the game’s release. I had hopes for this game. I wanted it to be great. I supported it best I could from day one, but sadly they kept making it harder and harder to support them with baffling decisions. The entire thing reeks of two naive, inexperienced but passionate creatives who just got in over their heads and didn’t know how to do any better. I truly hope Daniel and Gemma take this as a learning experience and don’t get discouraged. I, and many others, want them to be better.
Couldn’t have said it better myself. The whole project showed great potential and could have been great, and it’s a shame it didn’t taste success because it’s clear that it was born from passion. Really hope the creators take the whole experience in stride and try to make another game in the near future.
Ya know…when I read this- It’s a bit unfortunate. From what I understand from your posts- this is like a passion project that was a bit wreckless and poorly thought out. Maybe they need to practice and maybe add a genuine unique spin onto this so it’s not deemed as a rip off or plagiarizing cuphead. Also yeesh, the Native American thing you mentioned, they honestly needed to do proper research on that 😬 Very insightful post, adds a lot more dimension and gives more empathy towards the creators.
Great points, though I get not retweeting the interview. Sort of sounds like you had a personally stake in the matter and are just upset they didn't do what you wanted. Too bad the project failed so badly, I do respect their rationale there
“They are sucked into a book after doing some dark magic” is a very accurate description of the entire experience of how I’d summarize many people’s descriptions of playing this game. It’s like you’re a filler character eternally caught in the recurrent collateral damage of someone else’s grand journey in a bastardized Harry Potter novel or film.
Back in the day there was a game called Inner Space that was an Asteroids-style shmup with a customizable ship and it used your file structure and icons from your actual computer to name and depict its levels. Unfortunately it also tried to sell itself on a free trial system but the free trial lasted something like 30 hours and you could do everything in the game in about 10. If you were a sneaky/savvy consumer you could probably also erase whatever file it put on your computer to track the trial running out, but I didn't need to and also I was 8.
Considering it was only 2 people, I'm going to say that it is rather impressive they were able to replicate so many of the elements and honestly, there were some very neat ideas. Still it's no excuse for it but I just think they could have genuinely had a winner if they went for a more distinct approach.
I don't think they made it bad on purpose. Yes, it is without a doubt a cup head rip off. But if you take the fact that the Kickstarter was a huge failure, and add all that flaws in animation, gameplay, and just the whole game itself, I think it just boiled down to a lack of budget. It probably could've been a good game if it had a proper budget. (But that's just the way I saw it)
This game could have been something great. It shows potential in being the stumble guys of cuphead. But instead, it decided to rush production and let Unity get you from point A to point B because they were so desperate to get the game in people's hands. I wish MDHR stole the patent and gave us an actual game.
The most uncanny thing about the game's visuals is that there are a LOT of animations that use a bunch of tweening frames. It has the same unease of those "HD 60fps" remasters of old cartoons that feel TOO smooth, They don't have the typical energy of rubberhose style where the extreme poses and expressions, everything just becomes a wiggling blob. That is, when they're not choppy 4-fps animated sprites or STILL PICTURES MOVING AND ROTATING WITH BASIC FLASH EFFECTS If Cuphead reminds you of the old-timey cartoons, Enchanted Portals reminds you of their soulless remakes that only exist to exploit their fame.
My guess is they would have funding but it still might have had some problems as it seems like they were fans who were artists and not coders; though if they got funding they may have hired some more experienced coders or more people to help carry the weight of the project.
Also fun fact: Cerberus might be the only boss, THE ONLY BOSS, with a legit animated intro, and he doesn’t even have an animation for his body, just his heads Plus I’m surprised enchanted portals has no sound effects for a lot of things, even blue archive has more sound effects and it doesn’t even have sound effects for the enemies shooting
The game looks like it has a lot of really cool ideas, mostly in the design department, with different areas that could be interesting in cuphead if they were altered to look slightly more fitting.
Man I wanna like the animations but so many are unfinished or the style is inconsistent. As a 2D animator myself, consistency is KEY to making it all look good.
@@buster5661 Ouch. I was just talking about his appearance, I wasn't trying to denigrate the man's very existence. Honestly though, if that lazy ass ad-read's any indication you're probably right.
@@lordlasagna5121 I don't know who the fuck that is, I was literally talking about the man's appearance though. And I'm spot on too, it's almost eerie.
"There's no damage animation, they just flash white for a second." "It's the health that's an issue because there's no indication you're getting anywhere." Oh, like Cuphead.
This looks like a game where they made sure to hire good artists for it, got some writers to come up with admittedly clever/neat little things like the trojan virus....and then realized they had no budget left for either game designers or sound designers.
I really like the designs of the bosses... there was a good bit of creativity on tap, but they probably had a better chance contacting the Cuphead dev and bringing them some of their ideas. If Cuphead got a sequel or another DLC, some of these bosses would fit so well. At the least, they could be credited as contributors. Wishfully, they could have a new job at the studio. Either way, they'd have done alot better for themselves being potential contributors than try to rip a game off because it seemed simple enough.
The drowning and the burning ones may have been dark, but when you really think about it, in Cuphead you're a bag man busting kneecaps for Satan and presumably sending the bosses off to face eternal torment.
its sad considering how this game definitely had its unique moments, especially with the way they switched the art style here and there, unsure intentionally or not in some situations but definitely when mentioning the fianl boss being that fucking anime kid- aside that, whether im too easily impressed by that stuff or not, i feel like they could have done way more if not something entirely different with that talent rather than using it to develop an premature knock off
I'm surprised you didn't mention that in a few places the art style randomly changes. In the second phase of the witch boss and the final phase of the last boss the art style of both the boss and player character changes from the Cuphead retro cartoon style to a completely random art style. What's even weirder though is that the art style is different in both cases.
I'll be honest as much as this game looks like Cuphead so does an entire era of animation,as many similarities as you can pick here there are also many differences like the abundance of HUMAN enemies,the distinct lack of any gambling related plot,the level that takes place inside a goddamn SPACESHIP,etc.This is like deciding that Pizza Tower is a Hotel Mario ripoff
I'm gonna be real, 120k is actually kind of a tiny budget. That'd pay for maybe two full-time devs for a year. That is NOT enough man-hours to make a game with a lot of content, especially not one that's doing things like frame-by-frame 2D animation.
It's pretty common for kickstarter to be just a launch pad for the idea of a game, it's something you can show to an investor and say "LOOK, people CARE about this game, this many people paid to see this game come out, now imagine how many more customers will actually buy the game once it comes out" so that they can give you more money to finish the game
Honestly I really hoped this would be good purely so more devs would use a similar art style to Cuphead. Basically this game meant every other indie project using 20s style cartoon aesthetics was way more harshly judged than it would be.
I feel like this is genuinely a case of not having the money to make the game. Kudos to them for actually being able to make something at all with a lot less than they asked for, they clearly had to strip the game to the bare minimum. This is more a proof of concept than a finished game, and as such I think it's pretty good.
They also let the AI make the run and gun levels so if you don’t kill the enemies fast enough they’ll just keep spawning…..also everytime you die the level changes to a completely different layout.
They shouldn’t have made the game 20 dollars, but this video is pretty entitled regardless. Game development is incredibly time consuming and difficult. The fact that you keep mentioning that they don’t include things that were included in the kickstarter is because they didn’t reach their goal! They must’ve been Incredibly upset when they didn’t receive funding, and I’m sure they had to make cuts to get the game finished. Yea, they released it unfinished, but people only ever called it a “Cuphead ripoff”. They didn’t encourage these devs or empower them, they broke them down and used negativity when they didn’t even know what they were talking about. This game was destined to fail, and it’s not all the devs fault.
Despite being essentially just a clone you can tell just now the devs actually care about this project especially with the newest patch fixing some of the biggest problems in the games mechanics you at least gotta appreciate that luxury especially in these modern times
It also likely only released in such a horrible condition BECAUSE of how you can have patches in modern times. I honestly think it was better when they didn’t exist (or were harder to do) so developers took their time more. It also means nowadays we tend to get “free DLC” which is just content that couldn’t be finished in time for release and almost always conveniently releases when the game is losing popularity/player count.
My man, I just finished off a whole bottle of Fireball & like 8 beer cans, and am having a lot of trouble typing this, and even I still know the difference between Mozart & Beethoven.
I agree with most of the things said in this video apart from "even copying the art style and music" like bro... the art style has been around for nearly 100 years and had been used by thousands of companies same with the music it isn't anything new it's just that they put those styles in a game which I'm pretty sure isn't the first time it has been done
Kind of a shit move to play an entire game from a small team just to refund it. You don't have much insightful to say about it either, it gets hard and doesn't have enough sound design. The animation looks pretty nice, its a cuphead clone, but what else did you expect? Not really 'so BAD ITS OFFENSIVE' just seems kind of mediocre.
Exactly. This was clearly done by a few people who were inspired by cuphead. If anything, he's the one ripping other people off. I think the game actually looks good for the resources they had and he's just saying it looks bad for clicks
Honestly, for 20k$ this is impressive work. If they had gotten the pledged 100k$ I think this would have turned out pretty decent. At the very least they delivered more than what some kickstarters that have gotten what they asked for and then some have delivered in the past, I'll give them that.
Why youtubers does this? This game is nowhere "SO BAD IT'S OFFENSIVE", it's just a mediocre rip-off. You could still get your sweet money mentioning it's a inferior cuphead rip-off without pretending that this game bad programming is the same made by the cousin of the fucking puppet combo dev
it's pissing me off how bigger copies of smaller enemies are blurry because they literally just scaled up the image without compressing it in any way. oh my god
Guys, we all owe Enchanted Portals an apology. There's ANOTHER ripoff of Cuphead called Rubber Hose Rampage, and it looks more like a SCRATCH PROJECT than an actual game.
funny enough the 2 devs who are making this game, they are actually updating it! they have released a bunch of patches and are doing a lot better actually which is really cool to see them trying to actually fix it instead of just abandoning the game lol
yeah but its a bit late, when people try a game and leave, they dont often come back see cyberpunk 2077, it used to have bugs, now its one of the best games out there, super polished and fun and has a strong identity while other games are unfocused, yet sadly, a lot of people still never gave it a second try.
I wouldn't say it's a "clone" but rather a fangame of Cuphead that you have to pay for, and it takes most assets from Cuphead & butches those said assets badly. Honestly, I'm hoping the devs of this game use this as a stepping stool to making better games in the future
"The music stopped for a second. Like they used to do on the Nintendo". Nintendo never did this. This only happened in few cd games from ps1 on. It happens MORE in modern indie games than it ever did in NES and SNES, because a less skilled/poorer/time constricted dev will often just play a track on the background.
I bought the game, and wanted to give it a chance. And when it was first announced, I always kept telling people to not to immediately dismiss it for being a clone. Other 'clone' games have been good in the past. Heck, I even played it before I played Cuphead. But yikes, Enchanted Portals is extremely rough, and that's putting it lightly. It's a game made in a much shorter time frame with fewer people, sure, but it needs a LOT of work, and unless they overhaul a lot of it, it might never be fixed.
I mean, I won't lie... I liked a lot of the ideas and visuals in the game. Janky as fuck maybe, but it had an attention to detail (such as the see no evil, speak to evil, hear no evil monkies) that I'd never expect from a fucking chinese ripoff company.
The game looks pretty I'd dare to say better than cuphead, if they actually cared to put in the effort they could have been considered an unofficial spinoff of cuphead :(
