This Cuphead Clone Failed BADLY 

Imagine going through the trouble of animating a game full of characters that fit the Fleischer/Cuphead aesthetic and being dismissed as a no-effort clone. Like sure if the game is rough, the game is rough, but to dismiss it entirely because it uses a recognizable aesthetic is silly. Gamers are the the fuckin worst, man

The worst thing about this game is a lack of something as basic as safe files... Like wtf.

the getting hurt sfx is LITERALLY the stock smack.mp3 file 💀

The worst part is they charge the SAME PRICE as cuphead.

I think the issue was they tried to get too close to cuphead’s gameplay. I wouldn’t mind playing another cuphead-like game, but the point is, like icarus, they flew too close to the sun and burned.

The trailer was CLEARLLY animated, the demo was way diferent of the trailer "YeS bUt iT Is a DeMo" The "Space Cow" fight was way more finished in the trailer. For example the animations were smoother than what we got and had more stuff.

To give them credit: the art style changing between bosses is cool

This game just makes me want to play Cuphead even more over this. What's worse is that they even blocked a guy from giving them criticism on the game like the clunky controls, lack of sfx, music being bland, etc. And they blocked him

My biggest question is why on earth the devs didn’t add a SAVE SYSTEM

I kinda feel bad for the developers, the game had a lot of potential

As someone who's currently dabbling in indie development with a very small team, sometimes you can't just hold onto a game and work on it forever, because funding is a ticking time bomb and there's often real pressure to get the game released or backed so that people working on the game can continue to get paid. I wouldn't at all be surprised if they had to rush this out half-baked because they ran out of funds. The animation style is pretty darn expensive.

And this ladies and gentlemen… is why MDHR took their time.

When they first announced this game, my friend and I predicted the game would fail miserably and we weren't part of any of the backlash. When the game got released, we saw a gameplay of this game, we did not expect it being this worse. With that in mind, I feel like the production of the game is rushed.

The bosses have such fun designs, like genuinely they're genuinely good designs

they really had the balls to price this game as much as cuphead

If they made it more unique, like not a run and gun, I think it'd be better

Great points & video! To be fair to the game, the kickstater being a flop is something that impacted its gameplay/release. That's not to say "if it was funded it would be good/better"- but clearly the developers could not meet their scope with their means & created a product that reflected that. Much of their footage didnt have any sound effects until the final release trailer- so i'm guessing it was a last minute addition. at the very least I applaud them for finishing their product despite the backlash.

I was like “aw it can’t be that bad” 5s later: “NO SAVE SYSTEM?!?”

It's great that you reviewed the actual gameplay mechanics rather than just saying it's a knock-off. It's too bad it's not fun to play, that Tim Burton level looks amazing and a lot of bosses have pretty interesting designs.

I still think it’s funny people say this game ISN’T a Cuphead ripoff. It is. It’s not because of the genre, or the art style, or the boss fights. It’s because the game is structured the EXACT same way with all of those things and didn’t start development until AFTER Cuphead. It is and always was a clone. Now, some of the ideas are fresh, fun, or unique. It’s not soulless. But trying to bank off of Cuphead’s success is what sealed it’s fate.

It just wasn't daring to do more with its concept. The creators weren't really creative. They didn't have to do a rubberhose style, they could have done a different style for each world, but they stuck to it because that's what Cuphead did. Nothing seems cohesive. It's sterilized randomness. "Princess is Frog, Rooster Biker, Space Cow." Cuphead had wacky ideas, but they went through many different ideas into crazy places. They're so close to creativity, but they seem like they stuck with their 1st draft and went with it. I believe that Tim Burton art style change was done out of being unable to do the rest in the rubberhose style.

i wanted so bad for this game to be awesome 😔

I appreciate professional reviews like this. Highlighting flaws in a product without it sounding visceral or bitter. It's great to see that you judge it as a game on its own but even then, it's lacking. It doesn't help that they shadow dropped the game in one of the busiest seasons for game sales aside from the holidays. Unlike Hi-Fi Rush however, this game didn't get any radar from streamers. Heck, I didn't even know this game until I saw a few gameplays of this today. I also agree that this game suffers more as rookie mistakes on the most basic features in games since the late 80s to early 90s aren't here. There's clearly some effort in designing the enemies and backgrounds but does seem to be lacking in important elements like you already listed. If this was a student project that was for a contest, I think people would forgive it more. I would probably say "There some things you need to work on, but I think you got something here." Overall, this video not only gives fair opinions but highlights the basic things you can't ignore when making a game especially as a product you are selling.

"Disasterpiece" Thats one way to describe something

On the topic of the "racist" depictions of natives, I'm reminded of the time when people tried to cancel Speedy Gonzalez fore being "an offensive and harmful stereotype" while every single Mexican I've ever spoken to loves Speedy Gonzalez and never had a problem with him

6:19 oh my gosh all the rigging on that title screen doesn't even loop... look... one thing i can praise this game for is the art style, and the animations are not quite bad, it reminds me a lot of old school cartoons with insane plots and just plain fun, but gameplay is not looking the brightest, i was kinda looking forward to it expecting for there to be... MORE to it, you know? i kinda feel bad for the devs, they had something goin' but, this feels like a game that should have _never_ been published in the state that it is in now.

It's sad because it HAS some really cool ideas I haven't seen done, I just think the Devs needed a bit more funding and Development Experience.

I'm actually one of the people who was watching how this game unfolded since 2020, and I was supportive until recently. I started to notice trouble when they did their little teaser at the Future Games Show event. It had the same intro cutscene they showed twice beforehand, showcased rough animations, and didn't offer a closer look at what unique things the game had to offer. It didn't get any better when their release date trailer showed those "cutscenes". It sucks, because I genuinely find the main magician kids, Bobby and Penny, to be very charismatic, and I was looking forward to playing a fun run 'n gun game as them. To see that squandered really bums me out.

Another bad thing is that the announcement trailer clearly had smoother animations, and the game's versions somehow cut down on the quality hard.

I feel this is incredibly important information to know. They were funded by Epic to finish the project, so yes they did have funding. There’s no excuse for the quality of the game lol

It's ironic how the run&shoot stages in Cuphead were admitedly the worst element from that game (to the point they didn't create any new ones for the DLC) and yet they decided to have those as well, but it becomes obvious they couldn't be bothered to put any curated enemy design in any of them either since they rely on procedural generation wow

I was looking at non-commentary videos I love that you don't get any expressive feedback for both hitting enemies and taking damage. I was actually baffled by how it just cuts to a still image after you beat a boss. I sort of called it when this was kickstartered. The trailer didn't have any fast tempo gameplay like Cuphead making it look like a cheap knock off. But hey, it's inspired guys.

Notice how the trailers have noticeably higher animation quality than the final product?

This brings up a good point about games that no one brings up. Copying a game's style doesn't really matter because it still takes good skill and knowledge to actually make the game good. To put my own experience into this, game designers actually copy each other ALL the time. Every game has inspiration from another game to some degree. This is what is called +1 design. Its a design strategy that most game designers use to make new games where they take aspects from other games and add one thing to their game to shake things up and be unique. Example: Fortnite most likely used this with PUBG or another battle royal game when they were making their battle royal mode where the +1 design was the ability to build, then going on from there.

Honestly showing Sea of stars at the end with the battle that resembles Lavos Spawn fight at the death peak knowing the game clearly took some inspirations from Chrono Trigger was brilliant.

It's so bizarre to me that all the negativity towards this game could of instantly been turned to praise if it was just labelled a "fan-game." I was hoping for a Freedom Planet type of situation but maybe it was just bad timing or being "too blatant" with the inspiration but in the end they didn't deserve this. Granted no matter the backstory no game should be released with a price tag in that state, but judging by said backstory I guess they really didn't have much options.

Dont waste 20$ on this dumpster fire. Play gravity circuit: one of the best indie side scrollers ive ever played.

I'm just gonna make the obvious joke "Mom, can we get Cuphead?" "We have Cuphead at home." *Cuphead at home:*

It’s hard for me to personally feel bad for these guys because it was a doomed concept from the start. Similar aesthetic is one thing and it’d be forgivable if it was JUST the art style but also going for the exact same gameplay is what immediately labels this as a clone. No matter how hard they worked on it it was always gonna be that. No matter how much blood sweat and tears you put into a bad idea, it will always be a bad idea.

They blocked me on twitter when I told them how the game can be improved. I doubt these dev's care about anyone, or anything. Stubborn and arrogant ppl they are.

Wait… I thought they stopped their Kickstarter because they were offered by a publisher who could had fund the game?

to be fair to these guys, i think the art (while a bit generic) is one of their strongest aspects. the character designs are good, the animation is fun and has personality, there’s lots of small great attention to detail and things look smooth. i hope they improve it soon :(

man that king dice mozart goes so hard

the fact that youtube marked this video as a cuphead video in the description is absolutely hilarious

Massive creds to Pogo for beating the game first day. Great dedication! ...with poor reward...

I agree, I was very excited for this game since I loved cuphead and I was ready for another game inspired by that game. But when I got the game and when I played it all the way through, I was not happy with the gameplay, controls, lack of sound effects, etc. Now if the Devs wants to do like a future dlc or something then they might need to get more experience, maybe hire some people to help with all of the problems, and not to rush their projects. The outcome of this game is great way to learn from the developers mistakes and learning from those mistakes can help them do better in future (if they want to keep making more stuff)

I think wearing your inspiration on you're sleeve can turn into a valid indictment if you have NO identity of your own. Gleamlight has a stained glass aesthetic going for it (though it does make it visually busy) and this... like its not just a clone in concept, the artsyle (or seeming lack of cohesive understanding of the artstyle) does not sell it as anything OTHER than 'the game clearly inspired by something else'. I mean we can debate on if their use and depiction of Native Americans was kosher, but I think the very fact that they were relatively inoffensive left me questioning why it was included at all. Thats not me saying it would be better with egregious stereotypes, but that regardless of Natives or Cowboys, the devs thought just a gaggle identical anthro western caricatures was interesting enough of a design... and it really isn't. Cuphead has an actual Cow-girl, wearing a saloon as protection, shooting literal snake oil, getting fried into beef sausage and canned. Its telling that their most creative boss fight is just Beethoven in what's basically a recreation of a classic Tom and Jerry skit. And the thing is, I don't think any amount of time or budget would have fixed these foundational problems, the seemingly insufficient answer to the question of 'why are you making this game?', and they showed though in the kickstarter trailer, which is also why I don't think it not getting funded was just a fluke of bad press, because everyone who WANTED a Cuphead clone and were confident they could deliver would have backed it, in fact the clone comments would be good press for that reason. Cuphead clone wanters, especially the ones with money, don't appear to have been universally confident in the product.

The fact it costs more than Cuphead on steam. It's just not worth it.

As an animator I do have to say I really enjoyed the art style of the game. As a person who works with audio a lot though, most of these sound effects are the generic ones you get on RU-vid that middle schoolers use for their school project.

Oh god I completely forgot about this game lmao I always thought they just cancelled the project entirely after that RebelTaxi vid

At this point the game devs should have just released all the assets for sale and let others create games with them. 😅

The game is too small And the cost 20 € or dollar Ok cuphead cost 20 € But cuphead has more boss More levels More weapons A series and a dlc

man i was hoping it would be something good and there would some good bosses

I feel like a good example for an indie game that takes heavy inspiration from another series while still being generally fun to play would be Pizza Tower, it's very obviously modeled around Warioland, but the gameplay itself was actually good because the controls were made with the player's enjoyment and ease of motion in mind. It didn't matter that the forumla had already been done before, what mattered was the actual game's quality.

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.

This is a case where the devs spent too much time working on the quantity. If they ditched the run and gun levels and just worked more on the bosses, the game could've been fun even if it's significantly shorter

When I saw that it released I was immediatly waiting for this video 😆

The fact that some enemies look blurrier along with everything else looking clearer than the background itself is honestly an insult to animation and art.

The issue is that many indie devs bite off more than they can chew. That’s why my company’s first game is small.

I love how pizza tower music is being casually used as background music

This game lowkey looks like a flash game.

ive done pre release feedback for small developers and frequently i hear " you were the only one that gave us genuine feedback". It's hard for people to give honest feedback to indie devs

Now that thumbnail is probably the best one I’ve seen in awhile!

the only thing i don't like about the game is that there's no video cutscenes, of course photo cutscenes could work, but this doesn't feel that it needs the photo cutscenes, it needs the video cutscenes.

Thanks for not holding back on this game, so many people see fit to try and shield the game from criticism just because it has little people working on it, and i just find it baffling that they're going do far just to push the small man narrative.

The bats at the start of the video sure have sone quiet echolocation Lets forget about the fact that the player has a stock punch sound effect when hit

Lies of P mentioned! It's off topic, but that game deserves so much recognition. Currently most anticipated game this year.

I had a glimmer of hope that maybe this game could be great. It sadly turned out to be at the level of quality everyone expected.

The developers can't catch a break 😭

I remember watching the trailer when it came out and seeing all the comments calling it a "Cuphead clone", and to be honest, I didn't really care if the game was a clone or not, because at the end of the day, you can still tell that the people behind this game worked on it passionately, despite all the hardships they faced along the way.

Even worse is that theres 2 very clear animations that are practically ripped right from cuphead, the dash and the jump animations are almost exactly the same.

love how he sensores Oney's tweet for no reason

The "It's just more Cuphead! You like Cuphead don't you? So you should like this game" people are looking stupid as hell right now

Honestly, the whole Native American issue could’ve been played off as referencing the offensive depictions many older cartoons had when it came to depicting minorities.

As a POC, I was furious when the internet tries to get rid of the pancho/sombrero outfit in Mario Odessey. No we weren't offened, we were thrilled! So stop witchhunting

Its SO absurd to me because if all of these assets are made by them ( I'm not... fully sure about that, since the assets don't really all match? but I can't tell if that's because multiple artists worked on it ) but the art, especially background details like the haunted trees, are earnestly nice homages to the time period and pretty finished looking, but all together its just riddled with amateur-isms. Game wise and art wise. It really gives me this vibe of like a moderately above par first year animation student recklessly deciding " Hey, I know how to animate, why don't I make Cuphead? How hard could it be?" But they don't really have the essentials down. Like, the most fluid looking animations are the clearly "traced" ( or, probably heavily referenced ) stuff, like the walking animation for the main characters ( smooth, fullbody walking animations are hard to do, so if anything was going to be directly referenced it'd be that ) but a lot of the animations, like the dangling spiders, are at best 6 frames per second and probably only 4 unique frames total, which means that almost certainly not everything in the game is animated at a consistent or even similar frame rate-- which is a huge lack of consideration and definitely an amateur thing to do. This is a problem that would literally be incapable of happening anywhere but a modern medium like a video game, so it looks extremely off in something trying to resemble an old cartoon. There's also tons of things that indicate this was clearly not done as authentically as cuphead, which I doubt they even advertised it being so I know, but it does explain why so much of it looks so much cheaper and unpleasant than Cuphead's authentic hand-drawn, light box and pencil animation style. Doing things authentically does matter with an art style like this. There's a certain uncanny, unnatural movement quality that a lot of digital animation gets when shortcuts are taken either using Flash or artificial tweening, and in this case it appears to be something as simple as animating in a digital program in a way that involves moving an asset ( a limb on a joint ) pixel by pixel in an impossibly clean way with little to no bounce, which actually makes animation look a bit worse. But I could overlook that-- one huge problem appears to be that, again with the spiders as an example but also the bats, the animation appears to be rigged on an object maybe too big for the original art and so they seemed to have chosen to just artificially stretch it to fit?? Which is what's causing that ugly blurring and displacement from the scene on a lot of the characters. And why do the color coded enemies have this default air brush, completely high contrast, ms paint glow to them..... Anyways I'm rambling, I'm sure you can just look at it and tell they didn't do it right, but I'm fascinated by how much they did wrong and for so much effort only to make something that was doomed to not be well liked. But that sort of explains the whole bad clone game phenomenon, if you were capable of engineering /every/ facet of your game's design, you'd make something unique to you without relying on a reference by necessity to fill the holes in your understanding. There is a difference between a loving homage built on the deep understanding of a genre and using an existing thing as a crutch. Cuphead was a loving homage to old animation and retro shootem-ups, this is a poor photo copy of someone else's loving homage. They did not actually grasp the tenants of what made that old animation so great, they don't have the means or personal ability to recreate it, and so they could not capture it's heart, its charm, its nostalgic quality. I know a lot of people would defend this and feel empathy for the creators, say what great potential the project had for trying to exist at all, but frankly, I think its quite obvious they shouldn't have attempted to do this at all. It was nothing more than a great waste of time and money far outside their means or experience. Btw, I know animation, not game design quite as much, but it is baffling that there is no mid-air steering, because that has to be a deliberate choice. It takes more programming to disable movement when jumping then to just leave it enabled in my experience, so that choice in a 2D platformer is so weird....

Everyone who's playing palworld right now owes this game an apology

I'm hyping for someone to talk about it , all your knowledge helps me a lot and I'm thankful for that , the game is still less bossess and I'm feel like it's a another Cuphead copy and paste art styles

i think the part at 6:50 kind of shows that there was room to do something slightly original with the artstyle to kind of distinguish it but they just didnt feel like it

Most certainly a game of all time 🎉

I think the main thing that basically buried this game was the fact that it was announced I believe a few months after cuphead was released (I could be wrong on that so feel free to correct me). If it had came out at least a year or two after cuphead, then people likely would’ve treated it better. It could’ve also helped if they instead showed the game with a unique style and premise rather than just copying the same style of gameplay as cuphead did, Billie Bust Up is a great example of this

Is like bullying a plant, when you bully a plant, it won’t grow well but when you give the plant some encouragement, the plant will grow fine and healthy

I actually wanted to like this game. But from day ONE I knew the game would turn out like this; I could tell Enchanted Portals was focusing too much on trying to BE Cuphead while not focusing on making a good game.

Unlike Terraria, this game tries so hard to be the thing it gets inspired by (and fails) while also lacking it's own personality. Honestly it deserves all the criticism that is getting.

Personally i just wish they did more with the Beethoven boss. It's definitely my favorite boss, i‘d say it has the potential to be better than pretty much all cuphead bosses. Im a classical pianist and as soon as i saw that i was instantly intrigued but i was quickly disappointed because the boss is too short and too easy, i think they actually animated the piano correctly (Also i think that that picture on the wall is supposed to be Hayden, he was Beethoven's mentor. I don't believe Beethoven had a picture of him on his wall but it's still a detail worth mentioning)

If your entire selling point of a game is "it's Cuphead" but lacks everything that made Cuphead good, people would rather just play that game instead of this.

Holy smokes, I forgot Gleamlight existed till it was mentioned here. I recall their being so much discussion around it a few years ago and now it’s just been forgotten to time

Well there is another cuphead inspired game on the switch besides this game, I forgot what it was called but it's a pumpkin as the main character, everything is black & white, I think kind of pixelated, and if I find it I make an edit Found it, and on switch for 2.99 Edit: "Once Upon a Time on Halloween"

It kinda looks like one of those archaic flash games.

This is a case study for the need to do small projects before doing a full game. The lacking a save system wouldn't have happened if they instead made 1 small free game(Effectively a demo but purely for practice aka an "internship" game) to test and get an idea of whats needed for a game to work and what work well with what. A lot of good indie devs started off making small fan games/small one off free games just to learn how to make games such as Tobifox who had made romhacks before going up to make some small fan games then eventually was skilled enough to make Undertale and delta rune.

0:31 i didn't know Oney tweeted that, that's funny.

To be honest, I just feel bad for the developers. Everyone was against them and it feels like they just gave up and released them game judging by the lack of saves and poor sound design.

When I first saw the trailer, I could totally see the cause for backlash regarding the animation, but I was still hyped. Finally something hugely inspired by Cuphead that could probably start a trend of Cupheadlites/cuplites. Sadly I saw a gameplay video 2 days ago and was hugely disappointed. Till now I keep asking myself, what the heck went wrong? I know development must have been rough, but they had enough years to polish the game, so why?🙁 I really wish they end up polishing the life out of the game and worked on the fixes in the overall gameplay and sound design, it has enough potential to be better, not like this.😥

I'm sick of people defending the developers by gaslighting critics of the game. "People just hated on it because it's a clone"- No, people hated on it because it's a clone that's way too derivative of its inspiration, at times to the point of borderline plagiarism (the airplane phase of the robot cow boss is too similar to Cuphead's Dr. Khal's Robot for me to think it was a coincidence). Do I think they were deliberately trying to steal from Cuphead? No. I think they simply wanted to make something like Cuphead but weren't creative enough to come up with something more original. "Cuphead didn't create run and gun platforming or old rubberhose animation you know." Yeah no shit, and I doubt the majority of the people who hated on this game thought it did. Thing is, the developers didn't have to make it a run and gun platformer- or a platformer at all for that matter; and they didn't have to use an old cartoony art style either- they could have used a different art style. To their credit, they do use various different art styles in the released game, but it's such an under baked and poorly executed idea that it doesn't add anything to the game. Honestly, they should have made this aspect the main sell of the game- "Cuphead, but with various different artstyles", but I suspect they only implemented this after the backlash in an attempt to make the game less derivative of Cuphead. Ultimately, the developers' critical error was making the game so similar to Cuphead that it felt unoriginal and derivative. They were practically inviting the backlash. Plus, not a fan of how this guy casually dismisses the claims of racism regarding the stereotypical Native American outfits certain characters were originally wearing like there's no issue here. The main issue for me is that this was done in service of depicting those characters as antagonists, which (intentionally or not) evokes an ugly history of Native American persecution that old stereotypical portrayals like this were used to justify. This is another way in which Cuphead is way better. The Moldenhauers went out of their way to avoid using any designs that could be considered racist and were pretty successful in that- So much so that the claims of racism Cuphead did get were- rightfully, written off as unfounded. This game in contrast bumbled it's way (to give the developers the benefit of the doubt) into actually doing something racist so the accusations have more merit here.

I really hope they don’t stop making games all together because of all of these videos. I hope they listen to the videos and try to get better at what they want to do. I think they really wanted to make a good game, I hope they can take and listen to the criticism without getting really angry or just calling them haters. I honestly hope they keep trying!

i hope they fix some of this since this is constructive critisism

I think we can all agree that its definetly a game

I can only.hope the developers take a look back. Consider their options and make a better product My knowledge this is there first project and I gotta say most first projects don't end up actually being like this. They have shown they are willing to put time and effort so I can only hope that effort will be on a better product

7:17 That must be an NFT or godforbid, inspired by one

S O U L L E S S