Action · 2017 · Studio MDHR Entertainment Inc. · local
Cuphead
A hand-drawn cartoon from 1935 — and it wants you dead.
What it is about
Cuphead and Mugman rolled dice with the devil and lost. To keep their souls they are sent to collect other debtors' contracts — which means taking on their owners, one after another.
That becomes a chain of boss fights, each its own little set piece with several transformations: the flower that looked sweet a moment ago is a tower two phases later. Between them sit a few classic platforming stages and a map where you pick your next victim.
Everything about it is handmade: drawn frames, watercolour backgrounds, a big band on the soundtrack. With two, the second player is Mugman, can catch the other on the way down — and at the same time adds more movement to an already crowded screen.
Our verdict for couples
Every single frame is drawn by hand, and so the first impression is affection. The second arrives about forty seconds later, when a dancing potato catches you both in the same spot for the seventh time. Playing as a pair does not make it easier but harder, because there is more happening on screen — in exchange you can catch each other mid-fall, and a particular kind of heroism grows out of that. It carries a whole evening if you both enjoy practising the same spot twenty times over. If only one of you does, the other sits beside them twenty times.
Pros
- Every frame is drawn by hand
- A fight lasts minutes, not hours
- The second player can catch the first on the way down
Cons
- Very high demands on reflexes
- Two players make it harder, not easier
- The easy mode does not unlock the second half of the game
Suitable from
Gamer
- Conflict potential
- Heated
- Cosiness
- Draining
- When you can stop
- Any time
- How long it lasts
- 5–15 hours
What other co-op fans say
The community revolves almost entirely around two things: how hard it is and how good it looks. What stands out is that the two are almost never played off against each other — several people say in effect that they got angry at themselves rather than at the game, because every defeat stays legible. Little is written about playing together; where it is, it comes as a memory of long evenings at one screen. Anybody after a cosy session is warned throughout.
- “Crushingly difficult, yet still fair.”
- “the more you lose, the more you learn”
- “good game but still very hard and some bosses seem rigged”
Summarised by machine from 60 Steam reviews, not written by our editors. The quotes appear verbatim in those reviews.
If you like this one
Runs on the same devices as this game.
Turnip Mountain unreviewed
A climbing game where the two of you share one character — an arm each.
Terraria
Dig out a two-dimensional world, build it up, and clear its bosses one at a time.
SpeedRunners 2: King of Speed unreviewed
Rating to comeA race on one screen — fall behind and you are out.
Two people, one chain, one tower upwards. Whoever falls takes the other one with them.
Related in the magazine
- Guide
When you're both good at this
Almost every co-op recommendation is written for uneven couples — including our last one. For two experienced players the problem inverts: difficulty isn't what's missing. Needing each other is.
- Guide
When one of you never plays
The usual advice is: pick something easy. It is wrong, and wrong from both directions. What actually helps are four design patterns — and a list of what does not.