Cuphead has been a long time coming- the game looks fantastic, and has had the eye of many, even people who don’t own an Xbox, for a long time now- but it’s just been in the works for so long, there have been many who have wondered if the game will ever release at all. One of the reasons for the game’s delays has been its expansion in scope- it is now a far more ambitious game than it was when it was announced.
Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, co-creators of Cuphead, and founders of StudioMDHR, spoke to GamesRadar recently, and revealed that the game’s scope now is actually what had been intended all along, but been cut back from owing to the realities of their development team being a three man outfit.
“The reality is, Cuphead is closer now to the game we always wanted,” Chad said. “We aren’t throwing levels in to mollify people, we’re putting them back in after originally cutting them from our ‘dream scope.’
“The truth is that we started Cuphead as a three person team, just working on the weekend. With such a small team we knew to keep our scope small; there were just a few bosses and a couple of weapons and everything was just less insane. We demoed Cuphead at E3 2015 and the response was mind blowing.”
That response led to a desire to make Cuphead the game that they had always wanted it to be- and they decided to take some risks to ensure that it would turn out the way they had wanted it.
“We realized that there were a lot of people out there that wanted what we were doing,” Chad continued. “My brother and I quit our jobs, remortgaged our houses and began expanding the team. This was our chance to actually deliver the game we wanted to make all along, rather than the cut-scope game we originally planned with a three person team.”
In the end, they were able to accomplish what they wanted, and Cuphead looks absolutely fantastic- we can only hope that, in the end, the game lives up to its vision and its hype, and does well for the players who have wanted to play it for so long, and for the creators who poured everything into it. Cuphead launches later this year for Xbox One and PCs.