Cuphead is a “run & gun and fighting game hybrid” from Studio MDHR that looks brilliant in motion, it honestly looks like the kind of stuff you’d see coming from Walt Disney’s own hand back in his early days of animation. The game is coming to PC (and possibly Playstation 4 and Xbox One after the core game is finished) this year, and I can’t really contain my excitement for this game.

Just watch some footage of it and try not to walk away impressed to some degree:

Doesn’t it look very reminiscent of the older stuff put out by Disney? I definitely think so. Check out an official blurb about the game below, as other information is a bit scarce at the moment:

With Cuphead, we aim to evolve the genre by adding new features such as: super arts, infinite lives, a playable world map and hidden secrets. In addition to that, we will have refined controls, additional boss patterns on harder modes and balanced weapons to equip (that you don’t lose!). We plan to release 10-15 bosses per episode and end up with over 30 bosses. If all goes as planned, we will defeat the current “Guinness World Record for Most Boss Battles in a Run and Gun Game”[25 total]).

Clearly, the game’s focus is with one on one combat fighting on a 2D plane, but the game also features 2 player co-op with the second player taking up the helm of Mugman. While the core game is a 2D brawler of sorts, the team at MDHR is definitely looking to feature a myriad of genres, namely shmups (shoot ’em ups), some more platforming focused fights, and a hilarious nod to the extremely long, unskippable cut scenes found in some Japanese RPGs.

While they cite games like Contra and Mega Man, they want to avoid the memorization based gameplay featured in several of the classic 2D shoot ’em up/brawler games. To achieve this, they’re integrating variance into the gameplay by rearranging certain pattern orders in replays, using arrays on individual attacks to mix up combat, adding options to proximity attacks to avoid  trapping, and more. MDHR is definitely thinking the core game’s mechanics through and through, which will hopefully equate to a brilliant gameplay experience to match that art style they’ve nailed.