Cuphead is known for its hand-drawn art style and classic cartoon look, but that’s not all. Those who have played the game understand how incredibly tough it can be. But now that it’s coming to Switch, the experience won’t be made any easier.
In an interview with Kotaku, Cuphead co-director Jared Moldenhauer stated that the team “wanted to let the next wave of gamers experience it exactly how we intended to make it.” He told the site:
“But even though a release on Switch will likely mean more younger or less experienced players being able to try Cuphead, the game won’t be getting any sort of difficulty or balance tweaks, or extra modes, for its Switch debut. As Moldenhauer pointed out during our chat, the game already has an Easy mode, but it’s an abbreviated experience – you don’t get to play every phase of the boss fights, and you can’t play the final stages at all. That decision was made because the studio wasn’t happy with how the game would have played otherwise.” – Kotaku
“Some people wondered if we were going to tweak the balance or really adjust things, and I don’t see that as being fair. We wanted to let the next wave of gamers experience it exactly how we intended to make it.”
“Some patterns and some things became too complicated that you couldn’t tone down the variables to make that playable (in an Easy mode). Essentially, you would be playing nothing… or, there was no joy in it. We tried to reduce it down to what could be easier, yet still a challenge.”
“The end result, where people are a little upset that you can’t beat the game is an homage to the era, that there were just a ton of our favorite games as kids where you’d beat the game on Easy… and it would just be like, ‘now try it on Normal.’ Another aspect to that is, once you’ve built that skill set, going back and seeing more and putting your skills to use, I never had a problem as a kid.”
