Cuphead. The indie darling that took the gaming industry by storm in 2017. Known for its incredible and original cartoon aesthetic and difficult gameplay, it’s certainly a unique experience.
There’s just so much to love here and it’s all executed masterfully. Even so, there’s one major element of Cuphead I don’t see brought up very often and that’s the music.
A diverse selection of smooth jazz tunes and bombastic big band instrumentals behind the crazy gameplay not only makes for a delightful soundtrack both in-game and out, but affects the visuals and gameplay as well, making it my favorite game soundtrack of 2017.
But there’s more to these catchy tunes than meets the ear. Because they don’t just mess with the game, they mess with your mind. So let’s take a deeper look and try to find out how and why the music makes Cuphead even harder than you might think.
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I’d like to start by demonstrating how the music and animation in Cuphead interact with one another. Over the course of the game, players may notice that certain bosses and even regular enemies in the run and gun stages actually dance to the music being played. This includes Cagney Carnation, the cyclops, Cala Maria, and a few others.
The thing about these bosses is that while their bodies dance to the beat of the music, some of their attacks don’t. Let’s start by taking a look at the stage Floral Fury.
Not only is the samba music infectiously catchy, but it’s so good that this sunflower of a bitch over here is dancing to it while you fight him. This continues throughout the entire round, but it doesn’t just add another great element to the visuals, it also completely messes with the player’s head while playing.
You see, while his movements are set to the beat of the music, his attacks aren’t. The falling obstacles, the little spores he shoots out, the vines that grow from the bottom of the screen, all of these are done at seemingly random intervals over the course of the match. So while his dancing gets the player into a rhythm, the attacks go off rhythm, causing the player to screw up.
When the player is keeping the beat in their head, it means they’re more likely to jump or move on that beat as well, and while he shoots projectiles to the beat, they actually fall pretty slowly. This results in the player being more likely to mistime their jump. This is partially why Cagney is commonly considered the most difficult boss in world 1.
Moving forward all the way to world three we can see another example of a rhythm getting in the way of our timing with the cyclops at the end of Rugged Ridge. Head into the castle and not only does our buddy over here dance to the music, but the stage also begins to auto scroll requiring the player to jump from platform to platform while escaping. Here, the music is used both as a tool to help the player and a trick to hurt them.
When the cyclops jogs, he does so to the beat of the background song. He destroys the walls, hurts the player if he hits them, and generally makes this section pretty tricky. What makes it even worse is that the platforms come at the player at varying heights and an inconsistent rate, and the auto scrolling is much slower than the player’s probably going to want to move.
By following the steps of the score, the player is much more likely to assume they need to jump on the beat, even if there aren’t any platforms available at the time. Making this worse is the fact that the representation of the beat, the cyclops, gets closer, adding elements of urgency and tension to the soundtrack.
However, the player may also turn the tables and instead use the big guy’s pre-calculated movement against him. As the cyclops swings his arms through the air to the beat, it allows the player to get a sense of timing for his steps. By using both their eyes and their ears, they can look to the right side of the screen for coming platforms while listening to the music for cues on when to dodge the cyclops. It all comes together with practice and experience, something anyone who’s played this game knows all too well.
Moving back to world 2 it’s time for a completely different challenge. If you thought preventing yourself from moving to the beat on the ground was difficult, try doing it in the air. While running around, the player has to obey the law of gravity and this prevents them from continuously jumping on beat too often.
Since most of the soundtrack has such a high tempo, it would be nearly impossible for the player to try and dodge an attack by bouncing to the music as their jumps would need to be miniscule in order to keep up with the pace of the song. So while using your ears might result in a bad jump here or there on the dirt, the difference in the sky is that the player can move in any direction at any time, meaning they don’t just make bad moves, they can develop bad habits.
For example, in the tussle against Wally Warbles, he has an attack that consists of launching his feathers in a bullet hell-like manner towards the player that must be dodged in order to survive. Wally doesn’t even need to dance in order to trick the player here.
Simply by having the background music exist and putting the player in a position where they have to dodge a lot of arial projectiles at once, it makes them much more likely to get hit. This is because the feathers move at a rate similar to, but slightly different from the rhythm, resulting in damage if the player tries to dodge with their ears instead of their eyes.
This is all subconscious manipulation at its finest. Even the best players will always have that little voice in their head telling them to get into the rhythm regardless of what they see on screen. That being said, of all the bosses that use music to their advantage in the game Cala Maria is the most deceiving. She combines every element discussed thus far and then some, starting from phase 1.
While in her first phase, Cala has a few attacks. She can summon pufferfish to fall from the sky, spit out ghosts, or summon one of her three companions- a horse that pushes Cuphead upwards, a turtle that launches bombs, and some electric eels that chase the plane around for a bit. One of these attacks is not like the others. When Cala spits out her ghosts, she always does so on the beat of the song, they spin, and then they attack. This wouldn’t be so bad, except that nothing else in this fight moves to the music!
This one action sets the player up to subconsciously associate an element of the battle with the audio, but when nothing else is, it simply serves to add another matter of confusion that must be overcome.
Upon entering her second phase Cala begins to dance. Even still some of her attacks move with the music and others go rogue. It’s this back and forth that really makes her first two phases a struggle and part of why this stage is one of the most intricately and deliberately designed in the entire game.
With all of that being said, if you had any trouble with one of these bosses, now you may know why. Cuphead is already a pretty difficult game, but to add another layer of messing with the player’s mind on top of the bullet hell and forcing them to overcome their own instincts in order to win really puts it over the edge. And this type of manipulation isn’t entirely new.
Think about it. What type of game makes the player’s heart tell them to do something one way, even if their mind knows the only way to win is to do something else? If you guessed horror, then you’re right. Is there a dark spooky corridor in front of you? Head on in. Is your heart racing from a jump scare? Stay calm and aim before you shoot. It’s remarkable just how immersive techniques like this can make a game, as it puts the players ever so slightly more into the shoes of their avatars.
Hopefully we see more games try to implement methods like these and others that create a sort of meta gameplay within the player themself in the near future. If you want to see all the other reasons Cuphead’s an amazing game, check out last week’s review. If you want to see more in-depth game analyses, there’s a playlist of every episode of dissection so far. And if you want to see more gaming goodness, be sure to hit subscribe down below. And as always, have a mighty nifty day today!