it feels somewhat rare that an indie game really captures a retro style in a way that does more than pay lip-service to its predecessors. shovel knight was one of those games: a pitch-perfect recreation of NES-style action challenges stripped away of the mechanical uncertainty of the actual games of that era. cuphead captures that for the run-and-gun in a way that makes it not only a loving tribute but a legitimate cornerstone in the genre.

cuphead feels borne by a rigorous design methodology that demonstrates a deep understanding of the fundamentals of boss design in a 2D space. each fight is undergirded by the movement and platform features; this is generally the unifying trait. plenty of fights take place on a featureless flat ground, but very quickly wrinkles such as scrolling, conveyors, limited platforms, or combinations of these are introduced. a great late-game example is the ghost train stage that features of a platform that can and must be moved between left, center, and right using parry controls. these establish for the player the laws of their dominion so to speak: what space can the player leverage? what options exist at any given time to dodge a certain obstacle?

with each phase then comes the primary attack. bosses generally lack dynamic reactive capabilities unlike a human, so they are incapable of mindgames generally speaking. thus, in virtually all boss fights the boss cycles between random attacks that the player must apply a counterstrategy against. in modern games the design parlance is as such: windup animation begets the attack proper begets an opening for a player to either 1) rest if their counterstrategy is not efficient enough to yield a counterattack or 2) counterattack. too unthreatening and the player barely needs to muster a counterattack, and too overpowered and the player will have no time to respond. cuphead weaves in a truly surprising variety of primaries to challenge the player: the enemy may momentarily remove the player's control of the space, such as with the cat at the end of the rat tank fight batting its paws to swat the right and left sides of the screen, or perhaps the enemy creates antagonistic autonomous elements that force the player to utilize their spatial reasoning and pattern recognition to deduce a projectile's movement habits and shift their position accordingly, such as in the bee queen's middle phase where she incorporates stochaistically-drifting geometric projectiles as well as bullets that move in a linear back-and-forth climb on either side of the screen.

primary attacks on their own are only a lock-and-key design principle: find the counterstrategy that works against a particular move and apply it when needed. what creates true tension in the fight are the auxillary attacks. virtually all bosses are able to separately cycle through auxillary attacks that generally involve an entirely separate on-screen entity attacking on their own accord out of sync with the primary opponent. auxillary attacks on their own already heighten the experience by creating a space-constraint intersection that forces the player to adapt their key to more than just a single lock. certain intersections of attacks may prevent successful counterattacks or force the player to fall back on safer strategies, thus making the risk-and-reward judgment more critical and ever mutating. where cuphead really succeeds is having the auxillary attacks cycle as well. it's much like having three basic collared shirts and three basic ties: the combinations they present give you nine outfits, yielding an multiplicative amount of potential attack intersections. phase one of the sea medusa fight is a great example of this: three primary attacks (either summoning ghost projectiles or bringing one of two different fish out of the water with their own projectiles) with three auxillary attacks (staggered puffer fish projectiles, a water jet that forces a positive y velocity, and bombs that explode with a octagonal bullet pattern). each on their own is manageable, but combined there is an additional level of fluidity demanded of the player with adapting on the fly to intersections they may have never seen before.

of course cuphead doesn't simply hew to these elements in every fight; it expands on them and plays with the potential they possess. take the pirate ship fight: this begins with both a small primary attack (pellets fired by the captain one by one) with an auxillary component (a barrel that moves back and forth at the top of the screen, attempting to crush the player when they pass underneath). within time the captain will begin preempting his own pellet attack with a cycle of attacks from different sources, each with their own tell: a shark that consumes the left half of the screen, small bulldog fish(?) that slide across the ground, and a squid that both creates a fountain of bullets and can turn the screen dark if not defeated in time. on its own this is a perfectly interesting fight: manage the primary and auxillary attacks while being cognizant of primary attacks from external components via tells. however, in the second phase, the ship itself begins shooting cannonballs on a timer. at this point the player must not only manage transient attacks from the captain but also track the separate rhythms of the barrel and the ship's cannonballs. these intersect in a truly polyrhythmic fashion that pushes the fight into truly challenging territory that feels immensely rewarding to lock in with.

this is also boosted by cuphead having a stellar kit and smooth controls that feel sharp without being too abrupt or linear. his ability to parry specific objects (which are colored pink to distinguish them) adds a scale of mastery of many bullet patterns, with basic familiarity only yielding the ability to dodge while a complete understanding allows navigation to specific bullets for a parry and the reward of extra super meter. the super meter attacks are all rather useful and feel well balanced, though for the full-meter arts I can't really imagine someone using anything other than invincibility. however, I found myself legitimately switching out his shots and charms for different fights, which is not to say I found all of the variety useful (I mainly stuck to chaser and spread along with the smoke dodge and one extra heart depending on the fight), but to require a level of specificity in strategy for each fight encourages me to experiment more than I may otherwise. there are virtually no points of frustration I can attribute to a failure in the controls or a lack of a specific tool; almost every time I was stumped on a particular counterstrategy I always eventually worked something out even if it wasn't optimal.

I would really go as far as to say I don't think cuphead has any particular failings or even elements of unfair frustration that I can think of. while an immensely challenging experience, the primary and auxillary attacks are synergistic in such a way that a given intersection can't truly render an attack undodgeable or debilitating. never did I feel like a particular portion was just inserted because it felt cool or to fill space; rather, every bit of the game feels handled with care and finesse. the dragon fight was the peak of this for me... that particular fight walled me and put me off the game quite a bit. while the exasperation I felt was valid, I could never pinpoint a particular aspect that really felt unfair to me. at the end of the day, those projectiles that explode into smaller projectiles when hit really preyed on my spray-and-pray instincts in a way that punished me (and many others I assume) far more than most games are willing to muster. if I had to name one little thing that did feel off to me, it was the platforms during the bee queen fight. the scrolling part and random gaps don't bother me, but their collision box doesn't feel quite lined up with the art, which sometimes led to me falling randomly in confusing ways.

I do wish the flying stages had the same level of customization as the ground stages, but understandably that's a scope issue and not something I would expect from a small production. the non-boss levels also feel a bit perfunctory, but they are all still fun and only necessary for collecting coins for purchasing items in the shop. both of these won't get in the way of anyone looking to experience this: the core of the gameplay is still the tremendous boss fights. this has given me a a nice little kick in the pants to go back and dive into the early 16-bit fundamental works that helped mold this into the genius showpiece that it is.