Cuphead Deluxe Edition

Cuphead is a run and gun built almost entirely out of boss fights, drawn and animated the way cartoons were made in the 1930s: cel animation done frame by frame by hand, watercolour backgrounds, and a live-recorded jazz score. It looks like a Fleischer short and hits like a bullet hell. Cuphead and his brother Mugman lose a bet to the Devil and are sent to collect on the souls he is owed, which means working through an island of increasingly unreasonable opponents. Each boss runs through several phases with fixed patterns, so progress comes from learning rather than grinding, and the difficulty is the point rather than an obstacle to it. Between the bosses sit shorter platforming stages. Local two-player co-op lets a second person take Mugman, which makes fights busier rather than easier. The Delicious Last Course expansion adds a new island, new bosses, new weapons and Ms. Chalice as a third playable character. The Deluxe Edition adds the official soundtrack and nothing else — it is not the version with The Delicious Last Course, which is a separate bundle. Stocked as a Steam code only.