We haven’t done an actual inventory check in terms of how many frames compared to the core game, but I’d say they’re very close in this one isle. There’s a ton of frames in this DLC island. The number of frames of animation in the DLC, we really pushed and tested ourselves in terms of how far we could take animation in gameplay. Moldenhauer: A lot of it was procedural things, making this more efficient. GamesBeat: After working on the base game, were there any lessons you learned there that you applied to DLC? This is probably a natural sequence to happen after the last Inkwell Isle in terms of challenge level. As you play Isle One, the bosses and patterns and health are a bit simpler. Moldenhauer: No, I’d say it’s a natural progression in terms of it being an extension of Inkwell Isle Three. GamesBeat: What’s the difficulty we’re looking at here? Are you thinking that you could make this more difficult than even the base game, because of the DLC? After you beat the mausoleum in world one, a mystery character will appear at a nearby shoreline or dock, and he’ll transport you over to the DLC island. You don’t even have to beat the base game in order to access DLC. GamesBeat: Chalice and all these new charms are playable in the base game, right? We kind of squashed the idea of a stand-alone pretty quickly. And just given the style of animation, we thought we would group it all together as one chapter. Storyline-wise, it fits better as DLC with the original game. Moldenhauer: Content-wise, it probably could have been a stand-alone game.
Given the time involved, was there ever a time you thought you could spin it off into Cuphead 2? GamesBeat: There’s a lot in this DLC, a lot of new bosses, the new character. This was never even in our thoughts, that this would ever happen. But it still doesn’t quite compute for us. The Netflix show already dropped season one. Some time has passed, you know, since the original game came out. GamesBeat: How does it feel now that you have Cuphead as this multimedia franchise? You have the Netflix show, the merchandise. Moldenhauer: No, you always need the cookie charm. GamesBeat: Is that also a gameplay thing? When you beat the DLC, can you play as her without equipping the charm? The whole story around the DLC is that they’re seeking some magical ingredients so that she can become permanently alive. That character goes to the astral plane and Chalice becomes real. Mugman or Cuphead eats the cookie, and they swap places. She eats this magical cookie that brings her back to life. Moldenhauer: Yeah, the storyline is that she’s trapped in the astral plane, which is kind of a ghostly universe. I didn’t realize she was dead, I guess, until a bit ago. And then there were homages to the cartoons that we still wanted to pay tribute to. Again, we couldn’t get to that in the original game. One thing being we wanted to make Chalice part of the trio of heroes. We couldn’t get them into the core game, but we couldn’t let those things go, get them out of our memories and thoughts. Like many developers, there are certain things you can’t get because of time, budget, constraints like that. Moldenhauer: The genesis of it came after the launch of the game. GamesBeat: Was DLC always in the cards for Cuphead? Moldenhauer: Mike, you did phenomenal, and I enjoyed seeing that knockout. I want you to go on the record and tell people how I did. GamesBeat: Normally I wouldn’t ask this, but because we have a bit of a reputation with Cuphead … you saw me playing the demo. This is the boss I beat at the Summer Game Fest Play Days demo. I got to ask her about the development of Cuphead’s big DLC, but first I had clumsily ask for recognition. While basking in the glow of my victory, I also had a chance to chat with Maja Moldenhauer, studio director and executive producer at Studio MDHR. It’s just more, which is exactly what good DLC should offer. It’s more of the boss-based animation mayhem that made the original such a big hit. My own narcissistic quest for honor aside, it’s easy to see that The Delicious Last Course is gonna serve Cuphead fans well. Join gaming leaders live this October 25-26 in San Francisco to examine the next big opportunities within the gaming industry.
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