![]() The StudioMDHR team pushes through work on the game. By the end of 2015, StudioMDHR consisted of eight people. The boost in attention took Cuphead from being another promising independent game to being one of Microsoft’s showpieces for Xbox One.įollowing E3 2015, Chad and Jared went looking for bank loans. It’s hard to put a dollar number on getting a prime slot in an Xbox press conference, but Chad estimates that the marketing value of that moment was likely worth more than the actual dollars Microsoft gave them as part of their deal (which he declines to specify). There might be this thing,’” says Chad.Ĭhad calls that decision “definitely probably the major milestone” of Cuphead’s entire development. “That's when Microsoft approached us to be like, ‘OK, listen. And following that, the buzz kept building. In early 2015, Microsoft invited them to participate in a press event it was holding at 2015 Game Developers Conference. StudioMDHRĪs the game started to get bigger, the team kept pushing forward. Let's find a few part-time animators.”Ĭhad and Jared appear at E3 2015 to promote the game, then decide to double down on their investment. “We took baby steps this whole project,” says Chad. By the end of the year, they decided to start hiring and up the scope by about a third - from eight bosses to 12 or 13. They still had other jobs, and spent months talking over various plans to hire more staff and increase the game’s size. Though they still weren’t sure how much they wanted to invest in the game. Suddenly, StudioMDHR had a fanbase.įollowing the show, the reception to the game gave the team a bit more confidence in what they were doing. “Nothing crazy.”īut the game became one of those things people talked about in the convention center halls, based simply on the quality of its art. “Twitter like, lit up a little bit more,” he says. Chad remembers watching the press conference from home. The clip lasted only about four seconds, yet put the game in front of millions of people - even if they didn’t quite know what they were looking at.Ĭhad and Jared didn’t attend the show. StudioMDHRįor many players, their first exposure to Cuphead came as part of a short clip Microsoft included in its 2014 E3 press conference, showing a variety of independent games coming to Xbox One. ![]() Neither of those got very far, as the staff ran into tech limitations, though Ninja Stars featured two main characters - one red and one blue - an idea that would carry through to Cuphead.Ĭhad and Jared see Cuphead in Microsoft’s 2014 E3 press conference. They dabbled with a couple of run-and-gun ideas - one inspired by Contra called Omega Response, another with crayon-shaded characters called Ninja Stars. Then around the year 2000, the brothers decided to take a shot at making a commercial game, hoping to make a prototype and pitch it to get a publishing deal. “Ahead of its time, to be honest,” says Chad. “You play as a grandma and you pick berries and the more berries you pick, you can make more jams or custards or maybe make a fresh torte,” says Jared. In high school, Chad dabbled with simple hobbyist games like one called Grandma Pickins. “It was more a fantasy” at that point, says Chad. Mine's going to have the first female robot. “Like, this is what this boss would do and it would be so different. “I would do dumb things like design my own Mega Man on paper,” says Jared. And thanks to illustrations from Joseph Coleman, ink from Maja Moldenhauer and coloring from Tyler Moldenhauer, we have those pieces below.Ĭhad and Jared Moldenhauer wanted to make games since they were kids. To chart that path, we asked the StudioMDHR team to draw a series of images showing the biggest development milestones that happened along the way. Behind the scenes, they say, the idea started as a small part-time job and gradually grew over the course of five years, ending up as the indie blockbuster that launched to critical acclaim in September. Stories spread about it being one of *those* games, the ones that sit on shelves, cross the seven-year development threshold and appear on missing-in-action lists.īut according to brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, who led the project, that was all a bit of exaggeration. At 42 seconds long, the video established a 1930s art style and boss-focused run-and-gun gameplay, looking like an interactive cartoon.īy the time the game started to gain some traction, the Canadian studio had already pushed its target date to 2015 - a process the team would repeat by later delaying to 2016, and then 2017.įor potential fans, the carrot kept moving farther away. 25, 2013, StudioMDHR uploaded the first teaser trailer for its game Cuphead to YouTube.
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