Cuphead released last week after a lengthy development, with players surprised at the sheer difficulty of the platformer given its charming and deceiving art style. In a bid to make the game more accessible, developers StudioMDHR offer a ‘simple mode’ that controversially locks the last 10 percent of the game.

Modelled after 1930s cartoons, you’d be forgiven for thinking this was your average platformer with a unique design. In fact, Steam reviews sum it up rather well, in that the game is deceivingly Dark Souls-like in its difficulty. It’s no surprise that in light of this reputation, the developers included an easier difficulty dubbed ‘simple mode’ in a bid to open it up to more people.

This simple mode, however, changes the game in such a way that it is quite a different experience. Alongside the expected in that bosses are given much less health, attacks are altered which unfortunately results in entire stages of certain bosses being removed all together.

The last portion of the game is also gated behind the requirement that the player must defeat every game boss on the regular difficulty. This is controversial in that many argue that making the entire game accessible on either mode would detract from the sense of reward that players get over what is intended to be a difficult and challenging experience. On the other hand, others would debate that content that is out of reach in what should be their choice is wrong.

No matter what, Cuphead is still a charming deviation from the norm in modern platformers and is currently available on Xbox One and PC.

KitGuru Says: Personally, I feel that if the game is intended to be difficult, giving more to the players that achieve such success is well deserved. I understand that for the casual gamer, it is simply about playing the game in what little spare time you have but games, much like real life, should always be about challenging yourself to be better. How are you finding Cuphead?

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