How Studio MDHR Builds A Cuphead Boss

Introduction

Cuphead’s tale is a legend in the world of independent gaming. Brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer worked for years, risking their finances founding Studio MDHR and hiring a host of talented artists and animators to bring their tough-as-nails run ‘n’ gun game to life. It paid off. Cuphead was inspired both by classic 1930s games like Contra and Gunstar Heroes. The album has sold more six million copies and won critical acclaim as well.

With Cuphead’s staggering success, it’s not too surprising the team at MDHR wanted to deliver one more serving of sharp shooting excitement and aggravation. The Cuphead developer decided on DLC instead of a sequel. The Delicious Last Course will be released in June 2022. MDHR, an early producer, decided that the best starting point for the new game would be a boss idea from the original, which was scrapped because of time limitations.

It took a tremendous amount of time to create, test and improve every boss on the original Cuphead. The Delicious Last Course wasn’t any different. Game Informer recently sat down with Chad and Jared to get behind-the-scenes insight on the thought process behind the look and feel of a single boss – a cantankerous giant the size of a mountain.

Peak Design

Peak Design

Glumstone, also known as Old Man Mountain or Glumstone, was inspired by several larger-than life antagonists drawn from animated 1930s shorts. While the giant’s enormous stature and many of his mannerisms come from Disney’s 1938 Mickey Mouse short The Brave Little Tailor, his flowing white beard and scraggly appearance is a direct reference to Fleischer Studios’ 1933 classic The Old Man of the MountainThe film stars Betty Boop, the flirtatious actress. Cartoon depicts Betty Boop as the lonely hermit, who is seen running after Betty, following him to his mountaintop cave.

Glumstone’s initial character design came together so early that he’s in not one but two Cuphead books published before The Delicious Last Course – Cuphead Artand the novel of middle grade Cuphead on a Mountain of Trouble. MDHR suggested that a never-ending swarm gnomes be added to the Glumstone mythos. This idea quickly became the driving force behind many Glumstone’s attacks and environments. Glumstone was not at all annoyed by the Gnomes, but he would still work with them, in a relationship fairytale size.

The Cuphead team started to think of the ideal setting for their new, hard-hitting showdown. One of the first options was a cloudy mountain peak or frosty winter landscape. Another option was a treetop-gnome village. “The ideas were cool, but it kept everything too close, and it didn’t feel like the giant was truly a giant,” says Chad. “So then we started going through valleys and more vast looking settings. Once we hit that, it just quickly shifted to this wide open mountainous area, and we threw in that extra lore.” The team based the lore in question around the stony faces found on each mountain, adding the implied mythology of a long-slumbering race of colossal beings.

Couldn’t Axe For More

Couldn’t Axe for More

With Glumstone’s gargantuan face taking up the right side of the screen and an army of gnomes waiting in the wings, the Moldenhauer brothers and their team set about finding just the right balance of amusement and annoyance for the boss’ first phase. They proposed, debated, and ultimately shelved many attacks, including an avalanche of gold-flavored cereal bits, gnomes skiing off slopes of unkempt hair, and a minecart rail unfurling from inside Glumstone’s gaping maw.

“There’s tons of back and forth,” Chad says about the design process. “There’s really serendipitous times where you start building off of a concept, and every idea that comes up is perfectly linked and has this ‘Aha!’ moment. But a lot of the time, it’s just a battle to get the theme to feel right without going so far away that it all feels disjointed.”

The key to Glumstone’s first phase would ultimately lie with its relentless swarm of gnomes. Though the gnomes take inspiration from classic fairy tale tropes, they’re also highly inspired by characters in the iconic arcade beat ’em up Golden Axe. Known in the original game as “thieves,” gnomes in blue drop magic pots, while those in green drop health in the form of meat and other food items.

The gnomes seen in Glumstone’s tussle would don similar colors, cooking up noxious potions in the giant’s mouth and wielding stone hammers – an homage to the Golden Axe bosses, The Bad Brothers. Other gnomes would spring forth to fire off gold nuggets, while even more were painstakingly animated directly into the stage’s beard-covered surface, only popping up to stab players who lingered too long in one spot. Glumstone’s eventual stage name, “Gnome Way Out!,” would be far from an exaggeration.

Chad and Jared had known from the start that they desired an animal component in the Glumstone fight’s first phase. Only two species made the cut – geese and bears. Though MDHR conceived both as giants in their own right, they were eventually scaled down to bring more perspective to Glumstone’s size. A team of gnomes decided to ride a large goose instead of riding one. The gnomes stayed, riding atop the majestic Canadian geese on miniature saddles, a nod to the various mountable beasts in the Golden Axe series and MDHR’s Canadian roots.

It was more difficult to get a bear onto screen in terms of design. Glumstone is seen holding up a cage or cave in one hand and tempting the bear with tasty fish. The giant even made a cave with his own hands in one concept. Although these were great ideas, MDHR found them distracting. Glumstone ended up simply picking up the tail of a bear and hanging it in front of players.

Chad and Jared didn’t stop at a couple of Golden Axe references. They also included subtle references to their favourite SNK fighting series. It is the first that Chad and Jared notice. The patch of fur around the bear is the same as the one seen on Big Bear, Fatal Fury’s wrestler. “Once you discover that and you’re like, ‘Okay if the bear has an SNK reference, is there any way for the geese to have an SNK reference?’ And then we’re like, ‘There sure is!’” laughs Jared. The reference in question is on Glumstone’s “Geese X-ing” sign – a silhouette of a goose performing the signature Double Reppuken of Fatal Fury combatant Geese Howard. Both animal sight gags perfectly encapsulate the “blink and you’ll miss it” retro callbacks the Moldenhauers love leaving in plain sight.

Master of Puppets

Master of Puppets

While Glumstone’s first phase is a frenzy of beasts and gnomes, one of the most hectic in Cuphead history, the second takes a much different approach. Glumstone was first considered using shadow puppets, then real puppets. This idea had evolved into the inclusion of real animals but was still fresh in the team’s mind when it came time to craft the next phase.

Along with puppets came a new spin on Glumstone’s relationship with his gnomes, taking inspiration from the beloved Canadian children’s show Friendly GiantThis was a gentle-mannered giant interacted with various puppets and miniature models. Moldenhauers suggested to Glumstone that he might be a friend and entertainer for the little miners, instead of treating them like pests. This concept bred many new questions – most importantly, how the puppets would look and attack.

“We sketched up a few sock puppets, but there’s something that just feels 1980s about sock puppets,” says Jared. “So then we moved on to more of a felt-shaped, flappy mouth puppet, something closer to a muppet. But again, that has a weird ʼ50s to ʼ60s vibe, which is why we started focusing on puppets from older eras.”

The team discovered the works of Ladislas Sternich, an award-winning stop-motion animator from Poland and Russia, while digging through puppets dating back to the 1930s. It was within Starevich’s 1934 film Mascot that the Moldenhauers spied a lanky devil puppet that reminded them of Cuphead’s own villain.

“A decision was made along the way to get it back to medieval times, where it felt like the performers could make a satire on the kings and queens of the era,” says Jared. “It was a way to kind of teach the peasants and the regular folk about valuable lessons without being jailed. So we were like, ‘Well, maybe it’s weird, but we could try to make a king version of the Devil and a jester version of King Dice, and they could reenact this thing that would tie it back to the original game.’ I think that was the key moment that felt more alive, that really pulled the DLC island into the experience of the original game.”

Though the first iteration of puppets was going to be twirling a jump rope between their stubby hands, the swinging motion created issues with projectile timing and didn’t mesh well with the new theme. Soon, the rope was replaced by a bouncer sack filled with coins. This was carried back and forth between Inkwell Isles corrupt figures. The second phase, once paired with the beard-bouncing antics gnomes of Gnomes, found a fun balance between theme and challenge.

Gut Check

Gut Check

Anyone who has played Cuphead knows the subconscious panic of encountering a boss’ final phase. Studio MDHR encourages final phases to be shorter or easier than those before them. Not that the last stage of every battle is easy to overcome or adapt to, but the team does its best to ensure the environment isn’t too overbearing as players’ hit points wane and they inch closer to success.

Much like the concepts of gnomes, animals, and puppets, the theme for phase three came to the Cuphead team early on – players were going to be eaten alive. Inspired by the long-standing video game trope of fighting a supersized enemy from inside their very guts – perhaps most notably in Yoshi’s Island for the Super Nintendo – Glumstone’s last resort would be an act of desperation. Chad and Jared’s first thought was to have players go up against a master gnome, one lying in wait inside the giant, but thematically it didn’t make much sense. Glumstone was to be attacked by players, and not an enemy hiding in his stomach. A bulging stomach ulcer would then take to the stage with its mind, spewing bones and chicken legs.

Unlike the first two phases, where players could rely on stable (albeit gnome-infested) footing, from the start, MDHR planned Glumstone’s stomach as a pit, one that would eventually be filled with glowing green acid à la 1993’s Mortal Kombat II. “It was an old idea that we just never pursued, but we really liked the video game moments that eliminate the platforms from you,” Jared recalls. “You have to learn to dodge and aim while reducing your play space. We had that pattern down first before we had any concrete idea or layout of what exactly this stomach would look like.”

Although it was understandable that the players would be jumping between pieces of food, it proved to be an uninspiring sight. The Moldenhauers pondered the possibility of what the great giant might eat, rather than focusing solely on the food he ate. “We looked at some of these nightmarish early Fleischer cartoons, like You Sinners, Swing!,” Chad says. “It’s almost like our go-to when we want something creepy and monster-esque.”

“But it’s always important to maintain the cuteness of the nightmare,” adds Jared. “It’s kind of gross to have ulcers and an acid pit, but then it’s completely flipped on its head as soon as you see the ulcer is feeding these cute little animals inside of his stomach.”

And so, five sawtoothed monsters, a mix of creepy and cute, were added as the platforms for phase three, their skeletal appearance another subtle nod to Mortal Kombat II’s flesh-melting acid pit. They would be joined by gnomes wearing full-scuba gear, including blow guns. This is a reference to the original Shinobi scuba ninjas.

This was phase 3. The backdrop that would tie it all together. The team needed a backdrop that would move and pulse with the ulcer, which was difficult given the situation. To get the right feel, artist Caitlin Russell spent over 300 hours hand-painting multiple layers and each individual frame of the ulcer’s grotesque movement.

“It’s one of those things where you can’t quite tell how much work went into it, but if you really look and analyze it, you’re like, ‘Okay, this is a little bit crazier than maybe some people know,’” says Chad.

“It’s all a painting. It’s so much extra work to just get something that doesn’t throw you off,” Jared adds. “It’s only noticeable if you do a bad job and it becomes jarring. Whereas when you’re playing it, you’re just like, ‘Oh, that’s a nice background with the ulcer.’ But it took a ton of work to fill that experiment.”

It’s a beautiful view

It’s a beautiful view

And thus, with the ulcer defeated, Glumstone the Giant’s battle came to an end. Although the boss fight is completed in less than two minutes, it took many years to create the design, attack, and theme storytelling. The stage, with its beautiful backdrops and the swinging music of Kris Maddigan was prepared to take on any brave player who would dare to confront the enormous boss. Cuphead’s magic lies not only in overcoming seemingly impossible odds, but also in finding a hidden reference among the chaos of platforms and projectiles. The Moldenhauer brothers and their team at Studio MDHR wouldn’t want it any other way.

Original publication: Issue 349, Game Informer.