Gameplay Journal #9

For this Gameplay Journal I decided to play Cuphead! I have a tiny bit of prior experience playing, but I wanted to play it through the lens of Mary Flanagan’s definition of “critical play”. In her work, she explores the “commonalities among play activities, game genres, and important historical contexts to discover thematic ways in which play can continue to manifest critical thinking.” (Flanagan, 12) After spending more time playing Cuphead I think its a really good example for this. It’s a game with an infamous art style that many of its fans love, but its a generally “outdated” style. Cuphead brings back the historical context of older 2D animation into a modern game. I believe it was successful in captivating a large player audience because it drew upon that nostalgia.

I also believe the art creating nostalgia and drawing upon a relatively simple game genre of a shoot em up, but with a lot more endearing looking weapons and enemies contributed to its success. It takes a lot of basic successful game components throughout history, such as creating a loveable duo Cuphead and Mugman, which caught on despite not having the clout of being a classic duo that has been around for awhile. There’s a neat juxtaposition between all the classic elements of Cuphead, all the nostalgic elements, and the game itself which isn’t as nice as it looks. I actually had a much harder time than I was expecting to have in terms of clearing at the rate I was expecting, but that’s a good thing. I was constantly being forced into those situations where I have to think critically about what I needed to do at that moment, which can be hard when being forced to move at a relatively fast pace. That is why I think Cuphead works so well with the concept of critical play.

Flanagan, Mary. “Critical Play.” The MIT Press, The MIT Press, mitpress.mit.edu/books/critical-play.

Cuphead LetsPlay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iCfa5u6jih8