Have you ever played Cuphead? The extremely challenging and beautifully illustrated video game by Studio MDHR. I have a great time with Cuphead even though I am terrible at it. The game’s illustrations and animation style are inspired by the absurdist, surrealistic and slightly childish “rubber-hose” style of animation from the golden age of American cartoons. Think, for example, of Walt Disney’s first cartoons such as Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Steamboat Willy. Just like its inspiration, Cuphead is wonderfully absurdist and the game exudes atmosphere. I can therefore not wait for the Cuphead cartoon series that will soon be released on Netflix. Luckily, I now have Cuphead: the Fast Rolling Dice Game to keep myself entertained in the meantime, and luckily this game offers exceptional entertainment!
Coincidentally, Cuphead the video game begins with our heroes Cuphead and Mugman secretly visiting a casino and playing dice for money (just like you will be playing with dice in this game). The devil appears and makes the boys an offer: if they can win again, all the money in the casino is theirs, but if they lose, their souls belong to the devil! Of course the boys lose, but the devil is lenient in this case. If these stubborn little heads can collect souls for the devil from a number of evil spirits, they can keep their own souls. Despite their appearance, the boys do not sulk and go on their way. In the very hectic video game, you mainly try to defeat a series of bosses with different powers and appearances by dodging and shooting attacks at a fast pace. In this board game, it’s basically the same!
The game contains several boss fights (with different rules and game elements that I won’t reveal too much in this review) that players can beat. The final boss contains a pile of cards that players must play through. A number of cards are revealed that contain symbols. Players set a timer and must roll dice within the timer to match symbols in the correct order. Placed dice cannot be changed and skipped symbols cannot be placed later. This makes Cuphead a wonderfully challenging and very smooth game.
The different bosses offer sufficient renewal, variation and challenge. When players defeat a boss, they receive a score and coins. The coins can be used to unlock weapons with which they can attack the other bosses. The game also encourages players to challenge previous bosses again to get a better score. This is a very fun game concept. It’s not really a champagne game, but players do slowly unlock more elements that they can then use to tackle an earlier challenge.
Cuphead is a delightful and hectic game that does a good job of translating the video game into board game form. Using the various dice, you must dodge attacks and try to find holes in the boss’s attack to get full hits yourself. Highly recommended and a favourite that often appears on our table!
