Cuphead is a made-in-Canada tribute to animation's golden age

The first thing you notice about Cuphead: Don't Deal with the Devil is how gorgeous it is. The 2D visuals, hand-drawn and inked in the style of 1930s animation, are unlike anything else in gaming today.

Players control Cuphead and Mugman, diminutive Steamboat Willie-like characters who, with a finger-gun-like gesture, can shoot fluorescent bullets out of their hands at bizarre, incredibly detailed enemies.

The big-band jazz soundtrack complements the sumptuous visuals. Cuphead feels like a lost cartoon strip brought to life and remastered for the digital generation.

Beneath its initially cuddly presentation, however, lies a crushingly difficult action game with a retro feel. Out now on Xbox One and PC, Cuphead is a 2D shooter where players run, jump and shoot at waves of enemies in a desperate dance to survive.

It's the brainchild of Studio MDHR, an independent studio founded by brothers Chad and Jared Moldenhauer, who are based in Regina and Oakville, Ont., respectively.

The Moldenhauers drew inspiration from run-and-gun games like Contra and Gunstar Heroes, space shooters such as Radiant Silvergun and even martial arts fighters like Street Fighter 3: Third Strike.

Cartoon shorts by the Fleischer Studios, particularly Swing You Sinners and Minnie the Moocher, provided much of the inspiration behind the game's character design and overall vibe.

"While we really do love the fine-tuned, polished stuff like Snow White and Pinocchio, which are amazing — and kind of creepy in their own way — when you go back to the late '20s and early '30s ... it's almost as if they wanted to make surreal animation just to make it," said Chad Moldenhauer.

Making a game that properly evoked that bygone era was no easy task, however — it meant drawing and inking every character and backdrop's animation frames by hand.

"To get one second of animation, you have to have 24 frames of art," said Moldenhauer. "So when you're planning certain attacks or certain jumps, you still plan them the way anybody would plan them for another video game, but you just know you're going to be drawing a million frames to make it work."

The only concession the team made was to paint the frames digitally, rather than on a physical cell. Doing the latter would have added an extra six years to development time.

When Studio MDHR debuted their first trailer in 2013, fans were immediately struck by the art style and throwback run-and-gun action. Anticipation quickly bubbled into frothing demand. But the original scope of eight "boss fight" encounters wasn't enough.

Classic games like Contra had long levels with obstacles and enemies, capped off by boss fights at the end. Gamers wanted more than what was originally promised.

After observing the reception to the trailer, the Moldenhauers dramatically expanded the scope of the game, more than doubling the number of boss fight levels and adding a smattering of traditional run-and-gun levels for variety. They also expanded the development team from three to 14 members.

News of the upcoming game's changes further stoked the anticipation among gamers. But the extra work also pushed back the release date from 2014 to this fall.

Perhaps echoing Cuphead and Mugman's deal with the devil, the Moldenhauer brothers went all-in: They quit their day jobs and remortgaged their houses to work on the game full-time.

"From the outside looking in, it definitely seems like a huge risk," said Moldenhauer. "Our opinion of the reception was we should be able to just break even and still make this perfect game that we want. We might both be slightly crazy, but that's how we felt."

In the end, the gamble paid off. Studio MDHR announced Friday they have sold one million copies of Cuphead since the Sept. 29 launch.

"I don't even know how to respond to that, but it's blowing our minds," he said.

Other developers, however, cautioned that while the Moldenhauers' gambit ultimately paid off, there's no guarantee others will find the same success, no matter how good their idea or game.

"This could have easily — EASILY — turned out very poorly for them. It does for a lot of indie devs every year," a Vancouver-based developer wrote on Twitter. "Huge respect for the work put into Cuphead, but I hate that this feeds the myth that if you give up everything for your game it'll work out."

Despite the success of Cuphead, Chad Moldenhauer remains modest and extends his gratitude to the game's fans.

"My brother and I, all we wanted was enough money so we can create the next game without worries. That's our dream, so anything above that will be … I don't even know," he said.

He's also grateful to be part of the growing number of Canadian success stories in the games industry, having grown up in a scene historically dominated by American or Asian creators.

"You would see Doom explode and Myst explode and it was always in the U.S. — and it was still amazing, because you're like, 'Wow, these two guys or these five guys made this?' But it still never felt real. So for us to be at least part of this success story — so somebody younger can see that this can be real — that's like a dream to us."