The big difference is just how much you are copying vs taking ideas from.
Soulslike games (the good ones anyway) have their own visual styles and spins on things.
Trying to crib that much is not great, and is the same sort of response you would get for anything else too. Like it isn't trying to use the gameplay as inspiration to build their game on, it is just trying to be cuphead.
That game reminds me of that Box Maker game that was very obviously Mario Maker with a reskin.
Its very much just we wanted to make that game but we don't have the license. Also hoping that people just won't give a shit or know better and buy their blatant knock off masquerading as its own thing. And that does look better than Box Maker, but its still shameless and if I did any work on Cuphead I would absolutely want these guys to get fucked.
Games never get kickstarter money for being original, its all about apeing or reviving something old that people want more of.
What's an example of something that would be original without aping or reviving something old?
Untitled Goose Game
Indivisible
Daemon X Machina
Astral Chain
I don't mean the game has to be "wholly" original, because everything new thing is indeed a remix at the end of the day. But successful Kickstarter games are almost always couching their pitch in terms of things that already exist but aren't in large supply now. Typically namedropping exactly what their inspirations are rather than showing any subtlety, or even better lauding how much their one staff member happened to be involved in X games. And it's not even that the finished game itself is necessarily unoriginal, its more that the pitch to get money has to be. Like a trailer xeroxing cuphead.
rahkeesh2000 on
0
DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
Games never get kickstarter money for being original, its all about apeing or reviving something old that people want more of.
What's an example of something that would be original without aping or reviving something old?
Untitled Goose Game
Indivisible
Daemon X Machina
Astral Chain
I don't mean the game has to be "wholly" original, because everything new thing is indeed a remix at the end of the day. But successful Kickstarter games are almost always couching their pitch in terms of things that already exist but aren't in large supply now. Typically namedropping exactly what their inspirations are rather than showing any subtlety, or even better lauding how much their one staff member happened to be involved in X games. And it's not even that the finished game itself is necessarily unoriginal, its more that the pitch to get money has to be. Like a trailer xeroxing cuphead.
Daemon X Machina was a bad choice there..
It's very much Armored Core revived even made by some of the people who made Armored Core. Like that was their whole point with that game.
Tons of games within a genre will have very similar gameplay. That's just what genres are. What sets a game apart from other games within it's genre are style and execution. Look at Castlevania: Lords of Shadow. It's Castlevania reimagined with God of War style gameplay. But it's gothic horror aesthetic sets it apart from GOW's Greek mythology aesthetic. So the game still has it's own visual identity, and isn't regarded as a complete rip-off.
When you're in the same genre AND using the same visual identity, that's really just going too far.
Games never get kickstarter money for being original, its all about apeing or reviving something old that people want more of.
What's an example of something that would be original without aping or reviving something old?
Untitled Goose Game
Indivisible
Daemon X Machina
Astral Chain
I don't mean the game has to be "wholly" original, because everything new thing is indeed a remix at the end of the day. But successful Kickstarter games are almost always couching their pitch in terms of things that already exist but aren't in large supply now. Typically namedropping exactly what their inspirations are rather than showing any subtlety, or even better lauding how much their one staff member happened to be involved in X games. And it's not even that the finished game itself is necessarily unoriginal, its more that the pitch to get money has to be. Like a trailer xeroxing cuphead.
Untitled Goose Game is just Hitman with a goose
Indivisible is just Valkyrie Profile but a cartoon
Also if the question is whether or not games get kickstarter money for being original, Goose Game was not kickstarted and did not get any special funding for its development. They've been amply rewarded for being somewhat original, yes. I don't know if we can judge whether it would've been a kickstarter success, though. Buzz ramped up massively the week of release and afterward.
I would argue it evokes the chill/cute aesthetic along the lines of Katamari and Noby Noby Boy, mixed with a bit of the "simulator" genre.
I think some form of legal action should be taken.
There's nothing there that's even close to an actual copyright violation. Sure there's a lot of similarity, and a lot of inspiration from Cuphead, but nothing close to legally actionable.
There may be something in the music that's legally actionable if they took Cuphead's music and inserted it somehow into the game, but I don't know if that has happened or not.
If Cuphead was a platform exclusive, Enchanted Portals doing a Giana Sisters thing on other systems would make "sense." I feel that is why this mimicry sticks out, ease of access to the progenitor game.
Black lives matter.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
If Cuphead was a platform exclusive, Enchanted Portals doing a Giana Sisters thing on other systems would make "sense." I feel that is why this mimicry sticks out, ease of access to the progenitor game.
I mean, back when development on this game probably started, it was a XBox exclusive for a good while.
PMAvers on
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
When I first saw the images from that Kickstarter, my first thought was "Back in the 90s, we might have called this a 'Total Conversion'".
The thing that really weirds me out about the trailer is seeing all the bosses getting pummeled by fireballs and laser blasts and all that, and reacting at all. There's no flinching or giving some visual cue that they've been hit, they just keep carrying on with their complicated animation cycle seemingly without being aware that there are other entities in the world. Who are shooting their faces. Is this a standard bullet hell thing? I mean I guess it makes sense, if you have a boss that needs to be hit 30 times before they're down, and the whole point of the genre is that the bosses produce scheduled and deterministic patterns of attacks, then it's probably a bad idea to have them stagger or interrupt the attack when they get hit.
Yeah, that's the weird thing about it all. It's clearly a knockoff. Look at it. But a lot of work has clearly gone into it too. They're original characters with original animation. This is not a cheap copy cash grab. It's weird.
And as he said, Cuphead does not own the whole 30's cartoon artstyle aesthetic. They also don't own the concept of... whatever "genre" you'd want to call Cuphead. Boss rush run'n'gun? These developers could have either copied the artstyle and made their own genre of game, or they could have copied the genre and done their own artstyle, either one and nobody would have batted an eye. They went for the double whammy and did both.
All that being said, I was initially weirded out but overall fine with it. Up until that image above though, where it shows they even aped overall boss design too. Some of them are a stretch. I think the Beethoven one is fine. But then there's "guy sitting in a chair", and "Robot shooter fight". Seeing those pointed out... yeah those are uncomfortably close on the nose there.
I'm still otherwise fine with it. It's not much different than the battle royale shit that started with PUBG and continued with Fortnite. Or the whole... character based team shooter thingy with Overwatch and its ilk. Or hell, all the Doom clones back in the day.
"The sausage of Green Earth explodes with flavor like the cannon of culinary delight."
When I first saw the images from that Kickstarter, my first thought was "Back in the 90s, we might have called this a 'Total Conversion'".
Speaking of being old, as someone who has been coming to these forums on and off since the early days, I can't help but recall how much we used to mock "graphic whores" back then, gamers who placed the importance of impressive graphics over actual gameplay. Now I know the people who post here now aren't all the same people from then, but it feels like we've flipped things around where we're totally cool with gameplay that's just alright as long as it has a really cool art style. Like we're just a different kind of graphic whore now, only it's about aesthetics instead of polygon-counts and particle effects.
I'm not saying Cuphead is a bad game, as I haven't played it. But I have no real desire to because other than the art, the actual gameplay looks super boring to me.
KoopahTroopahThe koopas, the troopas.Philadelphia, PARegistered Userregular
edited October 2019
Cuphead's in general a boss rush bullet hell. There are a few platform levels that feel kinda shoe-horned in but still work for what they're worth, but the meat of the game is boss fights. I think it's really simple, but I really enjoyed playing it.
Everyone complained back in the day about Doom Clones, and now we have the first-person shooter industry.
I'll willing to wait this out and see where it goes. Videogames are a lot harder to make than just looking at someone else's idea, waggling your fingers over a keyboard, and poof, you've got a clone.
I feel like the first game to try to ape a successful newish formula always catches shit. I always felt Limbo was super derivative of Braid, and the third act felt really rushed and unfinished. Didn't people have a bit of a reaction to Fortnite totally changing it's core mechanic to ape PUBG at first too?
But I mean this is how you get new genres. Developers are constantly riffing on each other's ideas. I know for a long time it was a running gag in the print gaming press that every preview for a game was describes as a combination of 2 or 3 other successful games. Especially that short run of FPS/RTS hybrids like Sacrifice and Battlezone.
I still remember a copy of CGW that had 40 previews of new RTS games after WarCraft 2 and Command & Conquer blew the doors off the genre. Had some real enduring gems like Age of Empires and MechCommander. Also had some real duds like Dark Reign, Dark Colony and 7th Legion.
Does remind me that I wish Myth and Myth 2 were available on GOG or somewhere though.
It's clearly not that lazy of a copy. I won't be kickstarting it. But who knows, maybe they'll surprise people.
Or they paid a Chinese animator sweatshop to throw together a demo reel, and plan on running with the money. That's always possible too.
0
EncA Fool with CompassionPronouns: He, Him, HisRegistered Userregular
Again it's not that they did similar art to Cuphead, or similar gameplay, but both.
I really thought this was a sequel to Cuphead when I first saw the trailer. It's probably actionable in court.
I feel like the first game to try to ape a successful newish formula always catches shit. I always felt Limbo was super derivative of Braid, and the third act felt really rushed and unfinished. Didn't people have a bit of a reaction to Fortnite totally changing it's core mechanic to ape PUBG at first too?
But I mean this is how you get new genres. Developers are constantly riffing on each other's ideas. I know for a long time it was a running gag in the print gaming press that every preview for a game was describes as a combination of 2 or 3 other successful games. Especially that short run of FPS/RTS hybrids like Sacrifice and Battlezone.
I still remember a copy of CGW that had 40 previews of new RTS games after WarCraft 2 and Command & Conquer blew the doors off the genre. Had some real enduring gems like Age of Empires and MechCommander. Also had some real duds like Dark Reign, Dark Colony and 7th Legion.
Does remind me that I wish Myth and Myth 2 were available on GOG or somewhere though.
It's clearly not that lazy of a copy. I won't be kickstarting it. But who knows, maybe they'll surprise people.
Or they paid a Chinese animator sweatshop to throw together a demo reel, and plan on running with the money. That's always possible too.
People have already directly answered all of these questions you are posing here.
The thing that really weirds me out about the trailer is seeing all the bosses getting pummeled by fireballs and laser blasts and all that, and reacting at all. There's no flinching or giving some visual cue that they've been hit, they just keep carrying on with their complicated animation cycle seemingly without being aware that there are other entities in the world. Who are shooting their faces. Is this a standard bullet hell thing? I mean I guess it makes sense, if you have a boss that needs to be hit 30 times before they're down, and the whole point of the genre is that the bosses produce scheduled and deterministic patterns of attacks, then it's probably a bad idea to have them stagger or interrupt the attack when they get hit.
But it just looks odd as hell.
Yeah, that's very much a 2D shooter thing, usually the most you get is the boss flashing to indicate the shot actually did something. Some unusual shooters do have bosses react though, one series I can recall is Parodius, where in keeping with the goofy aesthetic bosses do wild takes to show you're damaging them, though not while they're attacking.
I feel like the first game to try to ape a successful newish formula always catches shit. I always felt Limbo was super derivative of Braid, and the third act felt really rushed and unfinished. Didn't people have a bit of a reaction to Fortnite totally changing it's core mechanic to ape PUBG at first too?
But I mean this is how you get new genres. Developers are constantly riffing on each other's ideas. I know for a long time it was a running gag in the print gaming press that every preview for a game was describes as a combination of 2 or 3 other successful games. Especially that short run of FPS/RTS hybrids like Sacrifice and Battlezone.
I still remember a copy of CGW that had 40 previews of new RTS games after WarCraft 2 and Command & Conquer blew the doors off the genre. Had some real enduring gems like Age of Empires and MechCommander. Also had some real duds like Dark Reign, Dark Colony and 7th Legion.
Does remind me that I wish Myth and Myth 2 were available on GOG or somewhere though.
It's clearly not that lazy of a copy. I won't be kickstarting it. But who knows, maybe they'll surprise people.
Or they paid a Chinese animator sweatshop to throw together a demo reel, and plan on running with the money. That's always possible too.
You get new genres by having devs think of clever new game mechanics, etc. Not by copy/pasting what other companies are doing.
You'll also note that Epic was sued when they made the Fortnite switch (granted they won their case). And I don't think Braid and Limbo are really any more alike than Limbo and Super Mario.
This is just lazy fucking development and the fact that it's a kickstarter is borderline shameful.
Posts
What's an example of something that would be original without aping or reviving something old?
The big difference is just how much you are copying vs taking ideas from.
Soulslike games (the good ones anyway) have their own visual styles and spins on things.
Trying to crib that much is not great, and is the same sort of response you would get for anything else too. Like it isn't trying to use the gameplay as inspiration to build their game on, it is just trying to be cuphead.
Its very much just we wanted to make that game but we don't have the license. Also hoping that people just won't give a shit or know better and buy their blatant knock off masquerading as its own thing. And that does look better than Box Maker, but its still shameless and if I did any work on Cuphead I would absolutely want these guys to get fucked.
Untitled Goose Game
Indivisible
Daemon X Machina
Astral Chain
I don't mean the game has to be "wholly" original, because everything new thing is indeed a remix at the end of the day. But successful Kickstarter games are almost always couching their pitch in terms of things that already exist but aren't in large supply now. Typically namedropping exactly what their inspirations are rather than showing any subtlety, or even better lauding how much their one staff member happened to be involved in X games. And it's not even that the finished game itself is necessarily unoriginal, its more that the pitch to get money has to be. Like a trailer xeroxing cuphead.
Daemon X Machina was a bad choice there..
It's very much Armored Core revived even made by some of the people who made Armored Core. Like that was their whole point with that game.
When you're in the same genre AND using the same visual identity, that's really just going too far.
Untitled Goose Game is just Hitman with a goose
Indivisible is just Valkyrie Profile but a cartoon
Daemon X Machina is just Armored Core but worse
Astral Chain is just Wonderful 101 but minus 100
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
FTFY
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
I would argue it evokes the chill/cute aesthetic along the lines of Katamari and Noby Noby Boy, mixed with a bit of the "simulator" genre.
Don't you dare impugn him
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
The one with the character whose head is a cup is Cuphead :P
3DS Friend Code: 3110-5393-4113
Steam profile
As someone who never played but watched a good bit of Cuphead, it's a lot more obvious in motion.
Resident 8bitdo expert.
Resident hybrid/flap cover expert.
It's different enough to not step on any direct copywrite toes and game mechanics and genres are not something you can claim.
There's nothing there that's even close to an actual copyright violation. Sure there's a lot of similarity, and a lot of inspiration from Cuphead, but nothing close to legally actionable.
Law and Order ≠ Justice
ACNH Island Isla Cero: DA-3082-2045-4142
Captain of the SES Comptroller of the State
I mean, back when development on this game probably started, it was a XBox exclusive for a good while.
COME FORTH, AMATERASU! - Switch Friend Code SW-5465-2458-5696 - Twitch
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yy6vCxKvpa0
The thing that really weirds me out about the trailer is seeing all the bosses getting pummeled by fireballs and laser blasts and all that, and reacting at all. There's no flinching or giving some visual cue that they've been hit, they just keep carrying on with their complicated animation cycle seemingly without being aware that there are other entities in the world. Who are shooting their faces. Is this a standard bullet hell thing? I mean I guess it makes sense, if you have a boss that needs to be hit 30 times before they're down, and the whole point of the genre is that the bosses produce scheduled and deterministic patterns of attacks, then it's probably a bad idea to have them stagger or interrupt the attack when they get hit.
But it just looks odd as hell.
Yeah, that's the weird thing about it all. It's clearly a knockoff. Look at it. But a lot of work has clearly gone into it too. They're original characters with original animation. This is not a cheap copy cash grab. It's weird.
And as he said, Cuphead does not own the whole 30's cartoon artstyle aesthetic. They also don't own the concept of... whatever "genre" you'd want to call Cuphead. Boss rush run'n'gun? These developers could have either copied the artstyle and made their own genre of game, or they could have copied the genre and done their own artstyle, either one and nobody would have batted an eye. They went for the double whammy and did both.
All that being said, I was initially weirded out but overall fine with it. Up until that image above though, where it shows they even aped overall boss design too. Some of them are a stretch. I think the Beethoven one is fine. But then there's "guy sitting in a chair", and "Robot shooter fight". Seeing those pointed out... yeah those are uncomfortably close on the nose there.
I'm still otherwise fine with it. It's not much different than the battle royale shit that started with PUBG and continued with Fortnite. Or the whole... character based team shooter thingy with Overwatch and its ilk. Or hell, all the Doom clones back in the day.
Speaking of being old, as someone who has been coming to these forums on and off since the early days, I can't help but recall how much we used to mock "graphic whores" back then, gamers who placed the importance of impressive graphics over actual gameplay. Now I know the people who post here now aren't all the same people from then, but it feels like we've flipped things around where we're totally cool with gameplay that's just alright as long as it has a really cool art style. Like we're just a different kind of graphic whore now, only it's about aesthetics instead of polygon-counts and particle effects.
I'm not saying Cuphead is a bad game, as I haven't played it. But I have no real desire to because other than the art, the actual gameplay looks super boring to me.
Twitch: KoopahTroopah - Steam: Koopah
I'll willing to wait this out and see where it goes. Videogames are a lot harder to make than just looking at someone else's idea, waggling your fingers over a keyboard, and poof, you've got a clone.
I feel like the first game to try to ape a successful newish formula always catches shit. I always felt Limbo was super derivative of Braid, and the third act felt really rushed and unfinished. Didn't people have a bit of a reaction to Fortnite totally changing it's core mechanic to ape PUBG at first too?
But I mean this is how you get new genres. Developers are constantly riffing on each other's ideas. I know for a long time it was a running gag in the print gaming press that every preview for a game was describes as a combination of 2 or 3 other successful games. Especially that short run of FPS/RTS hybrids like Sacrifice and Battlezone.
I still remember a copy of CGW that had 40 previews of new RTS games after WarCraft 2 and Command & Conquer blew the doors off the genre. Had some real enduring gems like Age of Empires and MechCommander. Also had some real duds like Dark Reign, Dark Colony and 7th Legion.
Does remind me that I wish Myth and Myth 2 were available on GOG or somewhere though.
It's clearly not that lazy of a copy. I won't be kickstarting it. But who knows, maybe they'll surprise people.
Or they paid a Chinese animator sweatshop to throw together a demo reel, and plan on running with the money. That's always possible too.
I really thought this was a sequel to Cuphead when I first saw the trailer. It's probably actionable in court.
Alright listen here smarta-..
People have already directly answered all of these questions you are posing here.
You joke, but this is being put together by two dudes no one's ever heard of asking for Kickstarter money. It really might be an elaborate scam.
Yeah, that's very much a 2D shooter thing, usually the most you get is the boss flashing to indicate the shot actually did something. Some unusual shooters do have bosses react though, one series I can recall is Parodius, where in keeping with the goofy aesthetic bosses do wild takes to show you're damaging them, though not while they're attacking.
You get new genres by having devs think of clever new game mechanics, etc. Not by copy/pasting what other companies are doing.
You'll also note that Epic was sued when they made the Fortnite switch (granted they won their case). And I don't think Braid and Limbo are really any more alike than Limbo and Super Mario.
This is just lazy fucking development and the fact that it's a kickstarter is borderline shameful.
Did that look like I was joking?
I wasn't joking