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Cuphead Guide

Studio MDHR2017PC, PS5, Xbox, SwitchRun and GunRating: 86
Cuphead is a run-and-gun game by Studio MDHR, famous for its 1930s cartoon art style and jazz soundtrack. Players control Cuphead and Mugman, fighting challenging bosses in a fictional Inkwell Isles. Known for its brutal difficulty and beautiful hand-drawn animation.

🎮 Controls & Basics

  • Shoot: Hold to fire, aim with right stick (or mouse)
  • Dash: Has i-frames — your most important move
  • Parry: Jump on pink objects — builds super meter
  • Super Art: Full meter = powerful special attack
💡 Learn to parry — it's essential for many boss fights.

👑 Boss Order (Recommended)

  1. Botanic Panic (Cagney Carnation) — easiest
  2. Clip Joint Calamity (Goopy Le Grande)
  3. Threatenin' Zeppelin (Hilda Berg)
  4. Ruse of an Ooze (Ribby and Croaks)
  5. Floral Fury (Cagney Carnation)
  6. Sugarland Shimmy (Baroness Von Bon Bon)
  7. Funfair Fever (Beppi the Clown)
  8. Pyramid Peril (Grim Matchstick)
  9. High-Noon Hoopla (Werner Werman)
  10. Dr. Kahl's Robot — hard
  11. Phantom Express — hard
  12. King Dice — penultimate
  13. The Devil — final boss
⚠️ This game is hard. Expect to die 50+ times per boss. That's normal.

🔫 Best Loadouts

  • Peashooter: Balanced, always reliable
  • Spread: High damage at close range
  • Chaser: Homing missiles — great for mobile bosses
  • Lobber: Bouncing projectiles
  • Charge: Highest damage, requires timing

👑 Boss Order That Holds Up

  • Start with The Root Pack, then Goopy Le Grande, then Hilda Berg - each teaches one skill (aim, spacing, pattern reading)
  • Cagney Carnation before Baroness Von Bon Bon; Cagney's phase two is the first real bullet-hell check
  • Save Djimmi the Great and Dr. Kahl's Robot for after you have the dash and the extra heart
  • King Dice's board is a dice-control puzzle, not a boss - stop the dice on the numbers you want

🔫 Loadouts by Fight

  • Spread: highest damage, shortest range - the default for most boss phases
  • Chaser: low damage but never misses; use it while learning a new pattern
  • Lobber: arcs over cover, good for the airplane levels
  • Super: Energy Beam for bosses, Invincibility for the run-and-gun stages

⭐ Scoring

  • An A+ needs no damage, at least three parries, and a fast clear - the parry count is the one people miss
  • Pink projectiles are the only parryable ones; jumping on them also fills your super meter
Related tool: Gacha expected-pulls calculator — enter your own pity, rates and confidence to see pull probabilities.
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