Xixo Games Studio’s Enchanted Portals is set to hit Kickstarter soon. Ahead of the crowdfunding campaign the developers released a promotional video for the hand-animated, action-shooter, which netted them both praise and criticism for being a lot like Cuphead. In fact, some people felt it was too much like Studio MDHR’s Cuphead, and so the developers decided to address these claims.
In a Facebook post published on October 14th, 2019, the developers wrote…
“Hi everyone! First of all, we want to thank all of you who have reached out to us to say that you love Enchanted Portals and can’t wait to play it! We think our intent with the game has been greatly misunderstood and we wanted to clarify some points and also give some context as to why the game is the way it is.
“Xixo Games Studio is a small indie studio of only two people, Daniel (CEO, game director and programmer), and Gemma (artist and composer). Enchanted Portals is our very first game, we are both avid Cuphead fans and our initial idea was to make a game heavily inspired by it, not to attack it or compete with it, but to celebrate it and because we’d love to see more Cuphead-like games out there. We’ve put all our love and care into this project, and it all comes from a place of respect and admiration for the original.
“That being said, we’ve been listening closely to the criticism and we agree that having more elements that further differentiate ourselves from Cuphead would greatly benefit the game, so from now on we’ll work towards adding some more original gameplay mechanics, a more whimsical soundtrack that fits the setting, and as many other unique elements as possible. Above all our goal is to make a game that people like and want to play, but still celebrating the legacy of Cuphead and paying homage to it.”
If you’re not familiar with Enchanted Portals, you can check out the initial promotional trailer below to get an idea of what the developers are doing with the game.
This spawned a number of videos from YouTubers and articles from media outlets going over how the game is very similar to Cuphead.
In some cases, there were claims that Enchanted Portals was plagiarism or that the game had “stolen” Studio MDHR’s idea and cloned it. 2 Left Thumbs did a video stating that Enchanted Portals took the Cuphead “inspiration” too far.
The developers have been participating in interviews and interacting with the community to clear up any confusion ahead of the Kickstarter campaign, which is set to get underway on October 24th at the end of the month.
There’s an interview with the developers over on Hell Yeah Gaming that further explains what the game is aiming to achieve and how it differs from Studio MDHR’s title.
You can keep track of the development for Enchanted Portals by visiting the official Facebook page.
The game is scheduled to release on PC and Nintendo Switch, assuming the crowdfunding campaign is successful.
(Thanks for the news tip Guardian EvaUnit02)
