Cuphead Studio Put Mental Health "At The Forefront" During Delicious Last Course Development

thegamer.com:

Employee turnover can be a problem for lots of game developers both big and small. Making games is a lot of work, and deadlines means that work often has to be compressed into not nearly enough time. For StudioMDHR, makers of Cuphead and its upcoming DLC, The Delicious Last Course, crunch had to be avoided. The studio just couldn’t afford to lose any of its animators.

"It's hard to find people," Moldenhauer stated in an interview with IGN. The Delicious Last Course has been in development for years, largely because of the labor-intensive process that goes into animating each on-screen character. According to Moldenhauer, The Delicious Last Course has just as much animation in it as the original game.

Related: Cuphead: The Delicious Last Course Preview - "We Still Do Things The Hard Way"

Because there are so few people who have the skills to do this sort of 2D animation, Moldenhauer said that it was especially important to keep everyone healthy.

"The number one thing, especially through COVID was keeping everybody happy," she said. "This is video games. Take your time. Mental health needed to be at the forefront, taking the space and time that you needed, especially over the last two years. We're like, ‘If it takes longer for the game to come out, it takes longer. Who cares?’"

Moldenhauer explained the Delicious Last Course was originally intended to include Miss Chalice and five boss fights, but StudioMDHR are the "kings and queens of scope creep." There are now more bosses, and instead of just the boss transforming, the entire level transforms too. That means more hand-drawn backgrounds and complicated coding to make everything work.

But accidentally backing into a DLC that’s as labor-intensive as the entire first