Enchanted Portals - a vibrant 2D platformer game has just received tons of negative feedback with just its first promotion trailer. Fans have been angry that this game looks so similar to the classic hit - Cuphead.
In fact, I've never seen any project that has been criticized this hard even when it hasn't reach Kickstarter yet. If you don't trust me, just see the video below to form your own opinion:
The story of Enchanted Portals
Let's set the stir away for now, and find out what will happen in Enchanted Portals first. The game starts in a magical world, as the two young magicians are playing recklessly, throwing spells from their spellbook everywhere. And karma strikes instantly as the two are messing around with something more powerful than they have expected.
Their actions have opened a magical portal, which then sucks them and the spellbook to another world far from their home. In order to get back, the two will need to gather all of the pages from their spellbook together. However, this world has a lot of dangerous creatures, and they'll have to use the abilities of magicians to defeat them.
The concept of this game is very fine for me, as it's concept is kind of cute and vibrant. In fact, I think it's just a new game that takes the inspiration of Studio MDHR’s Cuphead at first. But the more I look into the trailer, I am sure that Enchanted Portals has definitely crossed the clear line of being inspired and being a copycat.
Enchanted Portals is like Cuphead-at-home
Enchanted Portals is a 2D platformer game that has cartoon-like visuals that's very similar to Cuphead. Actually, it's too identical that no one would recognize that it's a completely unrelated game without being told beforehand.
It's a compliment and a criticism at the same time. First thing first, Cuphead plays good and looks aesthetic, and Enchanted Portals does the same thing. However, with unmistakable animations in everything: jumps, bullets, and even the bosses - Enchanted Portals is basically Cuphead with a name change at this point.
Even the music from this game was in the same big band jazz genre as well. The concept of this game is aesthetically magical, so some dreamy and fantastical music might suit the game really well. But the developer Xixo Games Studio was too lazy to mix it up.
Even though they have justified that they are fans of Cuphead and have taken a huge inspiration from the game "from a place of respect and admiration", it's definitely not reasonable for such extremely identical features. As a result, at the time of writing this article, the Kickstarter trailer above has received nearly 3,000 dislike - which doubles the number of its like counts.
Kickstarter campaign launched on October 24
As I've mentioned, this is only the promotion trailer of the game, as Enchanted Portals hasn't come out yet. In fact, Xixo Games Studio has planned to launch its Kickstarter campaign on October 24, 2 more weeks after this trailer comes live.
However, with such negative opinions from the community, I can say that it will struggle to meet its goals for a while if there are no changes. And there will very likely be no changes happening at all, as the developer has stated on Facebook about their new targets:
"We’re trying to turn our attention more towards all those who are supporting us and sending their love for the game."
Are you willing to pledge some money for the developer after this?
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