20 Best Indie Games Of The Decade
6. Cuphead
The Xbox One might have had a hard time turning heads this generation, but one look at Cuphead and you'll be in love.
From Studio MDHR, this "rubber hose" animation has long only been associated with old-school Disney cartoons, but applying it to a side-scrolling shooter worked wonders. The devs even delayed the game after initial response was so overwhelmingly positive, just to add a string of run n' gun levels to break up the show-stealing boss fights.
One thing that's also laboriously tested for Cuphead is difficulty. This is a very hard game, requiring not only precise timing and hand-eye coordination to stay on top of entire screen's worth of projectiles, but memorisation, too.
You'll likely spend 30-45 minutes getting everything locked down; suffering who-knows-how-many losses learning a boss' patterns and attacks, then obliterate them in one glorious run where you avoid everything and decimate in return.
Cuphead will push your 2D game-playing abilities to the absolute limit, but it looks stunning and feels INCREDIBLE every time you turn the tables.