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If you take one look at Cuphead, it’s pretty
obvious where the game’s inspirations lie.
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This game pays homage to cartoons from the
1930s, like old Disney films and Betty Boop
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cartoons, stuff made by Max Fleischer and
Ub Iwerks.
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But what you might not realise is that it
also pays a huge debt of influence to run
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‘n’ gun video games of the 1990s, like
Contra 3, and Gunstar Heroes.
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Especially, their boss fights.
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These games made use of the Super FX chip
on the SNES, and all sorts of technical wizardry
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on the Mega Drive, to make mind-blowing bosses
that filled every inch of the screen, and
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warped and rotated and looked practically
3D at times.
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I mean, check out this ridiculous boss battle
against the Mad Hatter from The Adventures
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of Batman and Robin.
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Or this one from Gunstar Heroes where you
switch between the floor and the ceiling to
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fight a giant robot that will randomly transform
into one of seven different designs.
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These old boss fights were, essentially, the
template, for Cuphead - which has massive
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great villains that are, really, the stars
of the game.
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Look at this guy.
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Check out this moon!
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That frog just turned into a slot machine. What!
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But these bosses don’t just look cool.
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Like their 16bit predecessors, they’re also
fiercely difficult to overcome, because of
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their tricky and varied attacks.
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And that’s what I want to explore in this
video.
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So let’s just ignore everything else, and
look at how Cuphead’s bosses try to kill you.
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So the boss’s attacks are ultimately, about
making you move.
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Not just to stop you from standing in one
place and infinitely shooting at the boss,
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but to test you on your ability to run, jump,
dash, and parry.
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While simultaneously shooting at the enemy, of course.
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And to really test you on this, the game has these attacks follow a huge number of different patterns.
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Some fly in a straight line.
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Others arc across the screen.
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There are attacks that bend back on themselves
like a boomerang.
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There’s this hateful pattern.
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Other projectiles split out in different directions.
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You’ve got attacks that move in a zig zag
pattern, and ones that follow an annoying
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sine wave.
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And others that fire directly at the player’s
current position, or slowly chase you around
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for a bit.
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Some of those are naturally more difficult
to avoid than others.
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And of course, each of these patterns can
be made more or less challenging, by altering
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the speed and size of the projectile.
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But one thing you’ll come to realise is
that these attacks are - ultimately - predictable.
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The dragon’s fireball, for example, can
go up, or down, or both ways at the same time.
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And that’s it.
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These cats always split into four mice - never
three, never five.
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Always four.
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And this means that a big part of a boss battle
is just learning about the boss.
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Figuring out, and then memorising its patterns.
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And these mini self-taught epiphanies stack
up, to the point where you can now predict
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and outsmart the boss at every turn - which
feels pretty good after having taken quite
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a beating.
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Of course, it’s not actually that easy.
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You know that the cat will split into four
mice, but you don’t know exactly when or
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where it will do so.
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And you don’t know if the dragon will do
a fireball next, or a psychic ray attack.
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So you also have to be able to react to the
more unpredictable elements.
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Luckily, the enemy will often announce what
attack it’s going to do next - either through
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animation: this is the dragon gearing up to
do a psychic attack, and this is when it’s
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about to do a fireball.
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Or through sound.
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Like, these walking flames, who yell out before
they jump at you.
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Sometimes, it’s even done through text.
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This is called telegraphing, and the duration
of an enemy’s telegraphing will affect the
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difficulty of the fight.
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You’ll generally notice that massive, difficult
to avoid attacks will have big, obvious build ups.
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While easier attacks don’t need to be announced
for as long.
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Unfortunately, not every attack in Cuphead
is telegraphed in such a fashion where you
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can react to it on your first go.
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This screen-sized laser is announced via
this animation, but pretty much every player
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is gonna get hit the first time they see it.
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This is one part of why Cuphead feels so difficult,
especially because you have a tiny number
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of hit points and can’t recover any of them
during the fight.
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So in Cuphead, death is made part of the learning
process.
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Hey, at least you’ll know what that animation
means next time you play!
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Anyway.
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One big way that the game ramps up the difficulty
in later chapters, is to layer on multiple patterns.
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When fighting this puppet, you’ll need to
avoid these bullets, and these bullets, at
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the same time.
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And when fighting the mermaid, you might have
to dodge an electric eel and a column of sea
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urchins at once.
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It’s all about taking an otherwise simple
attack pattern, and just giving you other
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things to think about.
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A fan that pushes Cuphead left or a water
jet that pushes Cuphead up.
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Moving platforms and falling treasure chests.
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So, fighting this clown is pretty easy - just
look at the colour of its horse to know what’s coming.
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But you also have to deal with this rollercoaster
that moves along the screen every few seconds.
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Thankfully, that’s also telegraphed.
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Finally, the boss battles go through different
phases.
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So, when fighting the frog brothers, Ribby
and Croak, you start by shooting flies and
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dodging punches.
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After you deal enough damage, the set-up changes
and now it’s all about bouncing balls and
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a desk fan.
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And after that, the frogs transform into a
slot machine with three different dodging
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mini games.
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This keeps the boss going longer, without
it just being tedious or repetitive.
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Just giving the boss a million health points
is rarely that fun.
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It also means that you can learn which phases
use which patterns.
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And that you feel small moments of satisfaction
throughout the battle, and not just at the end.
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It also adds an element of surprise that keeps
you guessing.
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And it dramatically ups the stakes - you don’t
want to lose, because you’ll have to start
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right back from the very first phase.
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So, let’s see all of this put together in
one boss battle.
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This is Baroness Von Bon Bon, and she’s
the boss of the stage Sugarland Shimmy.
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Now, you don’t actually fight her until
the very end because the first three phases
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see you going up against three different sub
bosses.
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These are randomly picked from a pool of five
baddies each time you attempt this battle
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- so, that means there’s more to learn,
and you have to react each time a new sub
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boss appears.
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Now each of these guys has their own patterns.
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Candy Corn moves around in straight lines,
and heads up and down at the edges or in the
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middle.
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Gobstopper follows you around the screen.
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Cupcake jumps up diagonally and then slams
down.
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Chocolate moves around and then splits out
in eight directions.
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And Gumball Machine moves back and forth in
a small area, while spilling sweets on you.
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They all cover the screen in a different way,
and require different types of dodging.
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Gumball Machine has you moving left and right
to avoid the sweets, while Gobstopper keeps
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you on the move because your current position
is about to become deadly.
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So there’s lots for the player to learn,
but you also need to react.
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Because even after you figure out that chocolate
will always split in eight directions - you
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don’t know when and where it will split.
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A little telegraphing helps you out, though.
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The battle also adds extra layers in each
phase.
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The first fight is a straight up battle against
the sub boss, but the second fight will add
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these tiny jelly bean soldiers who walk across
the bottom of the screen.
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And the third fight has a sub boss, and those
soldiers, and Von Bon Bon will pop out and
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shoot a shotgun full of candy floss.
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What you learned was a safe zone is now right
in the firing line, so you’ll have to make
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new plans quickly, and skilfully dodge through
this combination of patterns.
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If you beat all three phases, you’ll then
go up against Bon Bon herself, who chases
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you in a giant walking castle, meaning that
the ground is no longer that safe.
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She also throws out her head, which moves
in a really tricky chasing pattern, while
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giant rock candy wheels bounce along the ground
with a steady rhythm.
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ANNOUNCER: Knockout!
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So, this boss is a delicate balance of memory,
reaction, and skill.
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There are lots of different things that you
can learn, like patterns, phases, and weakspots.
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But unpredictable elements, like the random
sub bosses, mean that you’ll also have to
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be able to react to what’s coming next.
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And tricky patterns - like this chasing gobstobber
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blast - mean you’ll also just need to be
very skilful with the controls to keep out
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of danger.
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Most of the boss battles in Cuphead get this
balance right.
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But it’s easy to screw it up.
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I mean, take the much maligned boss Little
Horn, from Super Meat Boy, which completely
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tips the scales in favour of memory.
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This guy does the exact same thing every single
time, so fighting the boss is just about learning
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the pattern of attacks and then executing
the right commands.
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The attacks are too fast to naturally react
to on your first go, but they don’t require
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a huge amount of skill to overcome once you’ve
learned what to do.
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Now, this video has been all about how the
bosses kill you - not, how you kill the bosses.
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And that’s because dodging attacks is - ultimately
- the focus of the game.
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It’s not that hard to actually kill a lot
of these guys, because you infinitely shoot
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bullets as long as you hold down the button,
the targets are absolutely enormous, and you
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don’t need to know any special moves to
win.
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Things like parrying and using your EX attacks
are optional.
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That means that it’s often more about outlasting
the boss, than defeating it.
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And that’s why you sometimes feel like you
survived, rather than beat the boss.
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And that’s okay, but some of the best boss
battles are those where you know that the
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boss just won’t die unless you get in there
and kill it, with your amazing knowledge of
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the game’s mechanics.
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So this won’t be the last word on boss fights.
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We’ll be back in the future, to talk about
actually defeating these guys.
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Plus, other things like the build up, the
music, the pay off, innovative boss fights,
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and more.
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For now, though, Cuphead is packed full of examples of good boss attacks.
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Just don’t be surprised if you die a few
times when you’re looking at them.
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Hey thanks for watching.
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GMTK is funded on Patreon and these are my
top tier supporters.