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A jam submission

The Calling (Playtest Demo)View game page

Anime-inspired PvP shooter featuring over close to 100 livestreamers as the playable characters.
Submitted by BuriedCandy (@buriedcandyttv) — 6 days, 22 hours before the deadline
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The Calling (Playtest Demo)'s itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Overall Fun#623.6154.667
Controls / UI#1092.5823.333
Art / Graphics#1103.0984.000
Sound/Music#1132.5823.333

Ranked from 3 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

Genre

Action

Shooter | Platformer | Slasher | Beat em Up | Base Defense | Survival | Racing

Multiplayer

PvP | Party Games

Rating

Family Friendly

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

I played this game on stream: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2548025617?t=01h06m00s with Hythrain, Oden, you and others.

I generally don't play PvP games (or fps/tps games) in general, but I had fun playing this, since we were playing as a group and not with randoms.

The gameplay seemed normal for a PvP shooter, although I did encounter some bugs. It felt like the walls were blocking shots, but the barrels/something were not and I was getting shot through them.

There was also some parts where I was a floating gun, and other players were also floating guns, at least on my screen. On Hythrain's screen I believe all the characters were showing up ok.

At one point, I couldn't connect to the games as well even though I could see them in the lobby. I tried restarting the game but it didn't help. In the end, I had to create the game and the others had to join my game. After that game, I could join games again.

There was also a crash at the end (I sent you a screenshot). Hythrain also had the same crash at the same time, so it may be related.

There were also other minor issues like falling through the ground. When the round began, all the characters (even the NPCs) would say their spawn speech and it was a lot of chatter all at once.

Overall, fun to play with friends!

(2 edits) (+1)

This was a blast to play with other people! It felt very reminiscent of those old LAN parties, yelling back and forth, getting yelled at, making clutch moves, and cheering everyone on.  It ran very well, though is rather demanding on the system.  However, no real latency issues were noticed other than a little stuttering at the end of round if the player isn't the host.

Some points of improvement:

  1. Tutorialization can make or break an online game.  An quick tutorial mission would go a very long way into gaining some player trust that the game works as intended. Sprinkling tutorial information and mechanical tips into the loading screens can help reinforce and remind the player throughout their time in the game as well.
  2. Had a bit of trouble initially loading the game.  I think the game launched a browser screen behind all my other tabs and I didn't see it until I restarted my computer and didn't have my browser open it at all
  3. The Maps can be a little confusing at first.  Having images of them tied to the loading screen might help ease the player into the mindset of playing that map.  During the intro / waiting phase before rounds start, having a cinematic fly through of parts of the map they'll see often (especially for Control game modes) can give players some anchoring as to what to expect.  I know random teleports being confusing has been addressed already, but I do want to atleast mention it here as well.
  4. When selecting maps, it's hard to tell that that are more than those displayed, arrows on the side of the screen should help
  5. In a few places, it would be good to remind the player what game mode it is (ie. during the waiting phase and especially during the game start countdown).
  6. The mouse isn't captured by the game in windowed mode.  it's possible to click on another window or the taskbar  if it overlaps the game screen.  Some games will reset the mouse position to the center of the screen after polling it, and then stop polling and setting the mouse if the window loses focus.
  7. It's fairly hard to see the control nodes when they are captured by a team. It would be nice to have a floating UI element to show where they are on your screen (and a setting to turn that off).
  8. The Color Blind options are really cool, but they don't seem to effect the enemy highlight.  It would be cool to have full control of all the UI colors.  Also, it would be nice to be able to set the enemy/ friendly team colors to a specific color.
  9. In the city map, the big 2nd story teleporters have a small gap on the left and right side which allow the player to fall through the map.  This map is also missing a kill floor.
  10. Automatically switching a weapon on pickup should be a setting.  It's mildly disorienting when you incidentally pickup a weapon and it switches on you.
  11. Streamer friendly options would be really nice,  Some good examples would be customizable UI (moving it around to make space for chat or cams or weird aspect ratios).  A setting for name obfuscation for other players .
  12. If you die while meleeing, you respawn with the melee animation cycling (as a client).
  13. Once when I reloaded the map after a round, I spawned under the map for the waiting period (as a client).
  14. Once after a death, the respawn UI completed and my health bar came back, but my camera was still over my death spot (as a client).

The VOD is available in the link below for 60 days.  If needed for longer, please reach out and it can be turned into a highlight.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2548074454?t=0h3m55s

Jam Host(+2)

Hello! Welcome to Feedback Quest 8! My name's Hythrain, a co-host and one of the streamers for this event! This feedback is being written live as I stream your game! If you're interested in seeing my live reaction, let me know and I can send you a link to the VOD once it's posted to YouTube!

So my normal approach for any game in these events is simple: I get the game, make sure it's not a virus, then play it with as little information on how to play as possible. This way, I can judge how intuitively someone can figure out the game. Only if it's obvious that I need to read more will I do so. I note this so you can get a sense where some of these feedback comes from. In addition, I want to note that feedback and rating are different; don't use this feedback to gauge what I'll rate, nor should you view my rating as entirely indicative of my feedback.

So this was a lot of fun to play. I'm glad I went through the effort of arranging some other streamers to play it online, even though it required some extra hoops. These sorts of games I prefer testing with other players because then you can get a sense for how latency plays into things.

Visuals, the game is great. Music and sound effects I also like (though it was weird hearing sound bites from N64 Zelda games in one song). The gameplay was also good, though I can absolutely see where improvements can be made.

First, I'd say that your weapon shouldn't automatically change (or at least have a setting that lets a player disable this). It can really cause trouble for players who have a specific gun out and then happen to collect a new gun and it auto switches.

Second, while I love the teleporting I do wish it was more controlled. Rather than teleporting being random, perhaps it'd be better if there were set locations? Like going through A always takes you to B, B always takes you to C, C goes to D and so on? Honestly, I'm not sure the best way to handle this. I just know it sucks when you go through a teleport and end up right in a pack of enemies because it didn't go where you wanted.

Lastly, I'm not sure how I feel about the swapping of spawn points. Similar to how you can end up in a pack of enemies with the teleporter, it kinda sucks to respawn and find yourself alone where the enemy is and they all just face and blast you down. I believe the idea of this is to prevent spawn camping, but what if there was a function where you couldn't be killed in your spawn until you leave it once? That way, if people try to camp it, the camped team can just stay in spawn and kill some people before slipping out? To counter teams that camp from hiding spots, putting a teleport right inside the spawn that goes to a random teleport point that changes on a timer (not including the one that's directly in front of the spawn) could help counter that, as then a team could just go through the teleporter and all end up in the same spot and be able to swarm an enemy defensive point quickly to try and break the camp.

Also, there's one set of teleports that seem to be bugged, where you can talk out of them along the edges. You probably heard us talking about it on the stream, so I'm sure you know which one.

Other than that, there were two bugged vehicles that the player can get stuck on or in. You saw one of them first hand, but the second is the vehicle to the right of the centre when facing one that side's spawn. If you jump on top of it, it can clip you into the vehicle. I'm not sure the exact conditions to trigger it. The first time I feel like I did it on my own, but the second time I know I got shot while trying to do it and I think that pushed me in. As such, it's possible this glitch can happen with other objects if you get shot at the right time.

We also encountered bugs where players would disappear for some folks, showing only their guns. It wouldn't even show the enemy outline if they were on the opposing team.

Overall, there's quite a few things to fix but it's also very fun. I can't wait to see more. I also hope you're able to expand the streamer list over time. :)

Developer (1 edit) (+1)

Thanks so much for playing the game and glad you had fun with it! Appreciate all of your feedback, and luckily you haven't run into any bugs or things that we haven't been aware of already and have on our list to fix. I do love the suggestion to make it so that when you pick up a new weapon, it doesn't auto-switch -- that's a new piece of feedback we haven't received yet.

As far as the teleporting is concerned, I have actually already fixed that and now all of the teleporting is now predictable and controlled, though that update hasn't been pushed live yet (I was actually telling my chat when I jumped in to play against you -- I was also streaming at the time -- that it threw me off to go back to the random teleporting since I had already changed that and was used to teleporting to specific portals, lol).

Also, while the version of the game you played only had the 42 playable characters, your wish has been granted... there's actually a roster of 50 *more* playable characters (for a current total of 90+ streamers) already signed up to be released in the future, and if you're lucky enough, you'll see some of them pop up as bots in matches here and there before they officially get released as playable characters.

Thanks again for playing and so great to hear you had a lot of fun with it!

Jam Host

As a PVP game, is this able to do online at this time?

Developer

Hey! Thanks for being interested in the game! This version is an offline playtest, mostly because I have to mainly have to whitelist everyone manually to play online during our closed pre-alpha testing, but message me (or add me on Discord) with your Epic Games email address and I would be happy to whitelist you to play the online version!