Text/Sanming
Today I want to talk to you about such a game.
It not only evolves "guns + girls" into a real 3D battle theme, but also ingeniously adds dimension switching between 2D and 3D to the game system as a special way of moving/fighting, allowing players to feel the change in dimensions.
Players play as a variety of two-dimensional beautiful girls/years on the battlefield, sometimes fiercely fighting with guns with different shapes and unique functions, and sometimes turning into flat "standing paintings", dodging the oncoming rain of bullets, moving freely on the walls, and flying freely in mid-air.
This "true deconstruction" of the two-dimensional connotation, as well as the gameplay full of a lively and pleasant atmosphere, made me add this self-developed shooter game called "Calapichu" based on the UE4 engine to my wishlist early on.
At the moment when the publicity has not yet been fully rolled out, "Calapichu" has already received 320,000 followers and a 9.4 demo rating on TAPTAP, and we can feel the expectations of players for this game.
This body is also too tasty, readers and friends understand, I am old two-dimensional
Recently, "Calapichu" finally ushered in the "Bose 1.0" test in the anticipation, and at the end of the year, in various mobile game card pools crazy shipwreck, like a stubble of high-quality "leeks" I finally broke out in Europe, very lucky to win the test qualification.
After experiencing the game, I really want to talk to you about how this real "paper man shooter" "Calapichu" is played.
What is Calapichu?
Before we start talking about the game, let's tackle one of the most critical questions - why is the name of this game so strange?
If there are players who have been tortured by the same "big things", there should be a deep shadow of "Calapichu", the name comes from the six-dimensional space theory proposed by Calabi-Yau Chengtong, in the model Calabi-Yau manifolds they constructed, the dimensions can change like the unfolding wisdom of the three-body civilization, like a utopia that does not require much resources to maintain eternal existence.
In the world of Calapichu, humanity finally discovers this six-dimensional space made up of many tiny strings.
At 21:35 on April 24, 2060 in the old calendar, with humans entering two-dimensional space in the form of strings and regenerating as Kachu, humans officially began to explore the world of Kachu.
It's just that with a beautiful vision comes a false ideal town.
Opal, who is responsible for maintaining the Kachu world order, discovers that the Kachu body seems to have an unsolvable drawback - every hundred years, the Kachu body's carrying of consciousness reaches its limit, causing the string sequence to disintegrate, causing collapse.
With existing means, the onset of collapse can only be delayed by clearing memory. In order to maintain the stability of the Kachu world and the continuation of the Kachu people, Opal must not use the memory reset method called the "reincarnation plan".
This anti-humanitarian behavior led to the first disagreement among the Kachu about the way humanity could survive, and Scissorhands, a rebel group aimed at returning to the old world, was formed.
The other force, the Urbino consortium, advocated exploring another new world, and the three camps began to discuss what human beings are and where the future of mankind should go.
Is utopia a compass to eternal happiness or a sweet poison that hastens humanity's demise? I think this is also a profound theme that "Calapichu" wants to explore.
In my opinion, in a shooting game, the worldview, plot and shooting parts are like the relationship between vinegar and dumplings, and the two can complement each other and even make up for each other.
So how did Calapichu bring this hitherto only cutting-edge scientific concept into the game?
Although I can't understand those profound and obscure quantum mechanics, I know that "paper man wife (male)" is what every house loves.
The characters we play are superstringers from the special police squad Opal, the extremist organization Scissorhands, and so on, and "stringing" is the special ability of these people.
Reflected in the gameplay, the 3D character we operate can become a literal two-dimensional paper person at any time through "stringing", in this state, we cannot attack, but the collision volume of the model will become very small.
Veteran shooter players should be able to see that the most important function of "stringing" is to reduce the character's hitbox, and the flat shape allows the character to reduce the risk of being hit as much as possible in the rain of bullets, so that the character can get a greater advantage when facing the gun.
The chorded Paper Man character will become lighter, glide when jumping from heights, and move more flexibly around the map.
The more imaginative part is that after becoming a paper man, we can also manipulate the character to merge with part of the wall, climb over various obstacles from the plane, or secretly occupy the high ground of the map, or use the paper man's lack of footsteps to touch behind the enemy and launch a surprise attack.
Therefore, the map design of the game also needs to be re-developed around "stringing", "Calapichu" does not choose to move the classic maps such as desert and warehouse assault familiar to shooter players, and the "88 Area", "Euler Port", "404 Base" and "Wind Swing Town" that we can experience in the current version are all original maps redesigned for the stringing system.
Compared with traditional shooters, the biggest feature of Calapichu's map is that it is full of depth and three-dimensionality layered up and down.
Most of the scenes are not just flat, "stringing" brings more dimensional means of movement, such as in Area 88, players often have fierce confrontations around the container cluster in the center of the map.
On the one hand, this location is not far from the spawn point of either side, and there are excellent access roads, so players can be naturally guided to this area after birth to fight.
On the other hand, this small area can make people clearly feel the purpose of the design - there is a "platform position (commanding height)" that can be held in each of the four directions, and the container group in the middle seems to be easy to be besieged as a lowland, and the cover of various containers can also be countered, and the retreat can fight positional battles, and the entry is full of the refreshing feeling of street fighting.
Moreover, each platform has many backward routes that use "stringing", which also brings a lot of uncertainty and game fun to the confrontation.
"Calapichu" does not have path dependence on some successful designs, but instead uses the "stringed" gameplay with very heavy original attributes, which is very rare in domestic shooters.
What's more valuable is that I think the brain-opening "stringing" brings a very interesting experience, whether it is the degree of fit with the Kachu worldview, the fun of the system itself, or the map design specifically adapted to this system, so that the "stringing" is seamlessly integrated into the plot and gameplay of "Kalabichu".
Characters full of personality, highlighting the two-dimensional genes of "Kalabicchu"
But don't forget that Kala Bhikkhu is a shooting game with "two-dimensional" as the core selling point, and there is a consensus in this type of game, the game needs to have a variety of flattering and distinctive characters in order to please two-dimensional players and make the houses willing to pay for love.
On this issue, as an old two-dimensional I should have a certain right to speak.
The characters in "Calapichu" are quite clean, which is what attracted me the most about it.
If I have to describe it, the character of "Cala Bhikkhu" does not rely on the flesh selling sense of flamboyant brushstrokes, nor the kind of sexual coldness that emphasizes functional beauty, but has a wonderful sense of balance between the two.
For example, Michelle Lee, whom I like very much, is a newcomer to the OPAL organization and chose a police officer's uniform as the "base" for easy movement. Of course, many people will definitely be firmly sucked by the snow-white long legs at the first glance of Michelle, and the pair of essence "leg rings" just squeeze out a faint sense of strangulation at the mysterious end of the thigh root, triggering Azhai's endless reverie.
This kind of exposed flesh can be described as too glamorous more, and it will be lifeless if it is less.
As for the cat ear/tail shaped sensors, band-aids on the knees and other trinkets, it reveals to the player the lively and playful inner world of a girl - you will find that the girlish sense and the characteristics of the search officer blend very naturally in Michelle, who is also a decent opal warrior after picking up the weapon.
So many characters are not just different modeling, in terms of gameplay, the character setting also integrates heroic mechanisms similar to "Overwatch" and "Valorant", and each character has obvious differences in playing.
They all have their own main weapons, including assault rifles, precision marksman rifles, big snipers, big sprays, and more, which means that each character has a significantly different feel in one shooting game.
On top of this, each character has 2 active skills and 1 passive skill, and the skill design logic of each character basically revolves around shooting, map attack and defense, and "stringed" gameplay.
For example, Michelle is the number one character in the character book, her main weapon is the M4 with a very balanced rate of fire, damage, and recoil that is very friendly to novices, while her active skills are the Meow Turret, which can automatically attack enemies, and the evolved version of the Fire Meow, while the passive skill is to see through the enemy's position and share the vision with teammates when hit.
I recommend novices to try this hero, not because cats are so cute.
After all, Michelle's skills do not need to be deliberately paid attention to, they are all put down and effective, which does not mean that her upper limit will not be very high, a turret with a tricky angle can effectively block the enemy's attack, and can also be used as a very useful information point in this type of game to provide enemy positions.
Miss Audrey is a hero with a specialized shooting, her main weapon is a machine gun with a slightly slower rate of fire but higher damage and ammunition load, and the accuracy of shooting will become higher and higher as she continues to shoot, and the skills are all around the machine gun, the passive skill allows her to open the frontal shield to resist damage when aiming, and the active is to set up the machine gun in place to further improve the stability of the shot.
There's also Madelena, whose main weapon is a precision shooter rifle that requires a certain level of proficiency, but I can clearly sense that she is a specialized hero, and as a costume artist, she can splash her own paint "at will" on the map, and within the area covered by the paint, enemy heroes will slow down and cannot use "stringing".
The gun is not very easy to use and the skill cannot assist the gun, and Madelena may be a little chicken when starting out, but for those masters who have integrated the string into the body, Madelena's special ability is like a fantasy killer of Kamijou, often with the function of affecting the battle situation.
Compared with other games with similar hero designs, the gameplay of "Calapichu" is more integrated, it also needs to master the use of tactical props such as grenades/flash grenades/smoke grenades than "Overwatch", more familiar with the gun feel of different heroes than "Valorant", and there is a very high ceiling "stringing" system that needs to be used skillfully than "Rainbow Six".
Therefore, most heroes need to take into account shooting, stringing, skills, tactical props, and exchange with teammates in battle, and too complicated operations have become a less friendly part of the work, raising the threshold for getting started.
Needless to say, shooting only is not enough in "Calapichu", the two gameplay methods of the game are full of e-sports confrontation while following their own design logic.
In the more competitive demolition mode, players have to upgrade their equipment, skills, and armor before the start of each mini-game, and the resources to upgrade are limited, but the upgrade of different routes often directly affects the key victory or defeat of each small game, not to mention, a gun with better backseat and ballistic scattering attributes will further shorten the TTK of the master to defeat the opponent, and the laggard side can also upgrade the character through more resources to reverse the battle.
The in-game growth system of the blasting mode undoubtedly brings the fun of the game.
Upgrading the ability can not only bring quantitative changes, through the combination of firearms, skills, survival upgrades, we can also strengthen skills for the character, how to distribute, in what order to allocate energy, whether the character prioritizes upgrading firearms or skills, almost has become the most worthy system for studying the demolition mode, in the current extremely homogeneous shooting game market loyalty, differentiation has become a trump card played by "Calapichu".
In the team competitive mode with Smash Bros. as the main gameplay, players can pick up buffs related to armor, skills, etc. when they kill enemies, and the more enemies they defeat, the stronger they will become, and players can enjoy the snowball-like thrill - of course, if you are the one who is being rolled, the experience will not be so good.
In short, don't underestimate the hardcore degree of "Kalabichu" just because the opposite is a variety of white-haired cat-eared little maids, people can take away several "little rookies" like you and me with a shuttle.
But from another point of view, this is a good thing for players who like shooting games, which means that "Calapichu" does not hang sheep's heads to sell dog meat, but polishes, deepens, and perfects the gameplay with the same sincere attitude.
Even if you put aside the beautiful girl who is the main "selling point", this game will still be a shooter worth trying.
Finally, a few small questions
In this test, the advantages and disadvantages of "Calapichu" are very obvious - the two-dimensional beautiful girl with various attributes poked my XP system, fun is really fun, but there are also many small problems.
To be fair, Calapichu is definitely the "hard" type of shooter I've ever played.
Sometimes, "Calapichu" is really stiff.
For example, when climbing a wall, there is always a slightly stiff turn from the paper man state back, and there is a slightly uncomfortable perspective switch from third-person mode to first-person when encountering enemies in close combat.
There is also compared to similar shooters, the TTK of "Calapichu" is too short, I feel basically similar to old shooters such as "CS", and old players against guns, sometimes I realize that it is time to raise the gun, the other party's dense bullets have converged on my head into an exceptionally accurate point, for novices the experience is certainly not as cordial as TTK slightly longer COD or longer APEX.
These small problems are like a wooden thorn in the hand, usually do not affect the actual game experience, but every time you encounter it, you can forget the joy of the game itself and feel a pang of discomfort, at least before the official launch, "Calapichu" needs to be more refined to polish the feel of operation.
More often than not, "Calapichu" is not as "cute two-dimensional" as it seems, and the actual play of this game is full of confrontation and hardcore competitive parts, which have brought me a difficult shooting game to a few days of not smooth journey - barely playing a 0.8 KD has made me feel a little burned out.
Of course, as the production team's first shooter (or even the first game), you definitely can't touch the triple-A masterpiece on the porcelain market with every aspect of Calapichu, and as a player, I want to be more tolerant to witness its growth.
In my opinion, the production team has started from the concept of "two-dimensional paper man + shooting" and built a fascinating world, a mature gameplay and many charming two-dimensional characters, which will be the main framework for future updates of "Calapichu".
This unique game experience will also become the core competitiveness of this work on the track of shooting games, and it is unique that can really make two-dimensional beautiful girls move in 3D in the hands of players.
It's no wonder that you can always see in the comment area that "the end of the young man is coming"
So, there is still plenty of time left for the production team, keep up the good work, "Calapichu".