QUICAL Review for Steam

Quical is a small-scale indie battle royale game developed single-handedly by one Japanese student who is also known as, Sakastudio. Customize your loadouts to fit your personal play style and battle against up-to 8 other players in fast paced online free-for-all matches.

Quical has the foundation for a quick, easy-going first person shooting game. You can customize up-to five different loadouts with various guns, melee weapons, and perks- each costing various amounts of points to equip. Players have a maximum of 160 points to make use of and there is a way to increase that number as well. 

One of the game’s most interesting features is its perk system. There are currently 12 different perks available in the game ranging from goofy to overpowered, depending on how you use and combine your perks. Perks have levels that increase the effectiveness of them at the cost of increasing point cost to equip. For instance, level 1 Regeneration increases your health regeneration speed by 20% at a cost of 7 points, whereas level 3 (the highest level) Regeneration increases the speed by 100% at a cost of 24 points. 

The opposite can be said about lowering your perks to a negative level. For example, level -3 (the lowest level) Max Health decreases your health by 99% but gives you -120 points in return. By choosing to nerf yourself with any of the perks, you can add points to your loadout and make room to optimize your loadout to your liking.

Here is what else I enjoyed about Quical– Hitboxes were accurate and felt appropriate. I personally liked the low budget aesthetic of the game. The textures are not extremely detailed or polished, but the vivid environments and easy-to-use interface are still visually pleasing to look at. The main menu song is also nice to listen to and reminds me of modern Call of Duty menu themes. I also liked the balance of the realistic-yet-cartoony feel of the game in general.

Although the perk system can make for some goofy and fun loadouts to set-up, ultimately, there needs to be some tweaking to the game. It seems like the optimal build was running level 3 Health, level 3 Endurance (increases damage output), and level -3 Crouch Speed to make an overpowered build. There needs to be a rework into limiting what perks can be combined as to avoid everyone eventually making that loadout the standard. 

The developer needs to rework some of the weapons as well. Reload speed for most guns are way too quick and make the Reload Speed perk practically useless. Grenades only do 40% health damage and should be increased. Melee weapons had very little reach and would only hit when standing directly next to enemies, the reach of the hand axe should be improved at the least. There are currently only 3 maps to play on, this should eventually be increased.

By far the greatest criticism of the game is that there is no one to play with online and there is currently no option for playing with bots. Quical released on Steam on February 22nd and already has a single-digit playerbase. I could not find enough people to fill a lobby to play the actual game. I switched to the Japanese server thinking that would help since Sakastudio is based in Japan but I could only play with 2 people. I theorize that this may be due to poor advertising as well as the game costing $16.99USD on Steam. $16.99 is a bit steep considering there are so many better battle royale games that are available to play for free from recognized AAA developers. I believe the price needs to drop significantly to attract and form a playerbase as well as rework the game to make it stand out more from its giant competitors. 

Quical has the potential to be a fun fast-paced arena combat game. The developer needs to rework a lot of the game’s design as well as drop the price of the game, at least initially, to draw in people into trying the game. This could be an easy-going fun game for teens and fans of first person shooters alike. However, it is still very impressive knowing a single student was ambitious enough to create this game, his passion and skill for game development is apparent, perhaps he only needs more time or more help to polish this game.

Check Out the QUICAL Steam Trailer:

QUICAL is available for PC via Steam.

Andrew Santacruz

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For most of my life, I have had the great fortune and pleasure of experiencing hundreds of different video game franchises and genres. Some of my all-time favorite titles are The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Dark Souls, and Banjo-Kazooie. I have always played video games with the goal of having a good time.

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