Written by AndrewH

While among the stories we’d to hold back with referring to till today was Mortal Kombat X, the other title we had to sit on until now was our hands-on time with Spacetime Studios upcoming MOBA Call of Champions. We’ve already gone into great detail about this game when we had our pre-GDC 2015 interview with Spacetime Studios but we didn’t reach do any sort of hands-on using the game itself until GDC 2015 actually started.

With that said, if you want to check out the interview and all the information regarding the sport, definitely hit up our previous coverage of Call of Champions. However, we’ll do a quick recap in regards to what this game happens because it isn’t an average MOBA in some ways. Essentially this is a 3v3 MOBA with two lane maps along with a center area which can change with respect to the map you’re playing on. It can be a maze, a focus for team buffs, and much more.

Spacetime Studio went into causeing this to be game especially for mobile gamers even though your typical MOBA setup can work just fine on the mobile devices, matches can take too long. So Spacetime Studios broke down what a MOBA is and rebuilt it from the ground up into something which is much more fast-paced, with matches lasting A few minutes. Characters begin with all abilities unlocked which means you only have to be concerned with battling another team, pushing the Orb of Death, and not dying yourself. Each character has a total of 5 abilities they can unleash onto their enemies, and champions have their own elemental alignments, weaknesses and strengths.

Matches contain no minions whatsoever but there are towers. The Orb of Death, that is an orb situated in either lane on the map you’re using, is important towards the game. Towers deal huge damage to enemies so in order to mitigate that damage, making it much less, you need to push the orb close to the tower you are looking to defeat. Pushing the orb includes just standing near it. The greater team members which are close to it, the faster it moves. However, the same goes for your enemies too.

Winning a match is performed by destroying the enemy team’s base. If the time runs out with no bases are destroyed then winning relies from which team destroyed the most towers. If that’s tied then it’s based off of damage dealt. Upgrading abilities, of which each character has 10 tiers available, and leveling up characters is done between matches. This way the whole game is centered on combat and winning, which makes it a really fast-paced and intense game regardless whether you’re playing a ranked match or practicing against AI opponents.

Alright so maybe that wasn’t the shortest recap on earth but there’s much more to the game than we mentioned here including all the broadcasting, spectating, eSports features. Its that, check out our interview with Spacetime Studios. So does the sport actually engage in like it is described? In one word, yes.

While playing a few matches against AI opponents, who were actually very difficult to go up against, I discovered the game to be quite intense. Having to not worry about minion farming, porting to base for upgrades and skill points, and other activities that take you from the combat in a typical MOBA, actually speeds the sport up immensely. Since each champion has mass, you are able to bump smaller ones around which actually can be very advantageous. Big champions are slower of course but could ‘bump’ the smaller, faster ones around. Abilities match their characters too. Smaller, more agile, characters have multi-directional attacks (jumping in to the air and decreasing, AoE attacks, dash attacks, etc etc). This adds to the chaotic, but fun, action happening when individuals are fighting one another.

Visually, Call of Champions looks good. Each character has their very own back story and appear quite good. The animation of both the characters and talents being cast are extremely smooth as well. All of this concludes together to make for very fluid gameplay and teamwork is essential in this game, especially because of the small amount of time period a match has. Moving into the center and managing to remain there uninterrupted for 5 seconds will give your entire team a short buff of 1 type or another (attack, defense, etc).

The spectating, eSports, and broadcasting features add a new level to this game as well if you consider it as an aggressive title. Things are set up for it also it all functions very nicely, even allowing you to zoom right into a specific character or destination to watch the action in real-time, or rewind it to examine the experience that went on.

Everyone is probably curious about the in-app purchases and we have news on that too. This can be a MOBA so there can’t be any sort of pay-to-win or advantage available. We believed that the IAPs would be for variant looks of characters. It actually isn’t. Instead the only IAPs that’ll be available will be to enhance XP to leveling your character as much as max level faster. Since matchmaking relies from people around your current Champion’s level, it doesn’t give anyone an advantage if they put money into the game. All it will is help make your favorite champions reach their max level faster.

Walking away from Call of Champions was a bit hard. The sport is actually fun which only agreed to be against some AI opponents. Playing against others should be better still. Spacetime Studios looks to possess a beta going shortly, and from there the company would like to have the game inside and out both hands by the end of Q2 2015.

Official Website: Call of Champions