Attack of the Karens

Take the KARENS down! - Very replayable with the roguelite mechanics. - Difficult but fair. - Lots of hilarious lines and Karen memes :DDD - Great voice acting! - Definitely deserves much more sales!

Attack of the Karens is a shmup about the "Karen" meme. I absolutely love the charm of the game. The voice actors and the story of the game is very silly. It has rogue lite elements so your progression is based on your upgrades after a run/mid run as well. I'm personally a classical shmup fan so this premise originally might have turned me off but I didn't mind going through this one for the charm alone. The game cycles through options such as rapid shots, increased damage, extends and familiars. The game offers many opportunities for a beginner to obtain a 1CC after a couple of tries. My main issues with the game are sometimes due to the ship being very small you could get lost when sight reading bullets however I'm sure that just takes a bit of getting used to. I also don't like how the first two runs due to the nature of it being a rogue lite you are subjugated to being very weak and using a pea shooter. The game also lacks difficulty options which sometimes made me feel like there was dead air in between stages especially when you are powerful enough. Overall I recommend the game for a casual shmup experience but if you're looking for something more demanding I'd go elsewhere.

Attack of the Karens is a quality scrolling shooter with a great sense of humour, decent action, lots of upgrades and memorable boss fights. Randomised levels & bosses provides tons of replayability. I really loved the randomised levels/bosses for replayability. The levels were fairly easy but it's a marathon and the boss fights were a lot of fun. For more niche curation, follow me at: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27440015-CSH-Picone/

Speed-Run + Review: https://youtu.be/bXUtKX_2Y3I Attack of the Karens is a whimsical story of what we could expect if your local Karen became half cyborg. It features fast-paced combat in a variety of levels that has a beautiful retro look to it. You'll fight mini-bosses, and of course you'll then fight the actual Karens in some very intense battles that are very unique in comparison. Length: I also played the playtest, so... Demo + Playtest + Full game = about 25 hours by now. Because the game has some RNG factor to it in regards to the upgrades you'll see during a level, how early you finish the game is certainly going to vary. When you die, or complete the game, you'll be able to visit the store and begin purchasing permanent upgrades for your ship. This in turn will often have you playing through the levels quicker, and more confident than before. You have health, weapon, and speed upgrades - as well as some additional offensive and defensive upgrades you can take as well. If the game is too hard, or too easy, you can use the Kushions or Kurses to tailor your experience to fit your liking. It's a cool experience, and while I do suggest trying to beat the game without them - don't feel like you can't turn on all of the Kushions to make you feel like an absolute boss. Combat is fun, fast paced, and never feels unfair. You'll need to learn the attacks of the enemies to really excel in the game, but it's fairly easy to pick this up fast. The bosses may take a bit more time, but you can do it! Voice acting is phenomenal, and it really brings a level of polish to the game you may not expect from a title this size. The soundtrack is also an absolute joy to listen to, especially for fans of chip-tune music. Overall, what you're getting is an absolute blast of an experience at a great price. It also runs great on the Steam Deck, so you can play it on the go!

Like most of your typical rogue-like game, Attack of the Karen, you start off struggling to progress through the levels and bosses due to the mini-flying ship you're operating being generally weak. But, eventually, as soon you earn enough currency you will be able to upgrade stuff like HP, bullet speed, bullet damage, shield recharge speed etc making it easier to take down most of the squishy enemies before you feel confident enough defeat to fight bosses you encountered thanks to all the upgrades you spent on. Before you start a run, the game will tell you in advance which boss you will fight and the levels you will have to fight through to get to them in a specific order, giving you some pre-time to plan out your moves and keeping each run different from the other. As this is a game poking fun at Karen of all sorts, there are some comedic moments, but it could have been done with more embracing memes by having more unique dialogues as it does get repetitive after a while they don't change through each encounter which is a shame. It is something this game could have done to keep the humour fresh and alive much like Supergiant had done with Hades and Hades 2. The other problem I found with this game is it can be difficult to tell where your ship is located, for example, the colour it has made it mute to the background, furthermore, the supporting items you gain that are visible around your ship can appear like enemies. Both of these issues make it hard to detect where you are on screen when there is a load of enemies around, causing problems where you get confused about who to shoot and which bullets you should evade. I was thinking the only way to solve this problem is by changing the main subject of the colour of the ship to purple but then I realised that some of the background colours are in purple so maybe changing the saturation to make the ship stand out more compared to all the enemies. Despite some of these odds design choices, I did have a decent time with it. Not a game I would put as a top priority to play. It's one of those games you would buy forget about it after a month or year, spot it in your library then end up playing it for hours and you wonder why you never played it any sooner. Attack of the Karens does what it set out to do. It is short and simple and isn't too overly long. At the end of the day pleasant playthrough to keep yourself engaged for a few hours.

Help to cleanse the world from the karens! Jokes aside, Attack of the Karens is a really well executed game with a lot of replay potential. It's really fun and kinda addicting if im honest. Played it for an hour and got hooked. (the ost slaps too) give it a try!

Can blow up "Live Laugh Love" signs - 10/10 In all seriousness though... Played this for a bit - as a hardcore shmup fan you can tell this won't exactly be a CAVE style bullet hell game - but that's ok - not every game needs to be this. This game is a rogue-like shmup with big set piece bosses and a cheeky aesthetic. Definitely going for a more relaxed experience than a bullet hell game but I can say that my bullet hell/shmup reflexes aren't invalidated - namely there is no inertia movement (very important) and the patterns are generally micro-dodgeable. The hitbox for the player ship is more or less "honest" but the player ship is super small so it all works out in the wash more or less. The still screenshots might make it looks like the bullets are hard to see. They do blink which helps with visibility and they aren't terribly fast. There is a shop mechanic that - to be honest, not a huge fan of. (I prefer shop mechanics be isolated to a run and based on performance vs grinding up upgrades). I do feel like though that the upgrades come pretty quickly - I got a bunch in my <1hr playing and after getting them the game felt a bit better so maybe the game intends for you to get the upgrades quickly and being fully upgrades is the intended game experience. There is a fair bit of screen-shake, which I wish there was a way to turn off. The game just launched so many the dev will add this.

This game tells me that i will have manny fun. it was a blitzkrieg whit my wallet. I saw it, i buyed it, i played it and now i love it. What wonderfull people out there in the world are. Thank you Devs for such a gread game. ME and my kids will have the fun.

Pretty good roguelite Shmup that offers decent powerup variety and replayability. I'd say it's more on the easy side but there are enough customization options in place to make it harder (or even easier) if you want to. Some things irk me though: - Not all cutscenes are skippable; the ending isn't either - Having to shoot powerups for a few seconds to collect them seems weird to me - why can't I just move over them to collect them? Overall: 7.5/10, would recommend, especially to Shmup beginners

play this if you like shooting things