Karma. Incarnation 1

It's undeniable that Karma Incarnation 1 is what many would call, "Gamer Art" but what does that mean exactly? Is that just a fancy term for grandly illustrated/unique art? Does that mean lack of depth to gameplay? That there is a deeper message embedded in the game? Well, just like real art it is all of these things, but at the same time none of them. I know, that is a very Yoda like answer, but if you'll humor me lets break it down for you. Let's start with facts, Karma is a point and click adventure style game. When I think of comparable games to Karma, titles like The Journey Down 1&2, Armikrog, Violett, Tormentum-Dark Sorrow, and the much beloved, Grim Fandango. Point and click games are a very prolific genre with all sorts of different styles, animation, stories, themes and gameplay elements. Karma is no different, with its captivating animation and psychedelic use of color. The control scheme is universal and just about anybody could play these games. Karma is a love letter to Tim Burton, one can see hints of Beetlejuice and Edward Scissor Hands during their twisted trip though the worlds of Karma Incarnation. Personally I also see bits of one my favorite shows from the early 90's called, Aaahh!!! Real Monsters. There are grotesque smiles and our hero devours items, and sometimes characters whole. There are monsters and nightmares around every corner. At the same time, there is sort of an innocence to it all and something that is truly unique and beautiful. The games main selling point is the art, you can't take your eyes off of it, and why would you? Fans of the genre will see all the typical tropes of the point and click style game. There are puzzles; some abstract and others pretty straight forward. For the most part Karma takes a much easier path when it comes to puzzle design. I never really had to stop and think all that much and I always knew more or less what I was doing. Keeping you on track has been handled masterfully, despite the fact that the game has no dialogue by describing the entire story or what to do in comic book bubbles. This kept me on the path I needed to go, but I didn't exactly always understand why I was going there. I will touch upon this in a bit. The things that Karma uses to differentiate itself from the heap of point and click offerings out there with are its moral choices and Astral sight. The sight, upon activation creates this bubble of funky colors and lets you peer into the spirit world. This helps you accomplish a few puzzles, and gather some achievements. While very neat looking, I wish this element had been played up more as this ability ends up being rarely used. There are only two times its use is integral to the story and the first is when you actually get the ability. It just seems like more could've and should've been done with this idea. Other areas either could've been more explained or mechanics thrown in. At one point you receive a strange vessel/phone booth from Bill and Ted's Excellent adventure that takes you to other worlds. Upon using you zap yourself into another world, you pick up an old blind guy and drop him off. Why? I have no idea. This is just one of the random weird things this game just kinda throws at you and basically leaves you with more questions than answers. The story itself isn't anything too complicated, evil spirit takes your pink spirit girlfriend. You, good white spirit boyfriend must find a way to restore balance, defeat evil and save pink spirit girlfriend. It's simple but at the same time lacks definition in character development. I had no idea who anybody was. I know that the experience is more important in this instance but felt that I would've cared way more if the slightest effort to let me in on things was attempted. There is an inventory system in the game but it currently doesn't play any integral part in the game. Items are automatically combined for you and the game lets you know when you are missing something to advance the plot. You can click on items and see a comic bubble of its possible uses. This was helpful at times, but personally I never used it. The difficulty of the game is something I think will divide people, as it borders on being too easy. This isn't always a bad thing though. I have had to pull my hair out when playing games like Grim Fandango. As you move through the story you are presented with "moral decisions" and are usually given one of two choices. These decisions pretty much always end up being kill or be nice. There are occasionally moments you growl or incapacitate someone but it took me a bit to figure out that these don't affect your morality. If you are inclined to pointless murder that is really the only thing that is going to change anything. What does it change exactly? You grow spikes, and people react to you differently, ect. The story certainly learns toward goodness, as it is constantly giving you moments to redeem yourself and lose spikes. As this is the first of three parts of the story, I will warn you that story wise, there is no clear difference in destination by taking the evil path. You are rewarded with some end scene differences, but to actually "win" the game you need to play with a good alignment. Another thing to note is Karma Incarnation 1 has that it has "1" at the end for a reason. The game ends on a "To be continued" and fades to black. This is hardly a problem for me as other amazing games like The Journey Down have taken similar approaches. Art, music, and game design all take money and plenty of time. They are worth the wait. Just something to keep in mind for factual reasons. Other areas such as replay and innovation are not necessarily the focus. You can play the game twice, as a little meanie and as a hero, but you are going to get a maximum of six hours of gameplay. As mentioned before just keep in mind what you get for playing the games morality to its darker side. The true innovation here is bringing such vivid animations to life. One area I personally would've love to seen a bit more improvement on would be transitions. The game tends to hang or re-adjust your character during moments of interactivity. You can especially see these from transitioning from one area to another in the same world. I can say this a thousand times over, and the game has the awards to back it up, Karma is a beautiful game. Musically the game is playful, its use of tones and rhythm are as intregal its use of color. I didn't regret spending any time with Karma Incarnation, I wouldn't of played through the game twice just for kicks. There are enormous amounts of detail in every single world you visit. Little interactions that serve no purpose to the story, make you feel that this universe is strange and full of wonder. It is no small feat to take ones imagination, so vibrant and strange, and translate it with such skill and fluidity. That is why people are drawn to these types of games, they are gateways into other peoples mind. Some other games can boast of having all sorts of intricate features and complex stories but sometimes, a picture is worth a thousand words. Karma Incarnation 1 bathes in these types of moments, where you just can't look away. Ultimately, your mileage is going to vary with this title, but that stands true for most point and click games. There is a fervor when it comes to these types of games, people still sing praises of Monkey Island, the hotly debated Broken Age, the recent revived Kings Quest. Simply put, there is something that speaks to people when it comes to these types of artistic point and click games. Karma Incarnation is no different. It has its faults, but so do the other titles mentioned in this review. I personally cannot wait to see what wicked worlds we will get to grace in the next part.

Karma Incarnation 1 is one third of a cutely psychedelic point and click adventure with light puzzling and some hidden objects. I played it entirely using touch screen controls, though at the start of the game some baffling keyboard/mouse controls were communicated to me without any dialogue. I ignored this and kept touching things intuitively on the screen, which seemed to work just fine. In the first 40 minutes I met a guru, dosed my eyeballs with a psychotropic substance that let me see spirits and a new world of colour, then I jumped inside some kind of travel monster that took a blind man to eye-land, and then went to a beach rave with a flying saucer. The only puzzle I found tedious was jumping through holes in a leaf to try to find the correct exit, but otherwise most things went smoothly without requiring trial and error or repetitive searching. I can't wait to see the other two thirds of the game...

To tell the truth, I was not impressed by the demo and did not expect much from this game, but it turned out to be quite a little masterpiece! 'Karma' is beautiful, stylish and fun 'Samorost'-like puzzle adventure game. Jolly little monsters live in a bizarre world not unlike those made by Amanita, but with its own flavor - and many puzzles that could be somewhat difficult to solve without the walkthrough because of their, well, somewhat illogical nature. But it is very funny indeed - and every little bug, moth or flower is drawn and animated with special care and love. And after the recent huge price-drop, this game is actually a must-buy!

There's a lot about this game that is truly [b][i]bizarre[/i][/b], not just the art style. The game seems to be cobbled together without much care for the player's experience, and the result was that I was frustrated with gameplay, felt like I was fighting the game to play it, and felt like the game did not respect my time. (The ~7hours I've logged in it are only because I'm an unrelenting achievement ♥♥♥♥♥.) This made it difficult to enjoy the game, and so I don't recommend Incarnation 1 -- though I am hoping the dev might tweak things for later chapters, and am eager to see where all this goes. [EDIT Oct 10 2019: So many people praising the game as "art." Graphics aren't gameplay.] A few examples of why I found Incarnation 1 a chore to play: 1) Within the first ~10-15 mins of gameplay *after* the intro, you'll encounter a truly frenetic and bewildering sequence of load screens (!?) and short vignettes where there is little meaningful gameplay. [spoiler](I'm thinking especially of the first time you get into that weird little living elevator that lets you travel to different areas. You're forced through a vignette in which you have an interaction -with no options-- with a blind character. You never see that character ever again, and you pass through a few areas of the game you never see again. if this is foreshadowing for a later episode of the game, it comes at the expense of enjoying this chapter.)[/spoiler] It's exceptionally difficult to start feeling at home in the world of Karma when, right at the start, gameplay is constantly being interrupted. 2) You've got an inventory that displays items you've collected. However, you have no ability select items from your inventory to do anything with them. You can look at them in your inventory, but you learn nothing new by looking at them, and clicking anything in the inventory is never a path to accomplish anything in the game. If you've got the right item in your inventory, then when you approach the place where it can be used, the game will just tell you to use the item. And you then use it without actually accessing the inventory at all. This turns the familiar presence of an inventory into a distraction with no relevance to gameplay, and sends mixed signals to the player about how they are supposed to accomplish anything in the game. 3) Using Astral Sight appears to be just a gimmick for introducing (more) psychedelic art. There's very little going on in the spirit world that seems to matter for gameplay. Moreover, Astral Sight helps bring out some weird design decisions about the mechanics. Normally (without Astral Sight) you can pan around the whole screen and see what's going on far away from you. But Astral Sight only works for a small window around your character, so your world shrinks a bit when you use it (presumably the exact opposite of the experience it was supposed to provide of transcending a more mundane plane of existence or whatever). And yet, it's not quite so jarring, because... 4) The world you can see (without Astral Sight) is decoupled from the world you can interact with, nearly all the time. You can always pan around a screen and see what's far away from you, but you've typically got no option to interact with anything until you walk right up to an object. (The one exception is [spoiler]the forest[/spoiler], the one screen/area where suddenly, you can interact with objects at a distance. If you're like me, you discover this by being lost and bored and clicking anything you can -- and most of what you can click at a distance is irrelevant. The whole experience is a bit confounding.) When you are close to objects, the game simply tells you how you interact with them. As a result, being able to look around the whole screen at any time is basically meaningless for gameplay, since you only get information about which parts of the world are relevant once you've walked up to them. 5) Many of the hand-drawn animations become more irritating than charming, real quick. [spoiler]Especially in the forest and the leaf-maze.[/spoiler] The same animation plays every time you perform an action, and just eats up time: cute the first time, maddening the 30th time. Also anytime you are traveling to the left and click to interact with anything to your left, your character will pause, turn to the right, then turn back to the left and do what you wanted. This just seems like lazy programming.

This was an IndieGoGo campaign that I backed, but didn't make it. However, the devs didn't give up and kept working on their game, and now have released chapter 1. Did you like Botanicula, but wish it could be weirder? Then I have the game for you... Karma is a point and click adventure game where you play as a light thing. You're chilling in orbit with your love when suddenly this monster comes out of nowhere, eats your love, and goes down to the planet to devour it. It's up to you to beat the monster and save your love! Unfortunately, you're incorporeal, so you'll have to be born in order to actually interact with anything. Hey, that dragon's egg looks pretty sweet! I bet you could beat the monster in no time as a dragon! Oops, looks like the egg you chose wasn't actually a dragon's egg, it was a kind of a slug-like creature's egg. Looks like you'll have to do this the adventure game way, by grabbing stuff and solving problems. As an adventure game, this game is very simple. You'll pick up objects (by eating them), and if you come across a place where you can use them, the game will let you know. Otherwise, the game will display a question mark that you can click that makes Pip shrug. I had to look at a guide a couple times (I usually do with adventure games), because sometimes it was unclear if I could click on something or not. For some sections, Pip will eventually get a lightbulb that you can click on that will tell you how to do the section you're on. IE, some creatures are playing music around a fire, with you on the drums, the lightbulb will tell you that you're supposed to click the drum when the fire's sparks make a picture. Otherwise, you're on your own. There is a good/evil system in the game (hence the name, Karma), where at certain points you'll be given a good/evil choice, usually in the form of kill/let live. Doing evil deeds will change your appearance and apparently how beings react to you, but I haven't tried this out yet, since I went for a good playthrough my first time. Another system is your astral site, which lets you see into the astral plane which will help you solve some puzzles. The game's also a little buggy. It crashed on me a couple times, and one time I think a flag wouldn't trigger, so I had to play a section over again. But that was OK, because the game autosaves your current progress and has a list of previous section saves. Also of note is that this is part 1 of a 3 part game, so while you do get an ending, the larger problem of saving the world still remains. So, why should you get this game, which sounds kind of eeeeh? First, the graphics are amazing. The backgrounds are hand drawn, high quality and gorgeous! All the little colours and details are a feast for the eyes. The animations are fluid and just fun to watch. In every area, there'll be something irrelevant that you can to click on just to see an animation. Click on the snowman in the arctic level to watch him slowly shed his snow to find out he's a skeleton! The plant level has practically a million of these little things to click on. You can tell that a lot of love and care went into this game. It's really refreshing to have something smoothly animated and highly detailed after all the pixel games out there. Second is that this game's style is really, really weird. Your main mode of transporting to different areas is a living elevator-like thing with many eyes on stalks. I mean, look at those screenshots! The nice thing is that it's weird in a good way, not creepy or disgusting way. Definitely go give this game a try if any of that sounds interesting! Give the devs some love so they can make episode 2!

It's hard to put my words regarding this title because of the high artistic nature of this game. It can be said to a lot of point and click games. Karma is less of a game, and more of an expereince, a surreal, psychedelic experience, certainly a unique and unforgettable one IF you can apprecaite it. Yup, a big "if" right there. Point and click is a niche genre, always has been, and even more so today. It's a genre of hit and miss, especially for a game that takes a more artistic path like Karma. So, the big question is, is it the point and click game that right up your alley? [h1] Dark Innocence [/h1] First, let's talk about the strongest aspect of Karma, and that is it's art and concept. And it is gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous. It's vibrant and bold, every splash of colors are implemented with a great deal of thought, and how can I say this? It's hard to do such thing, creating a psychedelic-esque universe with bright, vibramt, and even contrasting colors without giving you an eyesore and headache after 5 minutes into a game. In Karma, it just works, it works perfectly. From the reddish/orange-ish that depict the strange-ness of the area, where the players first introduced to the game make the rather "normal" tribal cave looks 5x more alien than it is, then moving on to the purple shaded area, that echoes joy and happiness, to the ice-cold and isolated area, and the green "industrial" area. It's something to be expected in a point and click games, giving each area a distinct feel and look, something that has been a standard of a good point and cliick games, and that's playing with color to evoke a certain tone, mood, and atmosphere. Karma take a bold move by using a vibrant and strong colors, while most use a more subtle approach. Karma's characters itself are some... things.. that come straight out of your deepest nightmare yet somehow managed to be so cute and adobrale, it's almost like something that Tim Burton would create, so strange, unconventional, but "attractive" at the same time. As bizzare as the character looks, it has a strong aura of innocence, which fits perfectly with the overall art. [h1] Beauty in Simplicity [/h1] The story itself is pretty simple, you are a spirit whose beloved pink spirit is abducted by an evli spirit, and to defeat the evil spirit, he must reincarnate to a dragon, but instead he turned into a worm named Pip. Karma's dialogue is told by an alien, incomprehensible language, and thus heavily relies on various speech bubbles that shows various icons and animations, and that won't work without a fluid, expressive animation, and by presenting the right visual cues. And that's what Karma excel. These elements is what carry Karma's gameplay and storytelling. The supppsedly kind of cliched, boring story is greatly elevated by it's astounding viusal narrative. Cute things expressing themselves with cute speech bubbles. The gameplay itself is more simple than your typical point and click, it feels like most of the puzzles are there for the sake of making the game feels more..gamey. While the puzzle itself falls into typical point and click tropes, they are a bunch of puzzles that ranges from pretty straightforward to absolutely absurd, But the fact that Karma is entirely on 2D, made the puzzles overall easier, since you have far less dimensions to click around and the world of Karma is in a tight and rather confined space. Sometimes, I just click around the various interactive objects, hoping something funny will happen, and it works at times! As the name suggest, the gameplay mechanic that differentiate it from another point and click games is the karma system. In some occassions, you are given two options to deal with a problem, that's a good and evil deed. You'll grow spikes if you do evil deed, and that affect the story and how other creatures treats you. That gives the game an additional replay value. The other one is astral sight, where, in a push of a button, everything around you become more surreal with all these funky colors and you'll be able to see whatever it is on the astral world, and interact with it. Unfortunately, it's under utilized. As for the sound, I can't say much. The soundtrack, as the rest of the game is just strange but still really great to listen to, and the tribal feel to it fits welll. The characters' voices are funny, and the sound effects are well made. Just like the other aspects of the game, it fits perfectly well and adds even more to the whole strange yet charming atmosphere. [h1] The Same Old Tropes [/h1] Karma inhabit the recipe that makes a great point and click games..well.. great, and also carry the same mistakes as the ones it borrows from. First, the more abstract puzzles, my biggest gripe with the vast majority of point and click, it feels like it's just a common rule for these type of games to include the kind of puzzle that made me want to tear my hair off, but thanks to the small 2D space, Karma managed to significantly lessen the frustration, to the point where it's actually quite easy, is it bad? Well, to an extent, not really, Karma, by itself is aimed to be a more casual point and click and it did it. Second, is the story and character. As I said before, the story itself won't be that noteworthy if it's not because of the setting, art, concept, and how they convey it. And while, it ended in a good note, compared to other episodic point and click, they kinda failed to convince me that something grander is going on, though they do piqued my interest for the next installment. Finally, the weakest part is the side characters, due to the length of this game, to the design choices, it's hard to know, or pinpoint the characters, who they are,what their role is, their characterization, and so on. They feel like a bunch of creatures that Pip happened to pass by.And I hope this will be adressed in the next game. [h1] Conclusion [/h1] Karma, Incarnation is not a game for everyone, it's a niche game within a niche genre. It's a beautiful, bizzare, and unforgettable experience if you can appreciate the game as what it is. It's biggest strength is certainly the bold and vibrant visual, unique character design, and it's smooth flow both in story and animation. For a point and click game, its puzzles' difficulty is on the lower spectrum, mostly for the better.And it succeed on making a compelling story out of an otherwise generic plot. All in all, Karma, Incarnation is a game that is more interested in the "Experience" aspect on "Gaming experience", it's gorgeous,calming, and funny, and for the asking price, it's totally worth it.

Приятное психоделическое путешествие? Видимо, только для тех избранных, которым авторы проекта приложили вещества вместе с подарочной копией игры. Для остальных – бред, который не работает. Или работает слишком хорошо, ведь на то он и бред. Сразу отмечу причудливый визуальный стиль. Просто прелесть, симпатизирует с первых минут, но сугубо в отрыве от общей концепции игры. Как единое целое Karma. Incarnation 1 несвязна. Чрезмерный сюрреализм не пошел игре на пользу, сделав её неинтуитивной. Сложно понять не только последовательность действий, но и в целом вектор прохождения - что делать, куда идти, с чем взаимодействовать, что вообще происходит!? На экране интерактивно практически всё и это здорово – забавно пощелкать жужжащих мушек или «раздеть» снеговика и обнаружить под ним скелет. Но действительно полезное действие приходится выискивать тупо методом научного тыка и закликивания всего и вся. Это убивает всю квестовую составляющую. Техническая часть плоха, без компромиссов. Слишком долгие загрузки и переходы как внутри уровней, так и между ними. Что там такое грузится, учитывая общий примитивизм, - остаётся загадкой. Управление камерой сделано из рук вон плохо. Передвижение персонажа нервирует своей медлительностью, а поясняющие символы работают только если главный герой находится впритык рядом и не двигается. Из того, что порадовало в этом цветастом калейдоскопе, можно отметить сам мир – он отзывчив и реагирует на ваши действия. За этим интересно наблюдать. И не то чтобы это дарило вариативность концовок или размах реиграбельности, но сама идея платить по «кармическим долгам» своим внешним видом и реакцией на него окружающих выглядит занятно. И, конечно же, потрясающая музыка, под стать сумасшедшему стилю, в самом хорошем смысле, разумеется. Но даже она не заставит более вернуться в эту пеструю круговерть хаоса. Игра должна была быть первой частью трилогии. Это объясняет невнятный финал с намёком на продолжение. Но, наблюдая молчание авторов, можно сказать, что всё закончилось едва начавшись. И, может быть, оно и к лучшему.

I loved it. It's fun, the graphics are nice and colorful. 10/10

The beauty of the art style is evident to anyone, so I will not dwell on that. While it is impossible to not be reminded of the Amanita Design games, this doesn't feel like a rip-off. And while the textures are not as polished, the flow of movement from the characters is lovely and particularly well done. And the music score is great as well. Some mechanics (like being good and evil) could have been implemented better, the save system is far from good, autosaves and lets you replay huge chunks of the game if you want to try out handling affairs differently. Also it should be mentioned that this is part 1 of the story. All in all I had a blast playing it. If the pictures and trailer get you, you probably will not be disappointed.

A delightful little game! Very beautiful and unique artstyle, with lush colourful environments, cute characters, and a sweet if simple storyline. The "puzzles" are pretty easy to solve so there's not much of a challenge, however the main draw of the game is simply exploring this creative and imaginative world. A lot of times I found myself clicking on objects over and over again just to see the funny animations! And there's a decent amount of content available, considering the game easily lasts around 2 hours (without counting achievement hunting). The style reminded me a lot of Botanicula and other Amanita Design's games, though obviously less complex than that. Still, for such a cheap price it's definitely a more than satisfying experience. I bought this on impulse and I don't regret it one bit!