The online gaming community is filled with toxicity. It’s a problem. Ranging from MOBA games like Dota 2 and League of Legends to shooters like Counter Strike and Destiny 2, and even cooperative PvE shooters like Helldivers 2, you’ll encounter time and time again some players who are out there to either ruin your day or who really expect you to play at your peak, even when you just want to grind some missions and have some casual fun. Even when you play competitively and when you’re doing your best, someone out there will always do their best to put you down for not being great.
This stretches into PvE games, too, with some communities having minor but very vocal members who don’t like how you play the game, even when it shouldn’t be their business. Think Risk of Rain 2, any sort of Soulslike, Borderlands or Earth Defence Force. If you play with people on a Discord server that you’re not well-acquainted to, their expectations clash with yours, and toxicity ensues. In Soulslikes, in particular, especially as a streamer, people can really put a dent in your enjoyment of any given game.
It’s not all gamers, of course, but as I already mentioned, the vocal minority is ruthless enough to really sour your milk and make you want to do literally anything else if it gets to you. It’s not a great time, a lot of the time. It’s a big problem.
So, due to that especially, it’s rare to see games like Deep Rock Galactic, Kind Words and KarmaZoo that push the boundaries of cooperative play with systems that encourage mindfulness and kindness rather than fostering a community of hate and competitiveness. It’s games like these that are trying something new that I’m always excited to try out due to how unique they are in their setting and systems and in which they influence the community as a whole.
Today, I wanted to talk about KarmaZoo from that perspective and review it as an experience that is incredibly unique and satisfying, for the most part at least. As a side note, I got the game through Humble Choice this month, so you can grab it right there if you want to, of course.
As a quick disclaimer, I’d like to mention that I was also part of the closed beta test under NDA for KarmaZoo and got to see the game in its earlier stages as part of a few playtests and many different sessions. I can’t say that that shaped my views on the game as a whole but it definitely influenced it, at least in part. That said, I didn’t receive any incentive from the developers or any party involved to write a favourable or whatever review here. Hence, all the views expressed are my own, as per usual.
Developer: Pastagames
Publisher: Devolver Digital
Genre: 2D Indie Cooperative Puzzle Platformer
Release Date: November 14th, 2023
Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC, PS5, XBS, Switch
Copy was acquired through Humble Choice in Nov '24.
KarmaZoo’s developers describe the game as a “joyful, altruistic, cooperative platformer” and I think that explains the game quite well and not well at the same time. The game has you embark on a journey through multiple cycles of rebirth to make Karma trees bloom and to collect Karma hearts which you can then spend on various different features and new spiritual bodies.
You start the game as a blob or slime that is small enough to crawl through tight spaces and that can sing and double-jump. Your basic abilities here are ones you share with all forms and the slime form is one that you always have equipped. As you play the game, you’ll collect the aforementioned Karma hearts in many ways to unlock new forms.
These new forms have different characteristics to them. The shell can turn into a platform for others to step on whereas the big and heavy elephant might charge through glass blocks. The lamp can reveal secrets and the little spider can spin a web that others can climb on. In your runs, you can switch between multiple equipped forms as you need which makes it so that you can just customize your game experience based on your own playstyle.
As I already said, the game’s core principles include that it is a altruistic and cooperative platformer. The two game modes in the game are “Totem” (a series of minigames that can be played locally as well as online) and “Loop” where you embark on a journey to make a tree glow. Loop Mode is the main game mode for KarmaZoo and is exclusively online, even when you can create private lobbies for friends and the like. This is a bit of a criticism I have with the game. I wish you could just fill a lobby with bots, honestly. I’m not a fan of always-online-games, especially since servers might close down eventually.
That said, on these loops, you go through various stages that include puzzles and platforming sections as well as many secrets. Here, you might encounter spikes that will kill you if you step on them – but your tombstone works as a platform for others to step on.
Forming a tombstone for others, holding down a button, singing to make a platform move or otherwise aiding your fellow reincarnators is how you earn “Karma hearts” which you then can spend on progression in your hub area.
Death, however, isn’t permanent here. Whenever you die, via traps, spikes, lasers or the like, you return to the ground shortly after in the form of a bubble and can just keep going like that. The only way to “permanently die” (at least until the next stage) is if you stay seperated from others for too long. KarmaZoo features a “Halo” mechanic which is essentially just this sort of bubble around you, torches and other players. If you’re alone, it will shrink more and more until you die, at which point you turn into a spirit which can still help out allies in unique ways. To restore your bubble, simply regroup with at least one more person and stick together.
When all players turn to spirits or when the timer for each stage runs out, you fail, resulting in your loop ending. At that point, you still get rewards… you just could have gotten more if you had made it all the way.
The timer the game has, btw, is incredibly lenient and simply aids in not making games take too long, so I wouldn’t worry about that too much, even if I personally dislike timers in games.
So, to sum this up, the game is essentially a puzzle platformer where you help others. To progress, you need to help and be helped. If you help others and are a positive force in your runs, you’ll be awarded with Karma hearts which help you out. Once you make it to the end, everyone gets the same rewards. Got it.
But this is where an issue comes in. Since most runs are online-only, there are times when latency becomes an issue. If your internet is slower, the game turns borderline unplayable, as was apparent during closed beta testing and with a friend of mine from a more rural area. This makes timed puzzles (which are relatively few in number, to be fair) pretty difficult to complete, in my opinion.
Similarly, because you’re grouped up with randoms most of the time, there are some people who just want to rush through while others want to collect secrets and explore. This can clash sometime with people growing frustrated or ruining the experience for others. There aren’t many ways to grief people, as far as I know, but you can definitely deny joy from others, for instance by repeatedly stepping off a button to close a door in front of someone. This gets worse when there are fewer people alive still.
Luckily, the game has a kick system in place but I’ve also seen it happen that the wrong person was kicked, not to mention that the fewer players there are, the harder it gets to collect all the things.
Back to the fun of things, though, during the stages, you may also encounter fruits which you can collect to unlock run modifiers. After each stage of a Loop, you get a selection of modifiers that might help you or make the game funnier. You get more options depending on how many fruits you’ve collected. What modifier is selected is decided by vote, meaning that if a group of people want everyone to experience hiccups or turn into elephants, that’s just gonna be the fate of all.
These modifiers add variety to the many stages the game features but at times I get a little annoyed when I see the same modifiers again and again whenever there are better or more enjoyable modifiers present. I’ve even had times when people would just go the “no reward” instead of extra karma hearts or whatever, just out of spite, which feels counter-intuitive.
I wish there were more good (like the extra speed or the music-related ones) or funny options (like the useless facts or the hiccups) rather than ones that can make sections unrewarding or unfun (like the ones that transform you all into a specific creature, hence removing agency).
The game itself is, however, incredibly stylish and adorable in its presentation which does make up for these minor shortcomings. The adorable pixel art, the accessible colour palettes and the incredibly cute and funny dances you can do really fit the vibe of the game. The design for KarmaZoo is coherent through and through… and small details like every single form you can take having a different singing voices or dances make me just incredibly happy.
Similarly, there is a “battle pass” system in place that is completely free where the community as a whole gathers Karma hearts together which then go to various rewards of sorts, a system I find incredibly adorable and fun.
KarmaZoo tries to be altruistic by incentivising players to be cooperative and aid each other, send out hearts, goof around together, rather than competing against each other, and in that sense, it is incredibly helpful and very successful.
My biggest issue with the game, however, is how reliant it is on bigger player lobbies. If a player leaves, it makes the game pretty difficult. If you kick someone, it feels like you’re punishing yourself. I just wish the game would allow you to substitute players with bots of sorts, like the one in the tutorial, even if it comes at the risk of trivializing some content.
Heck, sometimes it takes a solid ten minutes to get into a game. You join a loop, after all, and then wait for the majority of players to step into the portal which in turn means that there is a lot of waiting involved until everyone is ready. I’d rather wish there was a traditional “matchmaking” system where you just get paired with random people. If your queue time is too long, let’s say five minutes or something, the game could then add bots to your game, like in the tutorial, and give them a random name of sorts.
As such, the game is heavily reliant on having an active and big community. Your enjoyment of the game differs based on the time and day, essentially, and how many players are actually playing the game but aside from unlocking forms and performing the different star missions, there just isn’t enough to keep players from playing more and more of the game, or is there? If the game had more incentives, like hats or new dances or whatever, perhaps the player base would fluctuate less.
According to Steam Charts, the all-time peak from 12 months ago was 1,085 players. The 24-hour peak at the time of writing this was 80. There are 56 players right now in the game. Before the game was part of Humble Choice, the peak player counts were around the thirties each day. Now in November, the game peaked at 183 but then steadily lost many of its active players.
As such, finding a lobby can and will take time, which, again, means that people might just play other games, quitting KarmaZoo, as such furthering the issue at hand.
So, I would say that my experience with the game overall has been incredibly positive. The game got much better over the course of beta testing and the past year with frequent updates and patches, which is good. When you get to play the game, it is a very interesting experience, for sure, with you having fun with others and helping each other. It is very wholesome and enjoyable, in my opinion, but comes with the issue of requiring a player base to be… playable.
The stats I mentioned are the days’ peaks and averages so depending on when you wanna play, you might just not be able to unless you have friends to play it with. It’s just a shame really.
Thus, if you do get to play KarmaZoo, it’s definitely an experience I would recommend. The way that the game incentivises friendly and cooperative (inter)actions is incredibly interesting and I really enjoyed that in my few runs… but getting to those runs was annoying and took too long. What would fix the game would definitely be to just introduce bots that fill in lobbies after a while and make space for people. Being able to join in-progress games could also help with letting players play the game.
If you’re interested in buying the game, I’d recommend to keep an eye out on the player numbers unless you have plenty of friends who’d play the game with you. In its current state, I’m feeling pretty mixed about this whole game but I’m leaning towards not recommending it, especially given that online-only multiplayer games might just be inaccessible eventually once the servers shut down or once there just aren’t enough people to play the game with.
This post was originally written by Dan Dicere from Indiecator.
If you see this article anywhere other than Indiecator.org then this article has been scraped. Please let me know about this via E-Mail.
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