If I gave you the buzzword breakdown of an online multiplayer platformer, your mind would likely jump straight to the ultra-competitive Fall Guys. In fact, the mere mention of multiplayer usually conjures thoughts of going head-to-head with other players for the right to stand atop a podium. What’s far less common is a multiplayer experience that asks players to put down the pitchforks and partner up to progress.
Published by Devolver Digital and developed by the Paris-based team Pastagames, KarmaZoo is described as a chaotic, joyful multiplayer platformer that trades competition for cooperation. Rather than pit players against each other, KarmaZoo incentives teamwork and kindness, rewarding those with compassion and putting the team’s needs above their own. I recently had the chance to go hands-on with KarmaZoo, playing with a few fellow members of the press and a dev from Pastagames, and I’ve come away with plenty of positive energy.
As the game’s name lightly alludes to, the ultimate goal in KarmaZoo is to ascend to Nirvana, the Hindu depiction of heaven that sees you merging souls with god through acts of kindness and caring. But you’ll need to pay your way with karma, a resource earned through collaboration and spent on adorable avatars.
When the game begins, you’ll be nothing more than a blob with no definable features or abilities, which sounds a lot like a newborn child if you ask me. You won’t be stuck in this feeble form forever, as you can spend your earned karma to unlock new avatars when visiting the game’s hub, the Sanctuary. There are 50 playable avatars that take the form of exotic and domestic animals, as well as plants and other objects, like a cute cactus man our developer guide had chosen to play as. While the blob could do little more than move and jump, the other avatars have their own abilities. By the end of our playtime, I had enough karma to purchase the turtle, which could retreat into its shell to avoid damage, while our developer cactus could use its spikes to create a surface for us to stick to, making platforming much easier.
After completing a short tutorial, we were thrown into a Loop, one of the game’s two modes, which tasked us with completing a gauntlet of five back-to-back levels. The game includes over 300 handcrafted levels, and each Loop will feature an assortment of them depending on the composition of the lobby. As our lobby consisted of blobs, with the exception of our cactus guide, we were predominantly given simple platforming levels with switches and moving platforms. However, we did see a more tailored level at a point in which we all turned into music boxes. Just go with it.
No blob is left behind, thanks to each player having a halo, a small aura surrounding their character that will shrink and eventually diminish if they go off on their own. The name of the game is cooperation, and the only way to earn karma is to help out your fellow players, whether that be by hitting a switch that opens a door or throwing yourself onto a bed of spikes to create a temporary platform out of the tombstone that’s left behind.
With ten players in a single session, things got pretty hectic, but the throughline of cooperation was always present. While we were on a voice chat the entire time, we simulated what it would be like to play with strangers, the game’s whole premise, by staying relatively silent and relying on voiceless communication. With a common goal and systems in place that reward compassion and more or less force collaboration, I’m hoping that genuine online interactions can be as entertaining as our session was because I had a blast.
Our time together, overcoming obstacles and awarding one another with karma to selflessly help each other progress brought us closer, forming a bond within the chat. And then we switched gears to play the competitive mode and tear all of that goodwill apart. The other side of the karmic coin is the Totem mode, in which up to eight players go head-to-head in various minigames to see who has achieved true inner peace (when I say inner peace, I mean who has the best reflexes and timing).
While several minigames will be on offer when the game releases, we tried out hands at a few rounds of Rush, a simple race from point A to point B. To keep things fair, all players take the same form, which for us was an owl that could glide, followed by fast and nimble raptors. Totem has a far more familiar feel with its bite-sized competitive games, not unlike other great party games such as Sports Friends. While I adore the concept of a cooperative platformer that lives and breathes good vibes, including a fast-paced and fun mode like Totem only strengthens the overall package.
When playing through the tutorial alone, I wasn’t immediately sold on KarmaZoo. The pick-up-and-play nature of the controls and the gorgeous pixel art style were appealing, but it wasn’t until I was thrown in with nine other players that I truly felt the hook. The concepts behind this collaborative platformer are endlessly endearing, and the execution, with the colourful aesthetic and cute characters, is wonderfully charming. While I’m not sure the cooperative approach will see KarmaZoo reaching the insane heights that Fall Guys achieved, I certainly think it has all the tools to be a runaway success.
KarmaZoo releases on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch and PC later in 2023.
Previewed on PC // Preview code supplied by publisher
