Game Reviews

KarmaStar

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KarmaStar
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| Karma Star

The concept of karma states quite simply: what goes around, comes around. To put it to the test I’ve been kicking homeless people on odd calendar days and helping little old ladies cross the street on the even, just to see what happens.

My hypothesis is that my karma will balance out (fingers crossed). If you read a headline within the next month about a Pocket Gamer staffer being kicked to death by sweet old homeless woman, however, you’ll know my hypothesis was false.

With that deeply upsetting image fresh in your mind, let’s bring our collective consciousness to the soft and cuddly charms of KarmaStar.

It's essentially a cross between the Top Trumps/war card game and something altogether much more original. Matches involve three space-suited contestants floating in the cosmos, each with a bank of five icon traits of differing strength: health, mind, people, love and money.

When it's your turn, you are presented with three enlarged versions of the icons in the middle of the screen. The icons that are accompanied by a plus sign level up your icon of that kind by one and grant you a point towards your overall score.

The icons that are housed within a red button instigate a battle against an opponent of your choosing when pressed. Tap it and the screen pans away to reveal the two dueling contestants. Surrounding each contestant, a number of small rotating dice appear, which stop when pressed.

The aim is to press each one to reveal a number, the combined total of which needs to be higher than your opponent’s to win.

The value of your trait corresponds with the number of rotating dice you can press - in other words, the higher the trait value, the higher the likelihood of achieving a higher score than your opponent. Winning a battle earns you two points towards your overall score. Lose and your score stays the same.

There are eight rounds in each match, two apiece in four life stages: childhood, adulthood, middle age and old age. Are you following all of this?

Occasionally, you're awarded power-ups that can be used at opportune points during play. These vary from enabling you to award yourself and another opponent one trait point to assigning more dice to yourself during battles.

They're key to turning the tide of a match. Knowing when to use them is as important as balancing your strategy between leveling up your icons and going on the offensive.

The karmic element is essentially a thin veneer, spread liberally over the core gameplay. Choosing icons, battle or level up, prompts a message to pop up on the screen about what effect your choice had on your opponents. These range from the positive ‘Thank your parents’ to the much less life affirming ‘Chased for shoplifting.’

Wi-fi multiplayer is an excellent bonus, though with only one single player mode, there isn’t much to play for once you've mastered the toughest difficulty level. That is unless you want to go after the many achievements, more than half of which you can collect when tackling the game on Hard.

But these shortcomings don’t matter too much because KarmaStar is a charming puzzler. It might not have much to do with Eastern religious philosophy, but its benign presence on the App Store will surely bank it some good behaviour points with the omnipresent cosmic forces of good and bad.

KarmaStar

KarmaStar is fun, tactically challenging, and sports enough charm to deserve a good faith round of its unique gameplay
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