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I've had problems installing the giveaway version. I keep getting a ''Failed to Launch the Program'' message. Downloaded three times and each time get the same message. Luckily for me I don't have a capped download entitlement. The images I've posted are mainly based on my Steam copy of the game. I downloaded and installed the free MyPlayCity (MPC) version; which also installs okay ( the downloaded installer is 1.9MB and it takes less than 4 minutes to download the main game and install with a 150MB broadband connection). Do make sure you uncheck the check boxes if you decide to download the MPC version. The Steam version costs £1.99/$2.99.

Karma. (Incarnation 1)

In Brief

Karma is a large download of over 1GB so I would download as early as possible

The game is a multi-award winning adventure game exploring the love story between two beautiful souls through ingenious humour, mind bending puzzles and a bizarre, hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animation style; possibly inspired by the developers of Samorost 1-3, Anamita Design, though Karma has a bizzare psychedelic introduction and less detailed imagery. Most of the images I've posted below were captured from the introduction as the in game images contain too many spoilers. I have over 140 images, but won't be posting a slide show until i've removed those.

Installation:

Karma downloads to a 1.07 GB zip file that unzips to three files, (a setup.gcd security wrapper, the set up file and a read me). Those with multiple hard drives are able to save games on any drive they wish. The newly installed game is around 1.5GB in size (wasn't able to inatall the giveaway version so the size is based on the MPC version installed). The game installs to the following path by default, but can be changed by the user if you prefer:

C:\Program Files (x86)\MyPlayCity.com\Karma

Four shortcuts are installed to the desktop. three of which can be safely deleted (Play Online Games, MyPlayCity Games and shortcuts to a free online game which vary each week). Also, if you don't like icons installed to the quick launch task bar, make sure you uncheck the box when the additional tasks window appears (after the Select Start Menu Folder window)

Introduction:

Cleanse the planet from darkness in the game Karma! This original adventure game explores a love story between two souls through the ingenious humor and a bizarre, hand-drawn, frame-by-frame animation style. Evil spirits has abducted the hero’s beloved, and the only way to reunite them is to reincarnate himself as a dragon to defeat the monsters and harbingers of hell. But something has gone wrong, and his soul is reborn as a worm named Pip. Now Pip must overcome the challenges of a surreal world, solve mind-bending puzzles, and save his love. Choosing between good and evil, Pip learns the laws of the world, and his choices define the outcome of the game Karma. Join this amazing adventure and have a bunch of fun!

Edited reference accessed HERE. 9th December 2017

The Game:

Review 1:

I was immediately captivated by the visuals and charm of Other Kind Games’ Karma. Incarnation 1., as well as the fact that it seemed inspired by Amanita Designs’ games, such as Samorost 3. Like its inspiration, the game has no words. Instead, everything is told visually through thought and speech bubbles. This is both a blessing and a curse.

You play as a little soul whose beloved has been taken by evil spirits. In order to save her, he’s tried to reincarnate himself as a dragon so he’s strong enough to defeat them. But something goes wrong and instead he ends up in the body of a plump worm named Pip. It might not be as exciting as a dragon, but Pip has some pretty useful skills of his own. For one, he has a long tongue that he can use as a whip to grab things. He can also eat things and carry them around in his belly for later use. And he has a pretty big appetite. But that can also be his downfall.

While the game does show you early on what happens to you if you kill and consume another creature, it wasn’t clear to me until near the very end of the game what the title Karma is referring to. But the gist of it is that the soul escapes through the top of his head, forming a spike as it does so. If he grows too many spikes, he won’t be able to ascend to heaven when the time comes. There are ways to get rid of his spikes, though — namely, by doing good deeds such as replanting a plant creature he killed. But from my experience, the karma doesn’t come into play for most of this game, which is the first episode. Perhaps it will play a bigger part in future episodes.

But there is a nice little skill you’ll get early on. Pip learns that he can squirt some type of liquid in his eyes and then see in psychedelic colors. It allows him to see things otherwise hidden to the naked eye. It’s like he sees into the spirit world. I’m a big fan of this type of mechanic in adventure games, as it gives some depth to the puzzles and allows for multiple layers over the same scene. It usually gives you more to do in a small space. I did like the puzzles that involved using the psychedelic vision, though I would have liked to see it used even more. Early on, I would use it when I was stuck, hoping that I missed something. But it rarely ended up being what I needed, so I eventually stopped using it as frequently. Later in the game, it is used more, but I still think it could have been better utilized.

There’s also a living transportation device that takes Pip to different locations at will. This includes a colorful summery area where everyone parties all day, a cold snow-covered winter world, and a lush forest filled to the brim with strange creatures that react to your touch. I enjoyed meeting all the different creatures, but I do wish the game involved less pixel hunting. Early on, it seems it will work like Love You To Bits, where all possible interactions are flagged by a little bubble. But it turns out, just about anything can be an important interactive object. In the forest world, this meant tapping on basically everything to see if it will give you what you need. In Samorost 3, you’re rewarded with achievements for inspecting everything. But here, it’s part of the main game and it’s not entirely obvious at first either. This led to some tedious backtracking and running around when I couldn’t tell what I missed.

On top of that, the game has a zoom feature, which might make it more playable on a small screen. But it’s not quite so necessary to zoom in so much on iPad, yet it constantly does so on its own. I would zoom out and the game zoomed back in a few seconds later. Luckily, you can move the camera around as much as you want, but it means you’re spending a lot of time adjusting the camera instead of just tapping to move. On my first playthrough, I didn’t even think to drag the camera around much because I forgot I could. The game kept zooming in and I’d forget that there’s a big world out there. It wasn’t until my second playthrough that I really took control of the camera and used it frequently. It makes things more manageable but also a bit tedious, because it won’t stay zoomed out.

On my first playthrough, I also got stuck for several days and almost gave up. I couldn’t see anything new to do. I had access to the sunny area and the snowy area, but I felt like I had exhausted all options. This is partially my fault, but the game was definitely also to blame. This is what happened. The first areas you visit, you can only go right. The game does not let you go left. So in the next area, I didn’t even bother to try going left. I just assumed there was nothing there. I was stuck for days with no idea what to do, until I finally thought, “let me see if there’s anything over there.” And my next step was indeed off to the left. I was then able to continue and finish the game fairly easily, though I did get the bad ending due to a silly mistake near the end.

And that brings me to another issue. The game does tell you that spikes and horns are bad. But it’s very easy to mess up and find yourself being judged for your past deeds before you’re ready. On my first playthrough, I had no idea that I was about to reach the end and had missed out on some very important steps. So I got thrown back to the very beginning. Once you enter the last area, there’s no way to go back and fix your mistakes. There’s also no way to know this ahead of time. Maybe I missed a detail in one of the visual stories the characters told. When everything’s shown through cartoon drawings, it can be easy to miss a detail. But it made my bad ending feel cheap, especially since I would have to do everything over for a chance at the good ending. I almost didn’t go back and play again, but I figured it shouldn’t be as bad the second time around. And it turned out my mistake was only in the final fifteen minutes of the game. I corrected it and got the good ending — or rather, a “to be continued.” But it felt like such a waste of time. From what I can tell, there’s no way to mess up until you’re close to the end. So why can’t the game just set you back to the point where your choices matter? Why make me redo all the same stuff just to have another go at the ending? It left a bad taste in my mouth, especially since Pip moves so slowly and sometimes has to walk across an entire area just to do one thing.

Then there’s the fact that this is only the first part in what I imagine will be a three-part game. Just as you’re getting invested in the story, it’s over and you have to wait to see the rest. My second playthrough only took about an hour. The game doesn’t cost much, so the length is not really a problem. It just felt like it was over too soon, like I was just getting started. And the issues I encountered — especially having to start from the beginning — felt like they were being used to pad out the game, which I’m not a fan of.

All that said, I’m glad I had a chance to experience the game, especially on my iPad. I would likely still play the second episode when it releases, though I do hope they deal with some of the issues I had with this one. I don’t like when a game wastes my time and here it seemed so unnecessary. I really like the idea of your actions affecting the outcome and being able to make reparations before the end. But it should have been dealt with in a clearer way and without the tedium of starting over. A few changes could make the game very user-friendly and perhaps a must-have recommendation. I would still recommend it, but you need to have some patience and be ok with the possibility of having to replay the entire game if you mess up. If you’re willing to give Karma. Incarnation 1. a chance, you can download it here.

Reference accessed HERE. Originally posteon August 27, 2017. Reposted by Whiterabbit-uk 9th December 2017.

Review 2:

I’m sure that most of you out there who have been playing video games for a while have heard someone say something along the lines of “video games are art”. While that phrase can have some semblance of an actual meaning, it’s generally only thrown out when someone is taking about a game that has some sort of posh, obscure, artsy-fartsy meaning to it. And those can be fine sometimes. But that’s not what we’re taking a look at when it comes to Karma. Incarnation 1.

No, Karma. Incarnation 1 literally felt like a high-tech, interactive art project. And I mean that in a (mostly) good way. Like, the visuals are the main reason that you’d want to play this game; they’re great. But visuals aren’t everything. Even if a game looks amazing, that doesn’t mean much if it plays poorly. And that’s the main issue that I had with this game. Okay, to be fair it didn’t actually “play poorly”, but it wasn’t a riveting gameplay experience either.

Karma. Incarnation 1 begins in a world above a world — a spirit world if you will — full of laughter and merriment, where disembodied spirits live and a god-like creator watches over them. While most of the spirits are happily playing, Pip, the protagonist (and the only named character that I’m aware of), is busy making googly eyes and smoochy faces at his soul mate (hah!). All’s going well until the barrier around their world breaks, letting a horde of evil shadowy creatures in.

These creatures immediately begin wreaking havoc, eating the spirits and attacking the world below. Pip and his beloved frantically make a break for it in hopes of reaching their creator but, right before they make it, Pip’s companion is eaten. Upon reaching his creator, Pip is informed that the reason that the barrier around their world has vanished is due to a monster attacking the shrines in the world below. These three shrines — and the artifacts inside of them — are what keep the evil away from their world, and the only way to bring peace back is for Pip to travel to the physical realm, inhabit the body of a powerful, unborn creature, and attack the shadowy evil himself.

So Pip was supposed to inhabit the body of a powerful creature, but instead he got stuck with… Actually, I’m not really sure what it is. He’s basically just a blob with a big mouth, a long tongue, and a gullet with some serious hammerspace. Needless to say, he isn’t going to be fighting any big battles anytime soon. Now, this might be a problem if Karma. Incarnation 1 was some sort of fighter or action RPG, but seeing as how this is a point-and-click adventure things work out rather nicely.

The goal in is to get back the first of the three missing stones and, believe it or not, die so you can bring it back with you to the spirit realm. Initially, this sounded like a pretty tough task. That stone could be anywhere in the entire world and, as a newly born creature, I’m sure that our protagonist has very little knowledge of how things work. So what’s a baby Pip to do? Well, it turns out not that much. …No, I take that back. Pip does quite a bit. It’s you the player who doesn’t do a whole lot.

Karma. Incarnation 1 is definitely the kind of game that I could see someone saying “you don’t play it, you experience it!” That might sound kind of mean, but I really don’t intend for it to be. Not entirely, at least. It’s just that, throughout the entire adventure, I felt as though I was playing more of a passive role. I wasn’t necessarily feeling the “adventure” part of “point and click adventure”. That’s not to say that there wasn’t an adventure. There definitely was. It’s just that a good chunk of it was very hands-off. Most of the gameplay involved clicking the direction you wanted to go, and clicking on the item that you wanted to interact with. Pip pretty much took care of the rest of it himself.

Pip can also use his Astral Sight Ability to peer into the spirit world. It looks cool, but its uses are incredibly limited.

The game wasn’t completely devoid of player engagement, however. There were several parts of the game that had you traveling back and forth between locations in order to procure items for later use in puzzles — as well as the puzzle-solving sections themselves. And it did these things well. A little bit of fetch quest-iness is all but inevitable with this genre, but it was never to the point of being overbearing. Karma. Incarnation 1 didn’t artificially inflate gameplay with pixel-sized, easy-to-miss items, or vague puzzles. Everything that you needed to do was obvious. And that was part of why things were so easy. While I appreciated the fact that none of its puzzles were obscure to the point of being maddening, Karma. Incarnation 1 could have used some more challenge.

Considering that Karma. Incarnation 1 has the word “karma” in it, it would be kind of weird if this game didn’t have some sort of moral choice mechanic that balanced you between light and darkness. And it does! Many of the actions that you do in this game will shift your karma either toward good or evil. When your karma is good, nothing really happens. The other creatures of the world will treat you nicely, or at the very least ignore you, and are willing to listen to you should you decide to talk to them.

Bad deeds will not only shift your karma toward the evil side, but it will alter your appearance as well. As you perform evil deeds, spikes will begin to grow out of Pip. The more evil that you do, the more spikes will appear. Being evil has a much more noticeable effect on the game. Many creatures will run away from you or refuse to talk to you, and this often can impede player progress.

Karma. Incarnation 1 approaches the concept of karma in a way that I can appreciate objectively, but find somewhat annoying in terms of gameplay mechanics. I won’t ruin the story for you, but the gist of it is that one does not have to be shackled by the sins of their past. Just because you did wrong before doesn’t mean that you can’t do right presently. The concept of redeeming oneself is always one that I can appreciate, and I feel as though Karma. Incarnation 1 approached it quite well. Unfortunately, the game’s moral choices are obvious, and very black-and-white. “Killing is bad, not killing is good.” Stuff like that. Seeing as how morality’s the game’s main focus, that kind of transparency is disappointing.

Alright, so I know that I kind of poked fun at the whole video games being art thing, but Karma. Incarnation 1 really is a great example of an objectively good artsy video game. Not only are all of the graphics hand-drawn, but they’re very lively. Each of the game’s areas has a number of wacky creatures to meet as well, all of whom are brimming with personality.

There’s also plenty to interact within each area. You can easily spend a decent amount of time clicking around in wherever you may be, just to see what kinds of things will happen. The forest area was especially good about this. I probably spent a good 10 – 15 minutes just clicking on things and seeing how they would react. The amount of flavor content was impressive, honestly

Karma. Incarnation 1 was a nice game, and I appreciated it for its artistic value, but it isn’t really an adventure that I’d want to take more than once. There was minimal interaction, the adventure itself was somewhat confusing, and certain mechanics, such as Pip’s Astral Sight, were underused to the point that there were times that I literally forgot that they were there.

But it was nice for what it’s worth. I know that there are plenty of people out there who are interested in highly artistic games, and if you’re one of those people then you might want to check this game out. Even if you end up not liking it (which I can guarantee you will if you appreciate hand-drawn graphics), spending $2.99 isn’t that big of a deal.

Edited reference accessed HERE. Originally posted by Kenny McKee. Edited and reposted by Whiterabbit-uk on 9th December 2017.

Other Reviews and Videos of Karma:

You can see Steamcommunity reviews of Karma HERE . There are several walkthrough videos of game play HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE.

Conclusion:

If you've ever played the Amanita Design games Samorost 1, 2 and 3, and enjoyed them, you'll love this game. It's beautifully drawn, with an amazing bizzare introduction (may be unsuitable for youngsters with the implied fertilization of an egg in the intro). Personally I thought the game was brilliant and would easily give this a 9 out of 10 for game play and graphics.

Suggestions:

After you've had an opportunity to play today's giveaway please take a few moments to give some positive or negative feedback; for example, what you liked or disliked about the game, or how it could be improved. If you don't like the genre at all, please explain why and if any, what improvements would change your mind? If you don't have time to post a comment today, please do so at your convenience, thank you. If you wish to post a review or comment about the game at a later date, you can access the comments section by going to the game giveaways home page, then scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Archives and select the date the giveaway was live (giveaway days are in bold type). This will open up the appropriate page for you to post your comment or review. Alternatively, you can google the name of the game and include Gamegiveawayoftheday in the search. This should give you a list of links to whenever this game was given away.

If you miss today's game giveaway you can always get the game via MyPlayCity 24/7 HERE; or If you prefer to purchase the game you can get it HERE via Steam.

Problems getting the game to work:

If you're having problems installing or activating or getting Karma to work please visit the FAQ's Thread HERE and read through the communities comments because sometimes fixes have already been posted, for example, a common issue seen since the Themida wrapper was introduced three years ago is that some community members installation of the game are blocked by their security because Themida code has been known to hide malware, (usually an error message is flagged for example 'The executable is corrupted' even though in reality it is not); so as a precaution some anti malware programs will block and even delete the suspect installation files even though the files (i.e the setup, read me and setup.gcd files are actually totally free from malware. This issue can be solved either by rebooting your computer in safe mode with networking or a quicker method is to temporarily turn off your security software to allow the installation. You could also try whitelisting the setup.gcd file. In the almost 11 years this game giveaway site has been operating there has 'never' been a game given away that was infected with malware.

If for any reason you want to contact the giveaway team, for example, you have a game to offer the community, or are unable to download the latest game or other issues that the FAQ's thread or these comments don't cover or solve you can do so HERE

I'd like to take this opportunity to thank MyPlayCity for giving away Karma and also to the game giveaway team, as always, for securing other ways to get free games.

Useful Information not related to today's game giveaway:

If Karma doesn't interest you, but you still hanker for something new to play, you'll find details of some game deals whether they be sale items, indie bundles or games being given away for free HERE (I've not updated the thread in a while, but most of the links still take you to the latest deals).

The rest of the information that used to be posted in the game review can be found in the forums HERE. Finally, check out Delenn's threads for details of other free games and offers HERE and elsewhere in the game discussion forums HERE, (usually on the first page of the game discussion forums).