So KarmaZoo might just be one of the cutest games I have played all year. I mean, you can literally shoot hearts at your teammates to spread love and I can’t say I’ve played another game that quite reaches that level.
At its core, KarmaZoo is a game about cooperative puzzle platforming. You’ll run into situations where you need one player to unlock a door for another player to pass, or where you need one player to sing to activate a platform for another player to stand on. It’s not a really difficult formula to understand and doesn’t really get too complex, which may be an issue for some, but I feel like the devs did a great job making it just complex enough to draw in players that may not be familiar with the genre while still being engaging for those more experienced.
Levels are divided into “loops” which are kinda reminiscent of a roguelike run. The levels are handcrafted and selected from a pool of over 300 according to what characters are selected. After completing a level, players vote on a card to activate for the next, and this was a kinda fun feature in itself because you can do interesting stuff like force everyone to play the same character in the next level or one of my group’s favorites – a card that activates a saxophone to play with the background music. These were fun to play with even if they don’t always change the gameplay.
A big part of that gameplay though is the different characters you can play as. These range from your simple blobs, to owls that can glide, to lions that can sing in all directions, to literal flower pots that can create platforms from their flowers. There are 50 such to unlock, so there’s a lot of replayability in that regard and given that you can play with up to 10 people, I can only imagine how insane some combinations would be. That said, I was a bit disappointed to see that some of those characters had identical or very similar abilities to others instead of truly being unique.
Still, that did not stop me and my friends from having a great time. Playing through loops and trying out different character combinations was fun, activating the dumbest level effects was also fun, and the game even has a competitive mode called Totem that can be played online or locally and that was a ton of fun too. That mode has a bunch of different level types, like races or eating challenges and it was really cool to see how the devs could take simple concepts like that and craft a ton of levels that all feel different from each other and try new things.
My only real concern with the game is its longevity. This is not a game that can be played solo. Like, it straight up just does not work. Trying to join a loop or creating your own spits you into a lobby with a message stating that two players are required to continue. This is not surprising, given that the gameplay would actually just be impossible to complete as a solo, but it is very important to note as once this game loses its playerbase, it will be extremely difficult to play.
Honestly, while I do find the game fun to play, I cannot see it maintaining a decent playerbase beyond a few months. Maybe at that point you’ll get one or two teammates, but a year from now? I don’t even know if it will be worth it then.
So it’s with that said that I will be giving KarmaZoo a light recommendation. It’s a fun little co-op puzzler that is great to play if you have a group of friends ready to give it a shot. It has a ton of characters to unlock, level types to work through, and the competitive Totem mode is a lot of fun too. That said, if you do not have a group to play with, you’ll be at the mercy of the online playerbase which I honestly cannot see lasting that long, so that is definitely something to keep in mind.
Quote: KarmaZoo is a fun little co-op puzzler that’s great to play with friends, but not really one I can see maintaining an active playerbase for those tackling it with randoms.
KarmaZoo retails for $10 USD on Steam. It is also available on PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and Switch.
I was provided a review copy of the game in order to write this review. Read more about how I do my game reviews here.
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