Surrealist Karma. Incarnation 1 seeking good deeds on Indiegogo

Written by Jack Allin — June 28, 2014 at 12:48

You might think the life of a worm is pretty low on the karmic scale, but it makes for a pretty intriguing premise in AuraLab's surrealist adventure Karma. Incarnation 1, currently seeking funding through Indiegogo.

In Karma, players control Pip, a "cute-yet-brutal worm, living in a truly surrealistic world." Just incarnated into this form, Pip is naive and knows little of this strange world, and he is as "willing to talk to flowers and stones... as he is ready to swallow whole another representative of local fauna." It's up to players to make Pip's moral choices in this "psychedelic tale of good and evil driven by the laws of Karma."

As demonstrated by the game's early gameplay video, Karma is a highly stylized, hand-drawn point-and-click adventure. There is no spoken dialogue, but there are plenty of decisions to make in a game that promises to be "jam-packed with original humour and brain-bending puzzles". Not only will your choices affect Pip's appearance throughout the game, they'll also impact the storyline itself, opening new avenues and closing off others during a single playthrough. In order to advance, Pip will need to view the world through his inner eye, a "special ability which allows him to perceive the spirit world at any moment of the game." In this "astral plane he'll find additional creatures and hints on how to sucessfully complete the quests."

The game has been in development for quite a while in Russia, and is now ready to take the final steps towards release on PC, Mac, and Linux by the end of this year. In order to do so, the developers are seeking $35,000 through crowdfunding on Indiegogo by August 3rd. A mininum $7 pledge will earn backers a free digital copy of the game, and a portion of all proceeds (this being a game about karma, after all) will go to support the World Wildlife Fund. Note that as a flexible funding campaign, the developers will receive all donations made, regardless of whether they reach their ultimate goal.

To learn more about the game, visit the official website and the Indiegogo fundraising page. You can also vote for the game on Steam Greenlight.