I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Karmaflow: The Rock Opera Videogame when its creative director, Ivo Van Dijk, handed me the controller. After being told that the game was a rock opera about heavy metal music, much of it sung by famous metal singers from bands like Cradle of Filth and Dragonforce, I just didn’t know what was coming. What I didn’t expect was a soothing, Journey-like experience married to some awesome metal tracks. It’s a bit of a weird game, in case you didn’t expect that, but one I had fun with and want to see more of.
The game involves you playing a spirit called the Karmakeeper, and your job is to navigate a couple of puzzle environments using colors you can absorb from enemies and objects around you. It was fun to drain the life force out of things as I moved around, but using that energy to fuel things is what looked really sharp. The plants in the environment would wither or grow depending on whether I was draining or fueling them, and many of these changes were quite dramatic, raising huge trees or changing whole sections of the dark, strange woods I was navigating.
The preview build I played was a little bit hard to navigate due to the darkness, though, as it wasn’t always clear where I was supposed to go. If you see something of one color you’re typically supposed to go that way and drain it, though, so most of the game was fairly straightforward if you just followed the colors. If you got turned around during a cutscene or just got carried away draining colors, though, you might get yourself lost like I did. I don’t see it being a problem during the final build, but it was an issue for me at points.
Anyway, while moving around and solving the environmental puzzles was relaxing, it was the segments where I met the Gods of this world that I liked the best. There seemed to be some sort of rivalry/ love story going on between two of them, one a dark spirit that floated on the wind and the other some sort of tree-golem creature. The designs were cool, but it was the sung lines that really drew me in. The music in the game is really sharp, and you can instantly tell that the singers love the material and that the team working on the game knows their way around the metal scene. Van Dijk has a background working in music, and it really shows. Lyrics were sharp and the sound was good, although the demo always kept cutting me off before I really got to enjoy the music. This was just a taste, after all.
This is one of those games where you’d be stupid not to get the soundtrack with it, as I think the music is really going to create a unique experience out of what would normally be just a relaxing exploring game. I enjoy the gameplay, but seeing where the story ends up and how it will sound has me keeping tabs on Karmaflow. These guys know their stuff, and if you find your gaming life a little less headbanging since you finished Brutal Legend, you should be watching and listening to this game.
