Karma. Incarnation 1 is a mobile app that's been dumped on Steam as if it was a real PC game (it's not)... it's a cash grab from greedy mobile devs. This mobile app is a simple iPhone screen tapping adventure game where you solve some simplistic puzzles by tapping and swiping on your phone.

This tapping will help you guide a spirit whose girlfriend spirit got eaten by some monster, so your plan is to be born as a dragon and then go terminate your enemy with extreme prejudice. Unfortunately things go wrong and you pop out as a badly drawn blob thing instead. Whatever. If you're looking for a weird, esoteric kind of adventure like Botanicula or Samorost, which this is trying to be, you won't find it here. It fails to deliver on the core premise.

It's worth pointing out this is just 1/3rd of a complete game, with the remaining two parts abandoned by the mobile app devs behind this, never to be seen or heard from again. So if you like unfinished things, I guess you have a great opportunity here. For everyone else, this is yet another reason to avoid some mobile app that's been shoved on Steam as an afterthought.

From a technical perspective, as a mobile app, this doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

The mobile app is comprised of somewhat mediocre hand drawn 2D illustrations instead of professional looking 3D game assets. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget to arrange someone who can create graphical assets properly, or lack of talent. Regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is very low, beneath what PC gamers have come to expect in this era of cutting edge photorealistic 3D graphics. At least it's not pixel "art", but if you're looking for contemporary, immersive visuals, this mobile app is a fail.

There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision.

The controls can't be customised because the game has such a dumbed down, simplified interface that it's just iPhone screen tapping stuff. The fact that the interface is this dumbed down might be seen as a problem in itself, however... this is a fairly shallow experience if you're the kind of gamer that likes to play games with deep, rich control schemes and interaction. You'll get none of that here.

Because this is a mobile app, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the iPhones that the mobile app was designed for. These are unfortunate handicaps and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was an afterthought for the iPhone developers who are to blame for this. The mobile app is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for mobile phones forces upon a game. Once more, mobile devs have made gaming worse for everyone. I didn't spend thousands on building a gaming rig just so I could pretend it's an iPhone.

These technical defects push this mobile app below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

Karma. Incarnation 1 didn't appeal much to the people who own a copy of the mobile app, either. It has achievements, and they show us a very clear picture that the mobile app didn't really capture any interest from gamers. The most commonly and easily attained achievement is "ASTRAL NINJA", finding a hiding spirit, trivial to get, but less than 16 percent of players bothered to get that far before uninstalling the mobile app. Hardly a success story, even the people who own this mobile app weren't interested in it.

The mobile app never really caught on with the millions of gamers on Steam, with a very low peak player count close to launch, and then just a handful of players launching this mobile app every couple of days. This is undoubtedly caused by factors such as those raised in this review. It's always helpful with buying decisions to consider how popular and successful the product is, and unfortunately while this did accumulate a few participation trophy reviews, overall, people just aren't using it.

You're forced to sign a highly questionable yet legally unenforceable End User License Agreement... for such a relatively low effort, low quality mobile app this comes across more as a delusion of grandeur than anything else. This agreement includes questionable requirements that may attempt to revoke consumer law protections that gamers expect to have, which is also highly problematic. Developers must learn they are here to serve gamers, not control them. I had my cat walk over the keyboard while the EULA was displaying, which fixed that problem for me.

For comparison, the $5 asking price for this mobile app could get you games like "Mad Max", "This War of Mine" or "Torchlight 2". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.

So, should you buy this mobile app? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

Karma. Incarnation 1 has the completely unrealistic cash grab price of around $5 USD, it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the sheer number of completely free, much higher quality games on Steam.

For comparison, the $5 asking price for this mobile app could get you games like "Mad Max", "This War of Mine" or "Torchlight 2". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this.