KarmaStar

Susie Ochs — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 02:40:00 -0500

Tapping one of these green badges increases the trait skill and scores 1 point.

This turn-based strategy game pits you against two AI-controlled components (or humans playing over the same Wi-Fi network) for eight turns, and the player with the highest score at the end wins. On each turn, you’ll see three badges randomly chosen from 10 possibilities: Tapping a green badge depicting one of the five traits (Health, Mind, People, Love, and Money) boosts that trait level by 1, and adds 1 to your main score too. Tap a red badge to launch an attack, which will boost your main score by 2 if you win. You choose which opponent to attack based on your trait scores--if you’re launching a Mind attack and your Mind score is 4, you’re more likely to win against an opponent whose Mind score is 2. The attacks are decided based on a dice roll--you get one die to roll for each trait point.

This might sound complicated, but it really isn’t. Wildcards, awarded at the start of your turns, mix things up by letting you steal the other players’ trait points, get extra turns, gain an edge in combat, and more. We liked how simple and relatively short the games were, but wished we could speed up the AI’s turn-taking. The game asks you if you want its own (forgettable) music or to listen to your iPod.

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