Welcome to Karma High School! Fight your way through the crowded hallways to get to class before passing period ends. Try playing the game first. It only takes a few minutes. But if you get stuck, click below to reveal the story behind this project.
Karma High was inspired by a recent conversation with friends where we concluded that a huge number of the world's problems could be solved if more people were simply willing to see the world through another's eyes. The challenge is: How might we able to encourage empathy through a game. We created Karma High to prompt a conversation about empathy and, more specificially, about bullying. In the game, the users progress through three levels of increasing difficulty, as follows:
Level 1: The player can attack with a punch to move others out of the way.
Level 2: The player has a “verbal assault” attack.
Level 3: The player has no attack and is instead attacked by the characters that they played earlier.
After a bit of frustration, players will likely figure out that Level 3 is impossible to win. Every time they get close to their classroom, they get attacked and have to restart. The only way to win is to restart the game completely and play through the first two levels without ever using your attack ability.
We'd love to improve the game to help make this a real tool for conversation. If you're an artist who's interested in helping out, contact Rob or Ryan.