Attack of the Karens (Switch)

Karen. Once just an unassuming girls’ name, social media helped morph it into an identifier. Women who were viewed as entitled or quick to complain over trivial matters were lumped together under this one banner, and the side-scrolling shoot ’em up Attack of the Karens sees them take things one step further. Rather than just the manager or a customer service help line now being their target, a group of four Karens have decided to unleash their wrath upon the world, the player the only one who can prevent them from making a mess of things.

 

To the credit of the four ladies behind this global attack, they didn’t decide to elevate their anger on their own. The four Karens were actually targeted by an alien mutagen that transformed them into powerful cyborgs, its aim being to take a group of people already interested in exerting their power over others and taking it to violent extremes. The four cyborgs, Cassie, Jordan, Marva, and Tiffany, are actually quite different from each other in all but behavior. While PTA member Cassie fits into the common soccer mom archetype that the term Karen is usually tied to, the other women are meant to be annoying or overbearing in different ways. Tiffany is the kind of businesswoman who stomps on whoever it takes to get ahead, the elderly Marva styles herself like a southern belle and looks down her nose at people, but Jordan is actually just an overly bubbly influencer eager to earn clout on the internet. Rather impressively, the voice acting for all four ladies is done by one performer, Kelsey Maher, who not only gives them each a distinct sound, but fully commits to each role wholeheartedly, particularly their anguished cries when they’re defeated. While you might not necessarily call them all Karens in real life, once they’ve been morphed in massive killer cyborgs, they all do begin to use their different lifestyles as means of attack.

Each Karen being a different type of lady actually manifests through their attack styles. While you’re flying your small spaceship trying to shoot them down, they’ll attack with not just with screens full of deadly bullets but attacks shaped like things they use in daily life. Jordan will call in literal waves of fans to crowd the screen all while she’s firing selfies or Like and Heart symbols at you to make the dodging rougher. Tiffany’s attacks can manifest as literally throwing money around, but each of the bosses has multiple forms where they usually embrace their cybernetic forms more, the game in general doing a pretty good job of mixing thematic attacks with some more traditional lasers and energy pellets to avoid. While the bullets demand quick smart movement to survive, you’ll still have more amusing attacks from the smaller Karen enemies like weaponized Live Laugh Love quilts, a suntanning lady who reflects sunlight into a large beam, and even the roofs of suburban houses bursting off to serve as hard barriers throughout the sky. While it would be amusing if the game leaned even harder into thematic enemies and attacks, it also feels like Attack of the Karens knows when to throw in practical challenges rather than stretching its concept too far.

 

Your spacecraft, the Harbinger, might actually be the game’s main key to success though. Starting off with just a reliable if plain forward firing blaster, there are many ways to improve its strength both in the long term and during a single run through the game’s levels. Attack of the Karens is a rogue-like, meaning while you’re trying to reach an ending and final boss with each run, it is expected you’ll likely die along the way, and thankfully it will mostly be to the game’s high but manageable difficulty level. Strong enemies will drop module chips you can utilize between runs to get permanent upgrades, helping to ensure you’ll do better the next time around as things like your speed, weapon strength, and health are higher, Attack of the Karens at least starting you off with 3 hits even from the beginning to help you actually get used to its bullet hell sections. There are upgrades that aren’t just steady increases to your strength and durability though, things like a rocket attack and rotating barriers making for more interesting upgrades to spend your modules on.

While the permanent upgrades help you make it further in the game on your next attempt, what really makes the Harbinger interesting are the pick-ups you can collect inside a level. The Harbinger will gradually level up as it defeats enemies, the game already encouraging aggression by levels moving onto boss fights based on how many foes you’ve defeated but it’s taken a step further with this extra incentive. Leveling up will cause a small circle with an upgrade in it to appear, it cycling between three options so you can try to pick the one you want. Some of these are again standard power increases, and it’s actually fairly smart to grab higher health levels or firing speed so it’s hard to complain there’s another way to do it beyond spending modules. Where it really shines though are the unique new attack options and helpful tools you not only can acquire for a run but upgrade over the course of it. A spray that makes a barrier around your ship and will recharge over time after that barrier goes down, an Assistant Manager who occasionally fires their own spray of bullets around the screen, grenades that home in on foes or bullets that fire backwards or even split apart to hit more in front of you are all useful and welcome additions to your equipment that makes every level up a little exciting. You can become a powerhouse or have many extra layers of protection just based on the pick-ups you choose to grab along the way, and their more substantial contributions make them even more enjoyable than the module upgrades.

 

The types of pick-ups that appear between runs isn’t the only thing that Attack of the Karens shakes up after every death. The four cyborg Karens don’t actually have set levels you encounter them in, the game mixing up the order you face them in and which stage you need to fight through to reach them. There are more than four potential levels so you can see entirely new places across runs, although these can feel like they don’t line up too well with the Karen theming at times. A farm level feels like an odd choice, and while each level type has its own set miniboss, their design can range from a tank dolled up like a lady in the suburbs and a pair of cyborg volleyball players in the beach level to something less inspired like a fairly straightforward fight against a train. The fight quality thankfully doesn’t suffer just because it’s not on brand, and there are a few other interesting elements that emerge from this level mixing idea. The boss battles can have attacks you wouldn’t see if you only fought them once and they are more dangerous the later you fight one into a run, but if you are worried about repetition, that is at least where the module-based upgrades come in to help you more quickly and easily push deeper into the game on your next attempt.

THE VERDICT: Attack of the Karens has fun with its premise, turning its irritating ladies into massive bosses with creative attacks, but its solid shooter fundamentals are what really helps it thrive past its amusing concepts. Enemies present a real threat with their screen filling attacks but you can bring a great deal of power to the fight yourself as you collect a range of excellent and enjoyable pick-ups that lead to satisfying runs. The rouge-like elements mixing around the levels and bosses is a somewhat strange touch, but acquiring permanent upgrades also helps motivate the player to keep making attempts to finish the game rather than being disheartened by its difficulty.

 

And so, I give Attack of the Karens for Nintendo Switch…

A GOOD rating. It’s not too hard to find a shoot ’em up where you can be set back a great deal by a loss, either by needing to repeat the entirety of a hard game or finding yourself robbed of all your fun power-ups. Attack of the Karens being a rogue-like on one level means it is setting you back to start and stripping away a lot of your power too, but the module upgrades help to make diving back in feel less intimidating as you can start to gain a gradual edge that inevitably carries you further. While the module upgrades being less glamorous ideas like more health and attack strength may make them less exciting than the pick-ups you find during play, they are what keeps Attack of the Karens from becoming as aggravating as a real life Karen. The pick-ups though are also part of the strong fundamentals that would make this an entertaining shooter no matter what the overall theme was. The pick-ups are big boosts to your effectiveness and yet they don’t break the power balance even as you continue upgrading them across the run. The bullet sprays and massive attacks that more creative bosses and enemies unleash are free to get a bit rougher with you because you are able to weather them, but they also remain fair so you don’t ever technically need to follow any one upgrade path. The level mixing is perhaps one area where Attack of the Karens could have approached things differently. It does feel like there could have been more thematic stages and it could have been interesting if a boss’s presence in an area had a recognizable impact on what you fought on your way to the cyborg Karen.

 

Attack of the Karens does fall into that enviable spot of being the kind of game you want to see just do more of what it already does well. More creative Karen attacks, more locations with unique enemies, more satisfying pick-up powers, it all is easy to want but this balanced shoot ’em up could easily be thrown out of whack if it had to keep up with a constant arms race against the player, and the rogue-like design could start to grate if each death threw you back to the start of an overly long set of levels. However, even when I died when the game’s last boss had only a sliver of health left, I wasn’t discouraged from diving back in for the next attempt because I knew I was stronger, wiser, and I could even try to cater my pick-up choices a bit more to trying to hedge myself against what that last boss used to take me down. Attack of the Karens isn’t just a humorous idea for a shooter, it’s one with smart ideas on how to design its action that leaves you with little to complain about.