Mr. Karoshi Review

Mr. Karoshi is an addictive puzzle platformer on the iOS marketplace.  Instead of the usual platforming experience, the aim of the game here is to kill the protagonist.  The depressed Japanese office worker longs to die and you must help him do so, by any means necessary.  Whether it is by throwing him onto spikes or setting up and intricate electrical circuit, you will kill him off and once you do the explosion of gore is strangely satisfying.


Karoshi's controls are simple and straight forward.  While they may not be intuitive for people who are not used to pressing virtual buttons, the standard iOS gamer should have no issue here.  During each level you must use these controls to direct Karoshi to interact with his surroundings, pushing boxes, firing guns and flipping switches.

The game contains fifty levels and each one looks superb on the iPod, with the games cute pixely retro charm.  The games graphics and sounds, go hand in hand with the games theme.  While the premise is dark it is also humorous and does not take itself seriously.  It is far removed from sleeping pills, or a rusty razor blade in a bath tub.  Along with these fifty levels there is also a bonus unlockable mini game.


The beauty of this game for myself personally, was the way in which some levels have multiple end-game scenarios and there are a number of ways to end Karoshi's bland and stressful existence.


Mr. Karoshi has a lot of charm and is unique in terms of what the iOS market place has to offer.  It is a must by, especially if you are a fan of puzzle games.


See the interview with the games creator, Jesse Venbrux here.


A unique and darkly humorous, puzzle platformer - 5/5

Jesse Venbrux on Mr. Karoshi

Recently I managed to hunt down Jesse Venbrux, the man responsible for releasing his hit indie PC game Mr. Karoshi, onto the iOS market place.  I asked him for an interview and here is the result:

Mr. Karoshi is a very novel idea.  Where did you get your inspiration?  


I try and come up with original ideas, so one part of the story is that I am just always looking for them. But I believe at the time I read about a game called "5 minutes to kill yourself" and played a super difficult platformer called I Wanna Be The Guy. In that last game I noticed how getting killed was kind of satisfactory (the visuals and sound) and in my head these different ideas got connected to form Karoshi.

Why did you start making games?

I've always been making things, drawing pictures, writing stories so the question for me is "why do I make stuff?". My parent are artists so it's just the kind of person I am. I enjoy coming up with something that didn't exist before, I think that's pretty amazing.


How did you get into making apps? 

The company behind Game Maker asked me to make a PSP game, as they were working on some universal converter. Later they switched to focus on iOS and Android. As such Karoshi was originally designed for PSP but came out on iOS and Android first. In hindsight I am happy with how the game turned out, since I was worried the controls wouldn't translate well. However I wish I had put some more time in the touch screen version to make more use of the devices specific features for clever puzzles. Who knows, perhaps in the future.

You have quite a large selections of free games on your site, do you think you will release any more on the iOS format?

I might release something in the future but probably not any of my old games. Most of them don't fit the touch screen devices well. Currently I am working for a company so don't have much time unfortunately to dedicate to personal projects.

All of your games that I have played so far involve death and most are fairly nightmarish in their atmosphere.  Why do you like making games in this fashion?


I have a dark sense of humour. Also, I want people to feel something when they play my games. Maybe I want them to feel something I felt (we all want to share our feelings right?). There's some morbid feeling about death which I think I was able to express with gameplay. I hope I'll be able to express (I should say: make people feel) more and different feelings with my work.

I don't have any bad experience with death or thoughts of suicide, and up till Karoshi never made games or other things about death so I'm not sure what happened but it must have something to do with my personality.

PixelJunk Monsters

Finally what do you have planned next?

I'm currently working on PixelJunk Monsters for social networks at a company called Q-Games. PixelJunk Monsters is a cute tower defense game currently available on the PlayStation Network.In the future I may do mobile again or more games on social networks or a combination. But I'm sure I'll keep making lots of games!

To check out more games by Jesse Venbrux check out his site here