Karma: The Dark World is surprising because it seemingly came out of nowhere, yet is designed confidently as if it were from a seasoned auteur. This psychological thriller, set in a suffocating dystopia reminiscent of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, lifts liberally from David Lynch’s playbook while peppering a few nods to Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding. With such an eclectic mix of influences, what kind of story is being told? Does any of it make sense? How does it come together?
Daniel is a Roam Agent for the Leviathan Corporation’s Thought Bureau, a Big Brother-esque secretive division tasked with policing thoughts and memories. The story centers on an investigation to uncover the truth behind a mysterious event tied to his own past, which unravels through fragmented clues and surreal experiences. As Daniel delves deeper, the boundaries between reality, memory, and nightmare blur, leading to a narrative filled with psychological twists and existential questions. Some aspects of the narrative are a bit too on the nose, but it still manages to leave a lasting emotional impact nonetheless.
The premise drips with promise: a fractured mind, a web of espionage, and a world where reality buckles under the weight of surveillance and betrayal. What unfolds is a bold, if uneven, atmospheric scenario of ideas that do not always land successfully. Sometimes it feels like it’s being weird for the sake of it. At other times, it feels like it’s leaning too heavily on its visual nods to recognisable media, such as the Black Lodge imagery from Twin Peaks or the whales from Death Stranding. It can be too distracting and immersion breaking when getting invested, when all of a sudden the game feels less like it’s telling a story, and more like the designers flaunting their knowledge of George Orwell’s work or surrealist media.
When it isn’t being too derivative, Karma: The Dark World‘s visuals are stunning. Lumen’s dynamic lighting and Nanite’s geometric wizardry depict a world that’s equal parts oppressive and mesmerising. A brutalist cityscape bleeds into surreal, shifting nightmares that mirror Daniel’s unraveling psyche. Motion-captured performances lend a cinematic heft, and the soundtrack swells with eerie stings and melodies, burrowing deep into the skull.
There is no mistaking that Karma‘s presentation is top-notch. This is a gorgeous-looking game that’s bursting with style and emotive imagery. The only problem is that during cutscenes or dialogue, everything starts to stutter badly. Even when running on the internal SSD of an Xbox Series X, Karma was prone to very rough bouts of stuttering and choppiness during most scenes. During standard gameplay, the experience smoothed out to a normal 60 frames per second. It isn’t the worst thing that can happen, and hopefully the developers can patch it up one day, but it does compromise the experience in a game that relies heavily on its expertly directed scenes.
Karma: The Dark World can be described as a walking sim adventure game, prioritising exploration and light puzzle solving over action. Investigating environments for clues feels satisfying when they connect, but the lack of guidance can turn clever puzzles into confusing roadblocks. Being trapped in an infinitely repeating environment where Daniel must travel through doors in a specific order is all well and good, but it needs to make sense instead of solving it by process of elimination.
The pacing drags at times, with threads meandering. Some surreal sequences overstay their welcome, diluting the tension. Where Karma shines is in its subtle horror: no cheap jump scares, just a creeping dread that gnaws at the edges of perception, punctuated by moments of pursuit that spike the pulse. The gameplay is commendable for throwing as many gimmicks as it can to get the most out of the deliberately limited gameplay. Sometimes players will need to use stealth to avoid a monster. Another sequence may resemble a totally unrelated game, rendered in a totally different art style.
Karma swings for the fences with meditations on identity, loss, and authoritarian control. It’s ponderous at times, and the story’s twists are genuinely disorienting, though some threads can feel obtuse, leaving loose plot threads too vague and open-ended for a satisfying answer. Comparisons to Soma or Control are to be expected, but Karma has more in common with something like Observer. It’s a grab bag of fun and familiar ideas from very influential work that a lot of gamers will appreciate, while still managing to say its own piece.
I’ve never even heard of this, but it looks great! Might pick it up when winter settles in!