Through a mix of non-linear storytelling and environmental storytelling, KARMA: The Dark World thrusts players into a looping, shifting reality. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.

KARMA: The Dark World Review Overview

What is KARMA: The Dark World?

KARMA: The Dark World is a first-person psychological horror game that drags players into a nightmarish dystopia where reality is fragile, memories are unreliable, and paranoia is your only companion. Developed by Pollard Studio, the game blends elements of investigative thriller and puzzle-solving within a world that feels like a fever dream wrapped in the cold, mechanical grip of a totalitarian regime.

KARMA: The Dark World features:
　⚫︎　Mind Exploration
　⚫︎　Distorted Reality
　⚫︎　Non-Linear Storytelling
　⚫︎　Puzzle Boxes

For more gameplay details, read everything we know about KARMA: The Dark World's gameplay and story.

Digital Storefronts
Steam		PlayStation		Xbox
$19.99				Coming Soon

KARMA: The Dark World Pros & Cons

Pros	Cons
Engaging Storytelling Remarkable Mind-Diving Mechanic Clever Puzzle Design	Disorienting Visual Choices Occasional Technical Issues

KARMA: The Dark World Overall Score - 80/100

KARMA: The Dark World is an unsettling, cerebral horror experience that grips the mind and refuses to let go. It excels in psychological tension, weaving a fragmented narrative through disturbing mind-dives, oppressive world-building, and a haunting soundscape. However, its technical shortcomings—such as occasional jarring scene transitions, inconsistent motion capture, and minor clipping issues—detract from full immersion. The game’s ambition is undeniable, but its execution wavers at times.

KARMA: The Dark World Story - 9/10

The story is KARMA’s strongest asset, plunging players into a dystopian nightmare where memories are rewritten, and truth is subjective. Daniel’s descent into uncertainty is gripping, and the Leviathan Corporation is a chilling antagonist in its own right. The non-linear storytelling adds to the psychological unease, forcing players to piece together events like a detective reconstructing a case file.

KARMA: The Dark World Gameplay - 7/10

The game blends exploration and puzzle-solving mechanics to create a tense, immersive experience. Mind-diving is a well-implemented feature, allowing players to navigate memories like detective work inside the subconscious. However, the gameplay itself is fairly simplistic—chase sequences often boil down to basic trial-and-error, where avoiding the monster is more about memorizing patterns than outsmarting them. The overall gameplay loop also becomes predictable after a while: dive into a memory, investigate fragmented scenes, solve a puzzle, evade a threat, and repeat. While the execution is strong, the routine nature of these mechanics can make certain sections feel formulaic rather than dynamically evolving.

KARMA: The Dark World Visuals - 7/10

KARMA’s visual design is intentionally unsettling, with shifting architecture and impossible spaces that amplify its psychological horror. The environments are detailed, and lighting plays a crucial role in setting the mood. The cutscenes stand out as some of the best visual moments. However, technical hiccups such as clipping issues, occasional awkward animations, and moments where scene transitions feel unpolished hold it back from achieving a higher score.

KARMA: The Dark World Audio - 9/10

The voice acting is a standout, bringing characters to life with performances that feel authentic and emotionally charged. The game’s sound design is equally effective, music is used sparingly but purposefully, adding weight to critical moments. The OST is another highlight, it’s the kind of soundtrack I'd willingly listen to outside of the game.

KARMA: The Dark World Value for Money - 8/10

With a runtime that varies depending on exploration and puzzle-solving, KARMA offers a compelling experience for horror fans looking for something unsettling. The additional puzzle boxes provide optional depth, and the multiple layers of the narrative encourage at least one replay to fully grasp the story. However, technical hiccups and some underdeveloped mechanics prevent it from feeling like a must-buy at full price. For those who enjoy mind-bending psychological horror though, $19.99 is worth the investment.

KARMA: The Dark World Review: An Utterly Twisted Dive Into the Mind

Fear. It’s the most primal instinct we have, a survival mechanism honed over thousands of years. It keeps us from walking blindly into danger, from trusting too easily, from making reckless choices. But fear is also something else—it’s intoxicating. It’s the creeping sensation on the back of your neck when you know something is watching. It’s the thrill of uncertainty, the rush of stepping into the unknown. Fear is both our greatest weakness and our greatest addiction.

I grew up falling in love with the genre. Horror wasn’t just entertainment, it was a test. Could I handle the shadows? Could I withstand the dread? At first, it was the simple stuff—urban legends shared under dim lights, scary movies with friends, the thrill of a well-timed jump scare. But as I got older, my love for horror evolved. I wanted more than just ghosts and gore. I wanted stories that clawed their way under my skin, ones that lingered in the back of my mind long after I turned off the screen. That’s how I found my way into psychological horror, the subgenre that burrows into your brain and makes itself at home.

Psychological horror thrives on uncertainty, on paranoia, on twisting reality until you no longer trust your own senses. Next to religious horror, it’s my favorite kind. There’s something uniquely terrifying about a game that doesn’t just scare you but actively messes with your perception. Games like Silent Hill 2, or Observer—experiences that don’t just tell you a story but pull you into an unraveling nightmare, forcing you to question everything.

And that’s exactly what KARMA: The Dark World delivers. A first-person psychological horror game set in a dystopian city ruled by the all-powerful Leviathan Corporation, KARMA plunges you into the mind of Daniel McGovern, a Roam Agent tasked with infiltrating and investigating the memories of others. But as you dig deeper into the past, reality itself starts to fracture. The world shifts when you least expect it, memories don’t line up the way they should, and soon, the question isn’t just what happened—it’s what’s real? The game doesn’t just mess with Daniel’s mind. It messes with yours, too.

This game doesn’t just make you scared—it makes you doubt. It makes you hesitate before opening a door, question the flickering shadows in the corner of your vision, second-guess whether that distorted voice in the distance is real or just another trick of your deteriorating mind. It messes with you as much as it messes with its protagonist, Daniel. And in a world where the line between reality and delusion is razor-thin, that’s a dangerous thing.

Unraveling the Past, Losing the Present

KARMA: The Dark World begins in what seems to be a hospital room somewhere in the future, where I step into the role of Daniel McGovern, a Thought Bureau agent for the Leviathan Corporation. But Daniel doesn’t remember any of that. He doesn’t even remember his own name. From the very first moments, the game doesn’t just tell me what it feels like to be lost—it makes me feel it. Just as Daniel begins to plead for his life, his mind, his memories, he is sent back in time by the Professor. Here, we see a different version of Daniel, a version molded by the Thought Bureau.

The first few acts are a slow descent into the unknown. There’s no grand exposition dump, no comforting tutorial to hold my hand. I am just… here. Disoriented. Empty. Searching. Leviathan’s world is eerily pristine, its architecture both dystopian and oppressive. But something feels off. The visual fidelity reminded me of Go Home Annie, hallways stretch longer than they should, doors lead somewhere different when I turn back, a shadow flits across my vision, but when I look again, there’s nothing.

My job is to investigate memories. Using Leviathan’s mind-dive technology, I’m sent into fragmented recollections, tasked with reconstructing events, piecing together crimes, and extracting the truth. But whose truth? The further I go, the more unstable everything becomes. Rooms melt into one another. Objects disappear when I blink. Time folds in on itself, and suddenly I’m not sure if I’m looking at the past, the present, or something in between.

And then there’s MOTHER. MOTHER doesn’t nurture—she conditions. She speaks in commands, not requests. Follow the rules. Stay productive. The work must continue. There is no rebellion in this world, no uprising against oppression. Just quiet, absolute control. And Daniel is a part of it.

Then the monsters come. At first, they don’t make sense. The game is smart about this, it doesn’t rely on jump scares. Rather, it relies on the fact that Daniel’s suspect—the person seeing this monster—is not in his best state of mind. Overworked, running on no sleep, his mind pushed beyond its limits, who’s to say if these are real? Hallucinations, memory distortions, stress-induced paranoia, anything is possible when the brain is fraying at the edges.

But the scariest part isn’t the creatures, it’s the realization that Daniel might be the monster. The memories I piece together tell a story of control, manipulation, and the terrifying power of rewriting history. Leviathan doesn’t just erase the past—it reprograms it. And Daniel is a part of this machine. Or at least, he was.

KARMA: The Dark World doesn’t give easy answers. It makes you feel lost, manipulated, and utterly powerless. Because if memories can be rewritten… then who’s to say Daniel’s haven’t been?

Drowning in a Fractured Reality

Everything in KARMA: The Dark World is built around instability. There’s no solid ground to stand on—literally and figuratively. The game doesn’t want me to just see the world; it wants me to doubt it.

Exploration is more than just moving through space, it’s questioning whether that space even exists. One moment, I’m walking through a bleak, corporate hallway, cameras tracking my every move. I blink, and suddenly the layout has changed. A door that was open seconds ago is locked. A corridor stretches impossibly far. It’s not just environmental horror, it’s an active, shifting maze that works against me.

The core gameplay loop revolves around mind-diving, an investigative system that allows Daniel to enter and experience other people’s memories. Leviathan calls it an "investigation," but in practice, it feels more like an invasive autopsy of the soul. These aren’t clean, structured recollections, they are warped by trauma, fragmented by fear, distorted by outside interference. I don’t just watch events unfold—I experience them. The emotions of the memory's owner bleed into the environment, warping everything in ways that make it impossible to tell what’s real and what isn’t.

And then there are the puzzles. Scattered throughout the world are intricate puzzle boxes, hidden away like remnants of a forgotten past. They are optional but irresistible, each one holding a glimpse into Leviathan’s buried history. Some are logical, straightforward riddles. Others are environmental, forcing me to search my surroundings for the answer. They’re one of the game’s strongest mechanics, offering tangible rewards in the form of world-building, an incentive beyond just "solving for the sake of solving."

KARMA succeeds in making me feel truly lost in its world. Every mechanic feeds into the central theme: nothing is certain, not even Daniel’s own memories. It’s a game that demands attention, one that refuses to hand over the truth without a fight.

A City That Doesn’t Want to Be Seen

There’s an outdated idea in horror that darkness alone creates fear. That obscured vision, barely-lit hallways, and oppressive shadows automatically make something scary. But KARMA: The Dark World proves why horror needs to move away from that mindset. Some areas are shrouded in so much darkness that I struggle to see necessary details (even when the brightness setting is at its highest). The world is oppressive, but that doesn’t mean it should be visually unreadable.

The one aspect of the visuals I absolutely loved were the cutscenes. They are moody, cinematic, and expertly shot, making the world feel more alive and real than any of the environments I actually explore. The motion capture work brings characters to life, especially in emotionally charged moments—except for one glaring issue: the mouth movements.

For a game with such meticulous cinematic presentation, the fact that character lips don’t always sync with their dialogue is frustrating. It’s especially noticeable during close-up shots, where the game wants me to focus on the tension in someone’s face, only for their lips to be half a second ahead or behind their words. It’s not game-breaking, but it’s one of those things that once I noticed, I couldn’t unsee.

And then, there’s the issue of glitching. Some of it is intentional—reality bending and distorting as Daniel’s perception unravels. Objects flickering in and out of existence, walls stretching unnaturally, the world twisting like a corrupted video file. This kind of visual instability is purposeful, a tool to unsettle and disorient. But then there are the other glitches.

Sometimes, during a scene transition, frames will clip, textures won’t load in properly, or an animation will hitch for just a second too long. These moments break the immersion. When the game is at its best, it makes me question what’s real and what’s not. When it’s at its worst, it just makes me question if something is broken. That said, when KARMA: The Dark World gets it right, it’s stunning. The blend of motion-captured realism, oppressive architecture, and memory-warping environments creates a world that feels truly unstable, a place that exists on the edge of reason. I just wish I could see more of it—both literally and figuratively.

The Sound of Paranoia

If there’s one thing KARMA: The Dark World nails perfectly, it’s the sound design. This is a game that doesn’t just make me hear things, it makes me doubt them. Every creak of a floorboard, every distorted voice in the distance, every flickering radio transmission is a weapon used against my own sense of reality.

The soundtrack itself isn’t overwhelming, nor is it constant. Instead, the silence is just as important as the music. It stretches out between key moments, giving me space to breathe, but also space to spiral into paranoia. When the music does swell, it’s with dissonant, mechanical sounds that feel like they’re trying to dig into my skull. Leviathan’s world is not one of comfort, and the game’s audio ensures I feel that.

But above all else, the voice acting is phenomenal. The performances aren’t overdone, which is crucial for psychological horror. Fear isn’t always screaming or whispering in terror; sometimes, it’s in the quiver of a voice, the hesitation before a sentence, the exhaustion layered beneath every word. Daniel, especially, is brought to life through a performance that carries the weight of exhaustion, confusion, and quiet dread. He’s not a caricature of fear, he’s just tired. And the way his voice changes as he loses his grip on reality? Perfection.

The directional audio also deserves praise. This game thrives on the concept of being watched, being followed, being listened to. And I feel that constantly. Sounds don’t just exist, they move. The game doesn’t always give me a visual threat, but it makes sure I can hear it.

This is psychological horror done right. The visuals set the tone, the story keeps me hooked, but it’s the audio that makes me feel like I’m actually there.

Is KARMA: The Dark World Worth It?

Bend Your Mind If You Dare

For those who love narrative-driven horror with a strong psychological core, this game is an absolute must. The mind-diving mechanic isn’t exactly a novel idea but it is always a fascinating approach to storytelling. The voice acting is phenomenal, with performances that breathe life (and madness) into its characters. The sound design is impeccable, crafting an atmosphere of paranoia that seeps into every moment. And the puzzle design rewards those who dig deeper, offering extra layers of lore that make the world feel richer.

However, KARMA isn’t without its flaws. Not all of its visual elements hold up, with motion-captured cutscenes sometimes struggling with lip sync and fluidity. The game’s intentional glitches serve its themes well, but unintentional technical issues, like occasional frame clipping during scene transitions, can momentarily break immersion. And while its dark, dystopian aesthetic is effective, it sometimes leans too heavily into obscured visuals, making certain areas frustrating to navigate.

If you’re looking for a straightforward horror experience with traditional scares, KARMA may not be for you. Its slow, cerebral approach to storytelling might test the patience of players expecting constant action. But if you appreciate games that challenge perception, twist reality, and leave you questioning everything, then KARMA: The Dark World is a journey worth taking.

Digital Storefronts
Steam		PlayStation		Xbox
$19.99				Coming Soon

KARMA: The Dark World FAQ

What Is the Monster in KARMA: The Dark World?

The creature that hunts the players is a mutated experiment, a twisted product of Leviathan’s inhumane research.

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KARMA: The Dark World Product Information

Title	KARMA: THE DARK WORLD
Release Date	March 27, 2025
Developer	POLLARD STUDIO LLC
Publisher	Wired Productions, Gamera Games
Supported Platforms	PC (Steam), PS5, Xbox Series X|S
Genre	Horror, Adventure
Number of Players	1
ESRB Rating	PEGI 18
Official Website	KARMA: The Dark World Website

Allisandra Reyes

I find joy in the adrenaline rush of horror games, but my thrill-seeking doesn't stop there. Beyond the digital realm, I like to take on the role of designated GM in TTRPGs.