KARMA: The Dark World Review

By Justin D Williams

There are horror games that want to scare you with monsters, and then there are games that would rather crawl inside your head and make you question what you are actually looking at. KARMA: The Dark World definitely belongs in that second category. Developed by Pollard Studio and published by Wired Productions, KARMA is a first person psychological thriller set in an alternate version of East Germany in 1984, where the powerful Leviathan Corporation controls practically every aspect of society. It is strange, uncomfortable, visually impressive, and sometimes intentionally confusing, but that willingness to get weird is also what makes it stand out.

You play as Daniel McGovern, a Roam Agent working for Leviathan's Thought Bureau. Daniel's job involves investigating crimes, questioning suspects, and using technology that allows him to enter people's memories. What initially feels like another investigation quickly becomes something much larger as Daniel begins uncovering information that forces him to question Leviathan, the people around him, and even his own perception of reality.

The setting is easily one of my favorite things about the game. Leviathan controls citizens through surveillance, social class restrictions, drugs, and the promise of a better existence for people willing to fall in line. There is an obvious 1984 influence here, but KARMA mixes that Orwellian dystopia with psychological horror and surreal imagery that makes the world feel like something completely different. There were moments where I understood exactly what the game was trying to tell me, followed almost immediately by a scene that made me wonder what in the world I had just witnessed.

That confusion can be both a strength and a weakness. I like games that trust the player enough to piece things together instead of stopping every few minutes for a giant exposition dump, and KARMA absolutely wants you paying attention. The problem is that it occasionally becomes so committed to being mysterious that some of the emotional and narrative beats become harder to follow than they probably needed to be. Still, the themes surrounding family, love, loss, control, memory, and identity give the story enough substance that I wanted to continue discovering what was really happening.

Anyone going into KARMA expecting a traditional survival horror game should adjust those expectations immediately. This is primarily an exploration and narrative experience. You spend most of your time walking through environments, examining objects, gathering information, solving puzzles, investigating scenes, and entering the memories of different characters. The game officially describes Daniel's investigation as a combination of investigative tools, interviews, puzzles, and memory exploration, and that is a pretty accurate description of how the experience unfolds.

The memory sequences are where KARMA becomes much more interesting. Reality begins bending around you, environments transform, rooms stop behaving logically, and seemingly ordinary locations can become disturbing in seconds. The developers do a good job using the first person perspective to mess with the player because you are never completely sure whether something behind you will remain the same when you turn around again.

At the same time, the gameplay is definitely the weaker part of the package. There isn't a deep combat system or a huge collection of mechanics to master. KARMA is much closer to an interactive psychological thriller than an action game, and Steam's community tags even prominently classify it as a walking simulator alongside psychological horror and exploration. I personally did not have a problem with that because the atmosphere and story were what kept me playing, but players who need constant action may find the slower stretches a little too passive.

The puzzles provide enough interaction to prevent the game from feeling like one extended cutscene, although I would have liked the investigative mechanics to go deeper. Being a Roam Agent capable of entering someone's memories is such a cool concept that there are moments where I wanted the game to give me more freedom to actually investigate instead of guiding me toward the next major story sequence.

This is where KARMA: The Dark World absolutely shines. The game uses Unreal Engine 5 technology including Lumen and Nanite, with Pollard Studio combining highly detailed environments, motion captured performances, lighting effects, and surreal imagery. There are moments where I stopped moving just to look around because the environments can be gorgeous in one scene and absolutely disturbing in the next.

What really impressed me is how much the visual design contributes to the psychological horror. The game does not need something constantly chasing you to create tension. A hallway, an office, a television, or an ordinary room can suddenly feel wrong because of the lighting, framing, sound, or something subtly changing in the environment. When KARMA decides to completely abandon reality, the developers get even more creative. Some sequences feel like walking through someone's nightmare rather than exploring an actual physical location.

The cinematic presentation also deserves credit. Character performances, camera work, environmental transitions, and scripted sequences frequently make the game feel like an interactive film without completely removing control from the player. For a relatively small studio, the visual ambition here is impressive. Pollard Studio was founded in 2018 and Wired described the development team around launch as a core group of roughly twenty developers. Considering what appears on screen, that makes the presentation even more impressive. The audio works together with the visuals extremely well. KARMA knows when to use music and when to let uncomfortable environmental sounds do the work instead. You will hear machinery, voices, distant noises, and other subtle effects that constantly make you feel like something is happening just outside your view. The original soundtrack was also created with Dolby Atmos collaboration according to Wired Productions.

Most importantly, the game understands that psychological horror needs atmosphere. KARMA does have disturbing imagery, but the best moments are often the ones where absolutely nothing happens. You are simply walking through an environment knowing that something feels wrong. That uncertainty becomes the real monster.

KARMA: The Dark World is one of those games that will not work for everyone, but I appreciate what Pollard Studio attempted here. The gameplay could use more depth, some of the puzzles and investigations could have been expanded, and the story occasionally becomes so surreal that following everything can become difficult. However, the atmosphere, visual design, world building, and willingness to completely mess with the player's perception make this one worth experiencing.

This is less about fighting monsters and more about entering a world where corporations control society, memories cannot necessarily be trusted, and reality itself feels unstable. If you enjoy psychological horror, dystopian science fiction, strange narratives, and games that are comfortable making you uncomfortable, KARMA has plenty to offer.

It may occasionally leave you wondering what exactly you just saw, but considering the type of game this is, I think that is partly the point.