Karma: The Dark World has a neat concept and a fascinating story, but is mired in technical flaws.
I like Karma: The Dark World for its story, world, and genuinely engaging puzzles. This isn’t a traditional horror game, as a lot of the fear comes from what’s going on within the world around you rather than any real direct threat towards the player character. The titular dark world is all around you, and you should feel very uncomfortable living in it. Whilst I like the story and puzzles, I absolutely did not like the technical issues I came across throughout, and I’d recommend you think carefully about what platform you want to play this on should the tale interest you.
It’s hard to talk about Karma: The Dark World and its terribly interesting story without too many spoilers, but I’ll avoid anything major. You predominantly play Daniel McGovern, a ROAM agent working in Leviathan’s Thought Bureau. Whilst you aren’t given a huge amount to go on initially, it quickly becomes clear that you’re living in an alternate 1980s Germany that’s presided over by a totalitarian regime. The purpose of ROAM agents is to investigate people for anything that might be opposed to this regime by diving into their memories to find any evidence of wrongdoing. Daniel’s initial investigation into someone seemingly stealing from work quickly descends into secret experimentation and conspiracy that seems to focus on him and his family, and those minds he explores are far more dangerous than he may think.
To give you an idea of the influences, Karma: The Dark World reminded me of the likes of 1984’s Orwellian dystopia and Inception’s brain diving with visual representations akin to those used by David Lynch. The plot has you questioning what reality you’re actually in as the scenes you experience become more and more bizarre. Early on, the plot feels incredibly confusing as there seems to be a couple of cold opens before getting to the game proper. I found the first hour almost offputting, but I’m glad I persisted, as once you reach the two hour mark, things start to fall into place and the game becomes much more enjoyable.
You have a single goal in any given scene, and this tends to involve you solving a puzzle or two to discover more information or escape somewhere when you’re under threat. Karma: The Dark World keeps things somewhat interesting as it rarely uses the same style of puzzle more than once. An early one has you answering phones that hint at the direction you should travel, whilst another gives you a camera that reveals a different reality around you that also includes a monstrous entity. None of the puzzles felt contrived, and some were even quite challenging. Rarely are you under direct threat when solving these puzzles, so you’re given the space to try and solve them. A few of them felt a little trial and error though, so perhaps I missed the odd clue.
Now, Karma: The Dark World looks very pretty a lot of the time, and I’ll talk more about that shortly, but the technical issues I came across playing on Xbox Series X were pretty dreadful. The framerate was abysmal for huge portions of the game, whether during gameplay or cutscene. Constant stutters and sound/visual desynchronisation really take you out of the experience, as do the bizarre visual glitches. At one point Daniel used both his hands to remove his brain dive helmet only to then mysteriously grow a third to wipe his face with a tissue. Then there were the crashes, of which I had three during the five-or-so hour playthough, and the voice lines running into each other. The latter I think may be a result of translation issues, but it meant I simply couldn’t make out what some characters were saying. Thank goodness for the subtitles.
Then again, those visuals are very nice a lot of the time. There’s some excellent use of lighting and some genuinely impressive effects. The devs have done a great job of creating this slightly off world that’s almost believable but feels just a little wrong. The game uses that unsettling nature to sell some of the horror you’ll see. There’s little in the way of overt jumpscares, but there’s plenty of uncomfortable scenes. You do have the occasional section where you’re face to face with another character, and you very much get that uncanny valley feeling, but these are rare enough to not be too laughable. Aside from the aforementioned voice line issue, the acting is generally very good, especially during some of the more emotive scenes towards the end, and the soundtrack is excellent throughout. In fact the use of music gave me flashbacks to the excellent and underrated In Sound Mind, which was lovely to think about again. It’s a shame that the technical issues are such a let down.
If you can overlook those though, Karma: The Dark World has a wonderfully rich story to enjoy, that seemingly starts out bonkers but only gets crazier as it goes. That’s not to say it doesn’t make sense, because it does once you get there, but be prepared for twists and turns aplenty by the end. The puzzles are interesting, and there’s a world to learn about should you manage to find notes and solve optional challenges. If you’re looking for another jumpscare-fest, this isn’t it. But if you want something a little more thoughtful, you might have found a good world to step into.
Karma: The Dark World is available now on Xbox, PC, and Playstation.
