‘Karma: The Dark World' Review (PS5): Beauty And The East
As the debut title for independent Chinese developer Pollard Studio, Karma: The Dark World is the latest in a long line of non-combat, slow-paced, first-person thriller games in the vein of Still Wakes the Deep. It draws inspiration from Twin Peaks, Alan Wake, Silent Hill, and anything Hideo Kojima had his hands on, as well as George Orwell — entirely unsurprising, given its setting.
Its trailer gives only a taste of the absolute madness you'll experience over its 10-to-12-hour running time — and its sumptuous art direction, under the watchful eye of Ke Yang — and it's unlike anything you'll have ever seen before, even though Karma's influences are very clear.
You take on the role of Daniel McGovern, a secret police agent in an alternate universe version of East Germany, which has been taken over by the all-seeing, all-knowing corporate dictator, Leviathan. Luckily, you're on their side, working as a member of ROAM, a technocratic uber-Stasi whose interrogators can dive into the minds and memories of suspects.
You start proceedings on a hospital bed, with no memory of who you are, and a trio of plugs sticking into your arm, which gives you the impression you're dressed like Psycho Mantis. Still, that's the least of your problems; you gaze out of the window to see cars and birds flicker in and out of reality, plus a dead body that doesn't.
Karma: The Dark World combines its initial game calibration with the perfect introduction to a quietly malicious world. It's 1984. You're scared and alone, faced with weird tests that check your audio settings, as you play tapes which calmly recite passages about 'trampled humans' and their 'dying cries'. You calibrate your field of vision in an oddly sanitised room. Then you walk into a room filled with baths, in which 'potted,' mannequin-like humans sit in dirt. Less (more?) fortunate cadavers are piled in a corner.
The worst type of mudbath.
Pollard Studio
Soon, you meet a disabled man who promises answers, but not before he puts you into a chair and plunges you into the past. Via a quick flashback to 1968, in which you're 'onboarded' to the world by Leviathan agents acting on behalf of MOTHER — this world's Big Brother character — you begin to explore memories that constantly blur the lines between cold, boring reality and manic, Lynchian delirium.
Karma: The Dark World is a slow game, both in its exposition and its occasionally frustrating slow walking speed. However, this world demands you pay attention to the minutiae, both to solve its puzzles and to slowly understand the sheer depths of its repressive world.
While it has horror characteristics, Karma is much more of a dystopian thriller; if you're worried about gore or jump scares, don't be. It has two or three 'shock' moments, but none of them quite connect to lift you out of your seat, or force a shower and change of clothing.
Mannequins. Of course there are mannequins.
Pollard Studio
That's not to say you won't feel sick to your stomach, because you never trust the world around you, even when it looks like a simple office or quiet street. Much like Still Wakes the Deep, even the most solid-looking walls can disappear in the blink of an eye.
Much like its setting, Karma: The Dark World is dripping with allegories and metaphors, to the point you don't ever feel like you know or necessarily understand the story. You might perceive this as its main weakness, mainly because it doesn't come close to giving you any real answers for hours, but it soon becomes its core strength. Apt, really, given how Orwellian it is.
You wonder if those people with TVs for heads are an allegory, or really do have CRTs on their necks. memories are selective in the minds of people you explore, so is that ten-foot-tall monster really a hulking brute, or a symbol of something else?
And how exactly are you smoking that, anyway?
Pollard Studio
Still, specific issues remain consistently clear, including the helpless despair faced by both leading characters — most notably, Sean Mehndez — and broader society, which you watch fall under the ever-tightening grip of slavery by a faceless dictator that issues heartbreaking decrees and forces unfortunates into drug-fuelled bureaucracy. Read into it what you will, but you'll be reminded of many bêtes noires of the 21st century: authoritarianism, AI, surveillance, and more.
For all its storytelling and artistic strengths, Karma: The Dark World offers a handful of annoyances along the way. The first is the control system on PS5, which feels poorly optimized; 'sprinting' is bound to L1, your inventory is on Square, and you open doors and drawers with the right stick, but only by holding the interact button (X, but also R2?). Combined with an imprecise reticle, this can be really annoying, though luckily the slow pace of the game doesn't mean you need accuracy under pressure.
Meanwhile, the voice acting is genuinely strong, but the script can often let the talent down. It's worst with player-character Daniel, who often responds to deep and meaningful exposition as if he's deaf, forcing him to lash out like a confused child and repeat the same queries and concerns that have already been answered — and in a frustratingly child-like tone.
Ah great, more mannequins.
Pollard Studio
Critically, the most disappointing element of Karma: The Dark World is that it doesn't make the most of its East German setting. The GDR is arguably the most fascinating failed state in history, but I can't recall one explicit mention of it throughout the game. Pollard Studio adopts a catch-all 'concrete totalitarianism' approach, but does away with iconography, art styles, and even the German language. For history fans, it amputates a huge selling point of the game, making it feel like it could be set in any European country of that era.
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For all these minor faults, Karma: The Dark World should be on the list for any fan of slow-burn thrillers like Layers of Fear, Soma, or Observer. Puzzles, in particular, are very rewarding, and areas in which you find them are carefully restricted so you stay focused on fewer moving parts or clues. A particular late-game room with four clocks was a real air-puncher when I finally figured it out — few games can be so consistently satisfying.
What's more, Pollard Studio should be celebrated for creating one of the most stunning games of 2025. While its technical performance doesn't match the heights of Kojima or Remedy's most recent work, Karma: The Dark World consistently hits the mindbending heights of its artistic vision. I'm still piecing the story and its meanings together over a week since completing the game, and that's entirely because certain scenes and ideas have lived rent-free in my head since I put the controller down.
For $25, Karma: The Dark World really does need to be played to be understood — or not understood, as the case often proves — but its weirdness, beauty, and strange approach to puzzles are truly rewarding. Much like Fear the Spotlight, the ending isn't the end, either, and even if you did platinum it, you'll still feel like you've missed something. Maybe that's the point.
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