Horror Double-Bill ("Karma: The Dark World" and "The Midnight Walk")

Well, it's that time of year again!

Early August!

Which has absolutely nothing to do with the context for this double-feature.

Anyway, for this article, the factors that bind the two games I'll be discussing are horror-adjacent atmospheres and an emphasis on story and vibes over gameplay. Ready or not, here we go.

Publisher: Wired Productions, Gamera Games

Developer: POLLARD STUDIO LLC

Platforms: Microsoft Windows, Playstation 5 (Reviewed)

TBD Release: Xbox Consoles

Karma: The Dark World has the distinct honor of being the only property based off of 1984 to understand the novel on a level other than the bare-bones thematic aspects. At least from my point of view. There are several key differences to be noted, but we'll get to those after a brief summary.

Following WW2, scientists from the USSR got up to some wacky sci-fi shenanigans, which gave rise to a megacorporation called Leviathan and an omnipresent figure named "Mother", which controls all aspects of Eastern Germany (and maybe beyond). You are Daniel McGovern: an agent with the thought bureau whose job it is to interrogate criminals by diving into their brains. One day,  Daniel is sent to track down evidence linking a disabled clerical worker to a theft, and after a brief dive into the worker's head, things quickly go sideways. 

Like I said, a couple differences to note: it's a megacorporation instead of a political party, it's a literal omnipresent AI kind of thing instead of a more figurative "big brother" metaphor, etc. But the context remains the same in a way I haven't seen done before. 1984 isn't just scary because Big Brother has eyes and ears everywhere, it's scary because they watch and wait. The novel isn't just about the USSR and big government, it's a reflection of the rapidly-changing-for-the-worse world that its new territories found themselves living in. That is what this game gets, and it's by far the thing that kept me invested in Karma the most.

One thing I'd like to point out to drive this idea home is one of the early brain dive sequences. In this sequence, Daniel alternates between the worker's memories of home and the office. When in the office space, the memories are safe havens from the potential jumpscares to be found in the home segments. And as that implies, when Daniel views memories of home, frightening things tend to happen. It's not even that anything bad is happening in these memories. It's all fairly ho-hum stuff. But the fact that the game decides to put us in a position where being directly under the watchful eye of the oppressor is more comfortable than being *possibly* watched at home shows a level of understanding of the source material that I find truly impressive.

Everything I've said is hammered home by top-tier voice acting, strong writing, a killer soundtrack, and an indomitable technical package that keeps the atmosphere blanket-thick. 

I do have one complaint, however. For all the many strengths this game's setting and characters can boast, the plot itself tends to fail when it matters most. It gets a little too plot twist heavy on a pair of legs that can't quite hold it. Likewise, certain plot details are intentionally withheld until the last possible second in what feels like an attempt to really make those plot twists pop, but in reality, they just make entire character motivations change and entire plotlines vanish. It's a shame, but I'll say that the setting and characters do make up for that more than you might expect.

One last thing to touch on is gameplay, which is split between walking segments and puzzles. The walking segments are self-explanatory, but the puzzles are actually perfect. Pretty high praise, but I said what I said. There are some real brain-benders here, but the building blocks of each puzzle tend to be easy to pick up on. One late-game puzzle that comes to mind involves clocks and listening for clues in the chimes, but I'll leave any deeper discussion off the table for now.

If you haven't heard of Karma: The Dark World, I don't blame you. I haven't seen much about it online, but where I have seen discussion, it's pretty positive, and I'd like to add my voice to that pile. While the story itself has some pitfalls, everything else here is excellent. If you like a good horror atmosphere but don't want to worry about too many jumpscares, this one might be for you.

[Because this is what I consider a "smaller" title, I'll be using my "smaller" scale]

Let us review:

Major story pitfalls - 1.0

The final score for Karma: The Dark World is...

9.0/10 - Fantastic

Well done, POLLARD STUDIO, well done

Publisher: Fast Travel Games

Developer: MoonHood

Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed), Microsoft Windows, Various VR Platforms

The Midnight Walk is something I'd been looking forward to for a long, long time, yet it has been in my backlog ever since the game came out in early May. I'd booted it up, saw it was available for VR, saw how much more incredible it would look in VR, then put it aside until I could justify purchasing a PSVR2 or something for PC. But the day never came. So, The Midnight Walk just sat there, and my disappointment grew each time I saw it in my little running document I use to plan out what gets what in my end of year lists. What little I played before putting it down showed that it would probably be the best VR game I'd ever get my hands on, so I didn't want to spoil it for myself by playing on a plain old screen...but recently I decided it was time to bite the bullet and just experience this game in an inferior format. And while I was 100% right that it would be an inferior experience, it's still exactly my kind of game, and it's one I'm going to be recommending.

Discourse around far too many games these days revolve around similarities to a game that will not be named at this point. I think the game in question is referenced too often where it doesn't need to be, and it often feels like reviewers don't have original thoughts anymore when they do so. So I'm not going to reference it...

Anyway, in The Midnight Walk, you play as a mysterious figure called "The Burnt One." That is to say, you're some kind of mythical pilgrim who is destined to venture through the world in a journey called "The Midnight Walk." In this pilgrimage, you guide a small, sentient firepot named "Pot Boy," with the end goal being to go to a specific mountain in order to re-kindle a primordial flame that keeps the world from being engulfed in darkness...see what it might be compared to?

Much like Karma, the world in The Midnight Walk is what ultimately drew me in. It's rendered in stop motion and portrayed like a Tim Burton film. So it's only really "horror" in the way that Tim Burton's films are "horror." Snow-painted coal mining towns, cute gothic villages with bendy pipe chimneys, you know what kind of setting I'm talking about. Most Tim Burton-y of all, there's a village called "Nobodyville," and when you enter, there's scattered comments in comically British accents about there being "a somebody in Nobodyville." For as dark as the setting is (literally, the sun basically doesn't exist anymore), there's little bits of levity like this that keep it from getting depressing. 

Bringing Karma back into this discussion again, The Midnight Walk is also made even better with top-tier voice acting, excellent writing, and a killer soundtrack. This one, however, also has wonderfully realized environmental and character designs that make it a joy to look at.

In terms of gameplay, if you guessed that it's walking segments and puzzles, you'd be right! 

The puzzles are inoffensive, as they don't require much thought. You'll typically look for a little icon for Pot Boy and send him there to have him crawl into a different area, light something like a candle, or some combination of the two. There are one or two puzzles that get a bit more complicated than this, but they're few and far between. For some, that'll be a dealbreaker, but I was in this entirely for the atmosphere, so that was fine by me. 

And the walking segments always give you more ways to look at the scenery, which again is what I was looking for. So, gameplay is about as bare-bones as it gets, but in this specific context, I didn't mind.

What I did mind, however, was the technical fidelity. It's just a couple small problems, but technical prowess makes a difference in something this vibe-based. Pot Boy, for one, will sometimes get hung up on pieces of the environment when you send him somewhere. He'll always make it eventually, but sometimes you'll need to double down on button presses to get his pathing to work right. There's also the occasional bit of stuttering, which is especially negative in a game like this. I'd imagine this isn't a problem in the VR version, but obviously I didn't play that one.

I started this review off on a bit of a negative note, and I'll admit there's still no small amount of disappointment in my heart that I didn't get to experience The Midnight Walk as it was intended. But that's no fault of the game! What I experienced on my regular old TV screen was still exactly the kind of atmospheric Tim Burton-y fairy tale I was hoping for, and I'd absolutely recommend it to anyone who can handle a general lack of gameplay. There's also a quote towards the end of the game about what the darkness in our lives ultimately means that is so comforting that I couldn't help but get choked up. So I'd also recommend The Midnight Walk to you if you find yourself in a dark place and in need of some comforting words from a gentle-sounding narrator.

Let us review:

Technical problems - 1.0

Like with Karma, the final score for The Midnight Walk is...

9.0/10 - Fantastic

Excellent work, MoonHood, excellent work