The Dark World puzzles and how to solve them

In the midst of all the chaos, diving through the minds of your lead suspects, there’s puzzles to solve in KARMA: The Dark World that’ll surely keep your mind working overtime.

Trying to decipher the surreal narrative of KARMA: The Dark World is one thing, but adding puzzle-solving on top of it makes this psychological adventure truly horrifying. Here are where to find and how to solve all KARMA: The Dark World puzzles.

KARMA: The Dark World puzzle solutions

Becker’s password

The first puzzle takes place inside the Clerical Office. Playing as Daniel, you need to work out Becker’s password to pick up the Level-E Keycard from the desk. The hint given tells you to look at “the panting of the clock.”

Solution

Since the painting has been taken down, you need to use the Telescreen directly next to the desk to zoom in on the first and second images where the clock painting can be seen being taken down.

This tells you that the time of the clock and therefore the password to Becker’s drawer is 0 8 1 5.

Sean’s password

You need to work out Sean Mehndez’s password to the locked cabinet in his desk at the Clerical Office to find the Dasein sample.

Solution

You can find the answer within the same room by going to Emily’s desk and finding a diary entry that tells us Sean’s password is “today’s date.” But to unlock this, you need to figure out what Emily’s password is first. You can do so by picking up the lipstick from inside the Storage Room, taking it into the Clerical Office, and going to her desk on the right-hand side (next to the giant Telecomm screen). The lipstick is marked with card suits. Find the card suits on the poster that converts symbols into numbers. Here’s a summary:

• Club = six
• Diamond = eight
• Heart = four
• Spade = three

This means that the password to Emily’s desk is 6 8 4 3. The diary entry, dated April 30th, 1976, tells you that the password to Sean’s desk is 0 4 3 0.

Phone puzzle

A short memory game at the end of Guilty chapter, you need to remember the sequence the voice on the red telephone relays to you. You can only listen to this once. The sequence is “War,” “Peace,” “Freedom,” “Slavery,” “Ignorance,” and “Strength.” You need to choose either left or right, where both telephones on either side deliver a sequence of two (again, only once). Select the correct pair and go through the door where you must choose again until you’ve correctly completed the sequence.

Solution

The sequence you need to go in to complete this puzzle is right (War, Peace), left (War, Peace, Freedom, Slavery), and left (War, Peace, Freedom, Slavery, Ignorance, Strength) one more time.

Rachel’s password

Playing as Sean investigating Dasein research, you need to unlock Rachel’s desk to get the Level-C Keycard for the elevator controls.

Solution

The puzzle hint is Lucas’s birthday, which you can find out by listening to the cassette tape nearest to the password keypad. His birthday is July 21, meaning the code is 0 7 2 1.

Book puzzle

Solution

Complete mom’s tasks at least once and then return to the study when asked to turn off the radio. Pick up the third iteration of the 1984 book glistening atop the pile next to the bookcase. Insert this on the bookcase. Go to Daniel’s bedroom and open the drawer in his desk to find his math homework titled Addition Operations.

This tells you to arrange the books on the bookcase in the following order:

• Book one: Slot one
• Book two: Slot nine
• Book three: Slot eight
• Book four: Slot four

Clock puzzle (Fred Ebert’s Office)

The clock puzzle is the hardest compulsory puzzle in KARMA. You need to figure out the password to Fred’s fourth cabinet, which refers to the time on the clock above it. However, the clock hands are missing. So, to figure out the password, you need to check the other clocks that have the correct time displayed on them. Each clock chimes when you click on the numbered red book poking out of the bookcase.

Solution

Be sure to pick up Fred Ebert’s book from the side table in the office so you can insert it into the fourth bookcase. This is crucial so you can listen to the fourth clock, which translates to the password. The hour, minute, and second have a unique chime. Every clock starts with a strong, singular ding sound with a pause between, equalling to one hour per ding. This is then followed by a ding dong, translated to 15 minutes. And finally, a high-pitch ding is one minute per ding. By listening to the fourth clock (with the password keypad underneath), we can work out that the time is 01:50.

Therefore, the password is 0 1 5 0.

How to unlock all KARMA: The Dark World Rule Followers

The Rule Followers are a group of collectibles you can track in your Memos menu. They aren’t compulsory, but they are great little brain teasers to break up the tension and sentimental moments KARMA has to offer. There are 15 Rule Followers hidden across the three acts.

Refer to the Chapter Select list if you missed a Rule Follower while playing. You can always reload to the last checkpoint if you guessed the answer incorrectly. We will note the name of each Rule Follower and in which chapter you can find it.

Dr. Jürgen W. Waltz

• Act: One
• Chapter: Cultivation
• Answer: Green

This is an easy Rule Follower to miss, as you didn’t know they existed at the start of your playthrough. When you enter the Cultivation room and meet the Old Man for the first time, you can look around this small room before sitting on the chair to activate the cutscene. Go to the computer terminal behind the Old Man (or to his right) to find the puzzle box there.

Solution

I had to recruit family members to help solve the first Rule Follower in KARMA, as this one was significantly harder than the rest. I can’t honestly tell you how the answer is Green, but I assume it’s through looking purely at the black squares, what shape they make, and by combining the ‘Z’ and ‘L’ shapes together to get the fifth part of the sequence.

Engineer – Wilhelm Puschel

• Act: Two – Part One
• Chapter: Research Institute
• Answer: Blue

This is one of the hardest Rule Followers to find, and I had to load this chapter three times before taking in the scenery one frame at a time. This puzzle box is inside the third mail pipe from the pneumatic device (as you approach it from the entrance).

Solution

This one required a lot of imagination to create the three-dimensional box without having it on hand. It took me a good minute, but you must eliminate all other options to get the answer: Blue. The easiest way to figure this one out is by seeing the black line as the top and the spade as bottom. From here, look at the angle of nearby suits and whether it matches the flattened cube pictured above.

Candy Maker – Roswitha Mokrosch

• Act: Two – Part One
• Chapter: Investigation
• Answer: 7 7 4 2

You can find a Rule Follower puzzle box inside Barbara Fischer’s desk. This is the same spot where you find and pick up the fuse storage box key needed to restore power to this room. While the Rule Follower has been removed from the box, we still need to work this out as the answer correlates to Barbara’s password (the yellow option on the puzzle box that’s been scribbled out).

Solution

While we can already mark out that the first number on the yellow option is 7, we need to refer to the Katakana in the first two boxes and add these together to equal the one in the third box. We can see what each Japanese character corresponds to by looking at the Sudoku-style box underneath them. What you then do is add the two characters from the boxes based on the Katakana written on the third box. Doing so will give us the answer 7 7 4 2.

The Legendary Roam Agent – Cooper

• Act: Two – Part One
• Chapter: Guilty
• Answer: Red

You don’t have to travel far to find this one. In the start of the abstract memories about Sean and his family, you can see them having dinner at the table behind the couch. Head over to the couch and look at the armchair opposite the television.

Solution

This was a breath of fresh air. Just carry over the last shown symbol in the sequence to get your answer. As there’s only one star, this eliminates three options and leaves you with the answer: Red.

Cleaner – Peter Kowalski

• Act: Two – Part One
• Chapter: Night Street
• Answer: Blue

Walk down the stairs as you’re returning to the Thought Bureau. Pass the black sedan and trio of Roam Agents breaking down a door. Take the only path to progress but turn right, towards the two parked cars. There’s an NPC sitting on a wooden crate with the puzzle box in the corner next to him.

Solution

This is one of those answers that just came to me like hitting 100 percent on Cold Harbor in Severance. The first and second in the sequence are opposites. Therefore, the third would do the complete opposite to them, leaving a singular white dot at the center, giving us Blue.

Roam Agent – Sandra Behling

• Act: Two – Part One
• Chapter: Thought Bureau
• Answer: Blue

Upon completing Leviathan’s psyche test, you enter a large room with a reception desk to your right. Walk far right, away from the corridor you need to pass through to reach Sean’s interrogation room. You need to go to the far side of the reception desk based on where you started. The puzzle box is here. You don’t need to go behind the desk to reach it.

Solution

All that matters in this puzzle is noticing the outside shape. This always moves into the innermost shape in the next part of the sequence. The upside down triangle in first moves to the center in second, the circle in second moves to the center in third, and the hexagon in third moves to the center in fourth. This means that the square has to move in the center, giving you only one option to choose: Blue.

Writer – Simon Syme

• Act: Two – Part One
• Chapter: Monster
• Answer: Red

As you’re fleeing from the monster, descending towards the basement, the door at the end of the line is blocked off by a chain. Jumping into the vent ends the chase sequence, and Sean crawls to the other side following a trail of Christmas tree lights. When Sean mentions seeing his daughter (Grace) again, turn left, away from the lights. You will find the next puzzle at the dead end, near a newspaper clipping you can interact with.

Solution

This one was a bit of a head-scratcher for me, but I believe the solution was based on which option had the fewest thapes. Each shape was overlayed with one another, creating smaller ones within. What we knew for sure was:

• Yellow = Seven
• Green = 12
• Red = Six

Therefore, we chose Red as it had the smallest amount, which was the correct answer to this puzzle box.

Clerk – Achim Heidelauf

• Act: Two – Part One
• Chapter: Work
• Answer: Yellow

This is one of those puzzle boxes placed in a sneaky location. Worst of all is having to complete the stamping task multiple times in search of this Rule Follower. Upon completing the stamp task, you go to a yellow room filled with dangling televisions. Go far right when you enter this room to find the one television that doesn’t have a screen. There’s nothing else around it. The puzzle box is inside.

Solution

The answer to this lies in the number of shapes you can see pictured inside the sequence. The lines divide the big shape into smaller ones. You need to count how many shapes you can see to note that the sequence goes in the predictable order of one to four. The star is one, the circle is two semicircles, the pentagon is three triangles, and the triangle is made up of four smaller ones. Therefore, the question mark has to be a shape with five shapes inside. This makes the answer Yellow.

Botanist – Franz Siedek

• Act: Two – Part One
• Chapter: Trade
• Answer: Green

When Sean is testing the Dasein, look around the room he’s in. Look towards the door to exit and then to the right, where the puzzle box is placed atop a unit.

Solution

I massively overcomplicated this one, but the answer lies in working out how the stars are moving. The black star is always moving three steps clockwise, and the white star is moving two steps anti-clockwise. This means the fifth and final position in the sequence is Green.

Toy Designer – Mustafi Mandel

• Act: Two – Part One
• Chapter: Childhood
• Answer: Yellow

When you’re the young version of Daniel revisiting his childhood memories of eating dinner with his family, go to the television and look at the coffee table for the puzzle box.

Solution

Looking purely at the black dot, the sequence of three in each row follows the same format: one must be on the circle’s line, another inside the circle, and the last just outside the circle. The first row is down, left, up. The second is left, up, right. This means te third row has to be right, down, left. As we’re missing the black dot appearing outside the circle, the answer is Yellow.

Worker – Charlotta Chaplin

• Act: Two – Part Two
• Chapter: Mom
• Answer: Red

With the freedom to explore your childhood home, go into the bathroom as mom gives you orders (e.g., set the table, turn off the radio, etc). The next puzzle is atop the bathroom sink.

Solution

This puzzle is almost tricking you into picking the wrong answer as all you need to do is select the option of what a pyramid would look like drawn in a birds-eye perspective. The answer is Red as the pyramid would come to a point, looking like a square with a cross inside.

Veteran – Wolfgang Parsons

• Act: Two – Part Two
• Chapter: Filthy
• Answer: Yellow

As you are exploring Rachel’s dark past inside her apartment, you can look in the refrigerator when the Wardrobe Man asks you to bring the checklist from Rachel’s bedroom. The puzzle is inside the fridge.

Solution

This was a complete guess, honestly, but I think the answer correlated to the length of the line correlating to the black dot. As the second to fourth options are longer lines than the sequence above, the answer we chose that’s the one you need to get this Rule Follower is Yellow.

Criminologist – Rachel Stangerton

• Act: Two – Part Two
• Chapter: Freedom

Before heading into apartment 108, walk to the end of the hotel corridor to find the puzzle box on the windowsill.

Solution

All you need to do with this one is combine the previous two images in the sequence to create the third, new shape. This would then mean that Blue is the correct answer, as adding up all the points in the two shapes equals eight, so you pick the one option that has eight points.

Clock Repairer – Michaela Schafer

• Act: Three
• Chapter: Amber Blood
• Answer: Green

You can find it at the very start of the Amber Blood chapter. Immediately upon loading in, you’re invited to race down the corridor, past Fred’s statues, and into his office for the clock puzzle. But don’t leave the elevator! Instead, turn around the moment you have control of Daniel to find the next Rule Follower.

Solution

While I think my method to solve this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, I believe the sequence shows whatever shape is on the outside is doubled to make the shape on the inside. So the first shows a circle inside a semicircle, double the semicircle, and it makes a whole circle. Then, the diamond doubled (four sides) makes the star shape (eight sides), and the triangle doubled (three sides) makes the hexagon (six sides). This makes the answer Green, as there are five shapes inside the circle, which then go into the ten sides/points of the star.

Secretary – Madlen Fidorri

• Act: Three
• Chapter: Virus
• Answer: Red

Immediately after running from the virus, you fall into a blue room (it looks like the freezer room from earlier) where corpses are on display. Check the corpses; a puzzle box will be inside one of their hands.

Solution

The sequence shows the arrow moving anti-clockwise. We know the arrow must point down next in the sequence, leaving yellow and red to choose between. Because nothing in the sequence indicates the next shape would be a cross, the answer is Red, as a circle already appeared in the sequence.

Finding and solving all Rule Follower puzzles rewards you with the Leviathan Collector achievement.