Hello everyone, I’m Yonghe Wang – Creative Director at Pollard Studios and today I am very excited to announce on behalf of my team and our publisher Wired Productions that Karma: The Dark World will be launching on PlayStation 5 on March 27. The game will also support PS5 Pro enhancements.

To celebrate, we thought we would share a breakdown of how the team is making the most of the PS5 Pro features to enhance the games visuals and performance – and to share the second in a trilogy of trailers – showcasing some of the surreal environments and characters in the game hinting at their relationship to you – the player. Please Enjoy!

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What Is Karma: The Dark World?

Karma: The Dark World is a first-person cinematic psychological thriller which takes place in a cassette future alternate timeline set after World War II. In our game, a company known as Leviathan obtained unfathomable technology that allowed them to wrestle Eastern Germany under their control, installing a regime that oppresses the citizens and places productivity and obedience as gospel.

They achieve this through a variety of means, from mass surveillance and mind-altering substances, to their secret organization of Nightcrawlers, special ROAM Agents who have the authority to investigate crime scenes and arrest citizens for interrogation and for Mind Dives – a special technology that allows them to dive into the memories of their subjects, and inhabit their memories, living and interacting with the events in their memories as they seek out the truth – dealing with the horrors of peoples pasts and twisted interpretations of emotions, guilt, and trauma from their harshest experiences.

You play Daniel McGovern, a ROAM agent tasked with investigating a theft at one of the Leviathan scientific institutes, and a job that leads to much greater investigation into love, humanity, empathy, and the complexities of morality.

Creating the Dark World

I believe creation is a profound dialogue with the human soul, transcending books or films to encompass real-life experiences and emotions. We focus on integrating philosophical reflection into game design, as reflected in the title of this work. The r

Hello! I’m Oli, the game director at Kaizen Game Works, the creators of Paradise Killer. I’m thrilled to announce that the playable demo for our new open world mascot management crime drama, Promise Mascot Agency, is out today on PS5!

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We’ve spent a long time working on this game, and the whole team is excited for PlayStation players to get their hands on it. Let me kick it to you straight; the PS5 rules. All of us at Kaizen primarily play on PlayStation, and we all grew up with the original PlayStation, PS2, PS3 and PS4. I collect PlayStation and PS2 games, and that era directly influenced the design of Promise Mascot Agency.

I love PS2 games where you Hangout And Do Stuff. Have you ever played Way of the Samurai, Raw Danger, Boku No Natsuyasumi and Steambot Chronicles? You should! You can really chill in those games, meet interesting characters, make important choices and explore at your leisure. That’s the kind of game we wanted to make; a fun world with mysteries, weirdos, secrets, good gameplay friction and immaculate vibes.

Take control of the exiled yakuza lieutenant Michi, and team up with the chaos goblin Pinky to save a bankrupt mascot agency and solve the underworld conspiracy that got Michi sent to a cursed town on the coast of Japan. In this game, mascots are living creatures and the town of Kaso-Machi is filled with misfits that can’t find work anywhere else. Michi is going to need to build a new family of mascots and help them achieve their dreams, so he can save the business and his yakuza family back home.

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Hey, everybody! Tim and Kristen discuss all the big news for this week’s State of Play, including Saros, the upcoming new game from Housemarque, and some of their other favorite moments from the show.

Stuff We Talked About

• Next week’s release highlights:
  • Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered | PS5, PS4
  • Afterlove EP | PS5, PS4
  • Like a Dragon: Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii | PS5
  • Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 1 | PS5
• Astro Bot’s five new levels
• Announcing Saros
• Days Gone Remastered announced for PS5
• Borderlands 4 arrives on September 23, with a special State of Play deep dive coming this spring
• PlayStation Plus February Game Catalog
  • Star Wars Jedi: Survivor
  • TopSpin 2K25
  • Lost Records: Bloom & Rage – Tape 1
  • SaGa Frontier Remastered
  • Somerville
  • Tin Hearts
  • Mordhau 
  • Patapon 3
  • Dropship: United Peace Force
• Resident Evil 4 VR Mode
• Metaphor ReFantazio

The Cast

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Last week, you to share the love and showcase romantic moments from the game of your choice using #PSshare #PSBlog. Here are this week’s highlights:

fsantos1697 shares Scott and Ramona sharing a kiss in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: The Game

Couch_Gamer2k23 shares Dina and Ellie leaning in with romantic tension in The Last of Us Part II

Skania__ shares protagonist Makoto and Aigis spending time together in Persona 3 Reload

garagaraarga shares V framing Panam Palmer with a hand heart in Cyberpunk 2077

jobolts_ shares May and Cody sharing a kiss against fireworks in It Takes Two.

ct_tomtom shares Cloud and Tifa spending time together in Final Fantasy VII Rebirth.

Search #PSshare #PSBlog on Twitter or Instagram to see more entries to this week’s theme. Want to be featured in the next Share of the Week?

THEME: Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered
SUBMIT BY: 11:59 PM PT on February 19, 2025 

Next week, Lara Croft is back! Share adventurous moments from Tomb Raider IV-VI Remastered as a still or with the Flyby Camera Maker feature using #PSshare #PSBlog for a chance to be featured.

Everybody has a story in their mind that they’d love to tell, but maybe they don’t feel like they have the ability to tell it effectively. But that’s about to change in Hazelight Studios’ Split Fiction, which launches March 6 on PS5. 

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In the game, the publisher Rader has a new, advanced machine capable of bringing a person’s stories to life and letting the authors live through their tales. They’ve invited some aspiring storytellers to give their tech a try–among them Mio and Zoe, two women with dramatically different backgrounds, tastes, and personalities. But when the on switch gets flipped and the stories emerge, an unexpected development causes these two’s most elaborate tales to intertwine. Mio and Zoe need to team up to survive each other’s stories–and figure out some of the secrets Rader’s been hiding from its test subjects. So begins Split Fiction: a co-op adventure about unlikely companions, imaginations running wild, and very strange adventures.

Double vision

Developer Hazelight is a studio known for creating memorable cooperative gameplay experiences like A Way Out, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and the award-winning It Takes Two. Their games are known for unique themes, strong emotional moments, surprise gameplay twists, and a good dose of off-kilter humor. We’re pleased to report that Split Fiction offers plenty of everything players have come to love from their previous works, all while amping things up to new heights.

Players who jump into Split Fiction will take control of one of the two leading women. Mio, a somewhat cold and curt city girl, is a massive sci-fi nerd who loves interstellar battles, cyberpunk aesthetics, and futuristic weaponry. Zoe, a chatty lass from the countryside, enjoys high-fantasy tales of heroic trials, dragons, trolls, and magic. A glitch in the system is causing the pair to journey together while switching between each other’s stories: They might be cyborg ninja assassins in a dystopia one moment, only to turn into magical shapeshifters on their epic quest through the wilds the next. All the while, the machine generating these story worlds is digging much deeper into each girl’s memories and story ideas than either one expected.

It’s a great pleasure to see you with our first post of 2025. From all of us at Team Asobi, we wish you a wonderful year ahead.

Last year saw the release of Astro Bot, our biggest game to date. As well as picking several game awards, we have been blessed with countless comments and lovely words from you, the players. 

This has made the hard work of everyone at Team Asobi even more worth it. So from the bottom of our lil’ robotic hearts, hearts, a huge thank you to you all.

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And now, into the main news! To start the year on a good note, we are delighted to announce new Astro Bot content is coming starting today. You might have noticed that a, yet unreleased, level of Astro Bot was featured at the PlayStation XP Tournament Final in London, England on January 18. That very level, along with 4 additional ones will be coming your way inside the brand-new Vicious Void Galaxy, starting today. 

As before, this new update is completely free of charge and a gift from us to you, the Astro Bot community.

These five levels will appear on a weekly basis as follows:

• Feb 13: Tick-Tock Shock
• Feb 20: Thrust or Bust
• Feb 27: Cock-A-Doodle-Doom
• Mar 6: Hard to Bear
• Mar 13: Armored Hardcore

Note: All Astro Bot updates from February 13 to March 13 will be available every Thursday at 6:00am PT, 2:00pm GMT, and 10:00pm JST. 

Unlike our last update Winter Wonder, which was a walk through the Xmas park, this new update features harder levels to test your jumping skills. Each level comes with a brand-new Special Bot to rescue and, once that’s done, can be replayed in Time Attack mode with online rankings. To access these, you will need to have completed the main game. So sharpen those skills again and let’s get rescuing.

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If you’ve played a Hazelight Studios game before, you know that the characters they create for you and your co-op partner come with unique personalities, backgrounds, and motivations that produce unforgettable moments as their stories unfold. 

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Hazelight Studios is keeping that trend up as they introduce two new player characters in Split Fiction, which is launching on March 6 on PS5. Take control of two unpublished authors, Mio and Zoe, who you will quickly find are worlds apart! When you first meet Mio and Zoe, they have been lured into Rader Publishing Headquarters with the promise of a potential publishing deal which goes horribly wrong, trapping them inside a simulation of their stories which you have to help them escape. In this blog, we’re diving deeper into their characters so that you can confidently pick your favourite when you get your hands on the game! 

Mio Hudson – Science Fiction author

Reserved. Decisive. Realist. Introvert.

Raised in the city with her father, Mio has barely scraped by for the last couple of years. She isn’t looking for fame or recognition as an author, she’s just in it for the money. Her love for all things sci-fi is reflected in her literary works, taking place in neon-lit cyberpunk cities, harsh futuristic weapon plants, and even in the coldness of outer space.

Expect to see her love for sci-fi shine through in the abilities she gains inside the simulations, where she may become a gravity-defying ninja equipped with a lethally sharp energy sword, wear an advanced exosuit that grants remote control of drones, or dual-wield laser blasters in futuristic combat armour.

Zoe Foster – Fantasy author

Charismatic. Empathetic. Optimist. Extrovert.

A cheerful countryside girl with a deep need to prove to her family that she’s not a complete failure. Zoe hopes that a publishing deal will solve all of her problems. Fantasy is her favoured genre, with her portfolio containing works of fiction about escaping towns overrun by trolls, battling through forests against an impending ice

It’s a great pleasure to see you with our first post of 2025. From all of us at Team Asobi, we wish you a wonderful year ahead.

Last year saw the release of Astro Bot, our biggest game to date. As well as picking several game awards, we have been blessed with countless comments and lovely words from you, the players. 

This has made the hard work of everyone at Team Asobi even more worth it. So from the bottom of our lil’ robotic hearts, hearts, a huge thank you to you all.

And one person who’s clearly having fun with Astro Bot is no other than Finn Wolfhard, featured alongside Astro in a fun new video.

Play Video

And now, into the main news! To start the year on a good note, we are delighted to announce new Astro Bot content is coming starting today. You might have noticed that a, yet unreleased, level of Astro Bot was featured at the PlayStation XP Tournament Final in London, England on January 18. That very level, along with 4 additional ones will be coming your way inside the brand-new Vicious Void Galaxy, starting today. 

As before, this new update is completely free of charge and a gift from us to you, the Astro Bot community.

These five levels will appear on a weekly basis as follows:

• Feb 13: Tick-Tock Shock
• Feb 20: Thrust or Bust
• Feb 27: Cock-A-Doodle-Doom
• Mar 6: Hard to Bear
• Mar 13: Armored Hardcore

Note: All Astro Bot updates from February 13 to March 13 will be available every Thursday at 6:00am PT, 2:00pm GMT, and 10:00pm JST. 

Unlike our last update Winter Wonder, which was a walk through the Xmas park, this new update features harder levels to test your jumping skills. Each level comes with a brand-new Special Bot to rescue and, once that’s done, can be replayed in Time Attack mode with online rankings. To access these, you will need to have completed the main game. So sharpen those skills again and let’s get rescuing.

Play Video Read more