On September 17, 2026, Netmarble held a media presentation at Tokyo Game Show for Solo Leveling: Karma (나 혼자만 레벨업: 카르마), a new mobile game built on the globally massive Solo Leveling (나 혼자만 레벨업) web novel and webtoon franchise. Japanese actor Honggo Kanata appeared as a special guest and played through the demo live on stage, according to Gamemeca's coverage from the show floor. The game itself is doing something the original story never did: telling the 27 years its protagonist spent fighting a war that the web novel, webtoon, and anime all skipped over.
What Karma Actually Is
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Developer / publisher | Netmarble Neo / Netmarble |
| Genre | Mobile roguelite action RPG |
| Tokyo Game Show debut | September 17, 2026, Makuhari Messe, Chiba, Japan |
| Pre-registration | Opened September 16, 2026, on Google Play and the App Store in Korea and Japan |
| Demo build content | Over 200 buffs and 8 playable characters, per Netmarble Neo development lead Jin Seong-geon |
| Special guest | Japanese actor Honggo Kanata, who played the story mode and survival mode live on stage |
Filling In the 27 Years Nobody Told
The core hook of Karma is narrative rather than mechanical. According to EToday's report from the presentation, the game dramatizes protagonist Sung Jin-woo's 27-year "Monarch War," fought after he uses an artifact called the Cup of Reincarnation to travel back in time — an arc the original web novel referenced only in passing and that the webtoon and 2024 anime never depicted in any detail. Rather than simply re-adapting scenes fans have already read or watched, Netmarble built an entire game around the gap the source material left open, giving longtime readers a reason to engage with content that is, technically, canon-adjacent rather than a retelling. That distinction matters commercially as much as creatively: a straightforward re-adaptation risks feeling redundant to an audience that already knows every plot beat, while an officially sanctioned gap-filling story gives the same audience something genuinely new to discover without requiring the original creators to write additional web novel chapters or webtoon episodes.
The game's signature mechanical change reinforces that same idea. Jin Seong-geon told reporters at the Tokyo Game Show presentation that the Shadow Army — Sung Jin-woo's army of resurrected monster servants, which functioned purely as summoned allies in the original story — is now directly playable, turning what was a spectator element in the webtoon into something players control themselves.
The Celebrity Rollout: A Playbook Netmarble Already Tested
Honggo Kanata's appearance in Japan wasn't the franchise's first use of a recognizable face to build pre-launch buzz. Two months earlier, at Anime Expo 2026 in Los Angeles, Netmarble had Aleks Le — the English-language voice actor for Sung Jin-woo in the Solo Leveling anime — perform a live dubbing session re-enacting an actual scene from Karma, timed alongside a new key art and trailer release, as Xports News reported at the time. The pattern is deliberate: a Western-facing convention appearance months ahead of launch, followed by a Japan-facing celebrity guest right as pre-registration opens, each timed to the region Netmarble is courting next.
The Playbook Behind It: What Karma's Predecessor Already Proved
Karma is not Netmarble Neo's first Solo Leveling game. Solo Leveling: ARISE, which launched globally on May 8, 2024, drew more than 15 million pre-registrations and generated roughly 14 billion won in revenue and 5 million daily active users on its first day alone, according to Korean trade press coverage at the time. Within its first month, per data cited from Sensor Tower, ARISE ranked number one in downloads and number two in revenue among mobile action games worldwide, taking the top revenue spot in 21 countries and reaching roughly $70 million in cumulative global revenue. A Netmarble business lead at the time credited part of that success to a specific decision: reusing the same voice cast from the 2024 Solo Leveling anime inside the game itself, arguing that the added cost was worth the immersion it gave existing fans of the source material. Karma's celebrity guest strategy and its focus on previously untold story content both extend that same logic — treat the existing fandom's familiarity with the IP as the asset to build around, rather than starting from zero with each new release. Sensor Tower's analysis of ARISE's launch also noted that app-review mentions of "webtoon" were among the most common terms users cited, and that the game's core audience skewed toward committed genre gamers first and existing manhwa and anime fans second — evidence that the crossover audience Netmarble is now targeting again with Karma's celebrity rollout was already the decisive factor the first time around, not an untested theory.
The territorial sequencing also mirrors how ARISE rolled out two years earlier: that game launched simultaneously across Korea, the US, Japan, and Europe rather than staggering regions, and immediately posted a number-one download ranking in 141 countries on the Apple App Store and Google Play combined, with a number-one revenue ranking in 21 of them. Karma's pre-registration, by contrast, opened only in Korea and Japan so far, suggesting Netmarble is treating this second title as a narrower, IP-deepening release aimed at the core fanbase first, rather than repeating ARISE's simultaneous global blitz.
Behind both games sits the same underlying number: Netmarble has cited a cumulative global view count of 14.3 billion for the Solo Leveling webtoon itself, the scale that made a second, story-expanding game a reasonable bet rather than a redundant one — the same scale of built-in audience that has made Korean IP crossovers into other Western entertainment formats increasingly common rather than one-off experiments.
FAQ
Is Solo Leveling: Karma a sequel to Solo Leveling: ARISE?
No. Both are separate mobile games built on the same Solo Leveling IP, developed by the same studio, Netmarble Neo, but they are not connected installments of one game series.
Do I need to have read the Solo Leveling webtoon to understand Karma's story?
Not necessarily, though it helps. Karma's central arc, Sung Jin-woo's 27-year war after using the Cup of Reincarnation, was only referenced briefly in the original web novel and was never shown in the webtoon or anime, so even longtime readers are seeing this specific story for the first time through the game. Newcomers unfamiliar with the franchise at all may still want to start with the original webtoon or the 2024 anime adaptation first, since Karma assumes at least passing familiarity with characters like Sung Jin-woo and the general concept of Hunters and Gates.
Verified as of September 26, 2026. Karma remains in pre-registration with no confirmed global launch date at time of writing; release timing and regional availability should be confirmed through Netmarble's official channels.
Sources
- Hankooki — "나혼렙 카르마 '일본게임대상 퓨처 부문 수상 목표'" (September 17, 2026)
- Gamemeca — "[TGS 26] 나혼렙: 카르마, 그림자 군단이 플레이 캐릭터로" (September 17, 2026)
- EToday — "넷마블 '나 혼자만 레벨업: 카르마', TGS서 공개…한·일 사전등록 돌입" (September 17, 2026)
- Xports News — "'나혼렙: 카르마', '애니메 엑스포'서 신규 키아트·PV 영상 오픈…성우 깜짝 공개" (July 6, 2026)
- Sensor Tower — "넷마블 《나혼자만 레벨업:어라이즈》 글로벌 누적 매출 7천만 달러 달성"
- Netmarble — "나 혼자만 레벨업: 카르마" 공식 사전등록 페이지