Solo Leveling: Karma's New Trailer Lands Right After Its Anime Expo Panel

Netmarble released a new combat and story trailer for Solo Leveling: Karma on July 6, two days after the game's panel at Anime Expo 2026 in Los Angeles. Karma is a roguelike action RPG built around a "Dimensional Gap" — Netmarble's term for the 27-year war against the Monarchs that Sung Jinwoo lived through off-page in the original story. It's aimed at PC, iOS, and Android with no release date beyond "TBA 2026," developed by Netmarble Neo following earlier reveals at Anime Expo 2025, G-STAR 2025, and AnimeJapan 2026.

The combat leans openly on Hades' design language: isometric dodge-rolling, directional attacks, cooldown-based skills, and a "Blessing" system that hands out randomized run-to-run modifiers. Players fight alongside summonable Shadow units, including series regulars Igris and Iron, through procedurally generated dungeons built for replay rather than a single linear campaign.

What actually makes this reveal worth parsing is Netmarble's track record with the last Solo Leveling game. Arise launched in May 2024 to 50 million installs and $138.9 million in gross revenue over six months — but monthly revenue fell from a $58.9 million peak in its launch month to just $7 million by October, amid complaints about flash sales interrupting cutscenes, stacked subscription tiers, and punishing gacha drop rates. Netmarble's answer came in November 2025: Arise Overdrive, a $39.99 premium relaunch on Steam that strips out every gacha mechanic and currently holds a 75% "mostly positive" rating.

Karma's monetization hasn't been officially detailed, but early reporting points toward a story-driven model built more around expansions or a battle pass than randomized pulls — a plan that, if accurate, tracks directly with what Overdrive already proved works better with players.

I think that's the actual headline buried under the trailer news: a publisher quietly admitting its own gacha model failed by building a gacha-free version of the same game a year later. I'd stay cautious about calling this a lesson fully learned, though, since nothing about Karma's business model is locked in yet, and Netmarble could just as easily bolt a battle pass onto what's otherwise still built for repeat-run monetization.

Karma still doesn't have a release window tighter than "2026," so the next real signal will be whichever event gets the first monetization details on record.