Sektori Review - Like A Cold Ocean Dip
On August 21, 2017, a now-famous post was dropped on the blog of the Finnish developer Housemarque. Titled ‘Arcade Is Dead’, the post would outline for fans and media, that “despite critical success and numerous awards, our games just haven’t sold in significant numbers,” and that “we are exploring something totally different than what you might expect of us, but we believe this will lead to the creation of even more engaging gaming experiences.” Now, while Housemarque would move on and ultimately do some extraordinary things with the 2021 release of Returnal, and is currently on track to launch its successor, Saros, on March 20, 2026, some weren’t willing to simply let arcade die, and with few others stepping up to the plate, former Housemarque dev, Kimmo Lahtinen, did. The eventual result, the twin-stick shooter, Sektori, is a love letter to the glory days of Housemarque’s own Super Stardust franchise, as well as Bizarre Creations’ Geometry Wars franchise, splashes in some roguelite elements, and excels both as a throwback and also a modern-day arcade gem.
Launching into a run of Sektori was as refreshing, both for good reasons and the bad, as an early dip in the ocean. Sure, it’s good for the soul, but also, everything shrinks up inside you as the wave hits. With that graphic comparison aside, Sektori evokes similar feelings; it’s revitalising, and it’s exciting, but at the same time, it’s a smack right where it hurts for those who’ve not engaged with the genre in a while.
In the game’s campaign mode, players are dropped straight into the action, pulsing high-adreneline techno beats blaring behind you as you’re instantly left to sink or swim, waves of geometrically inspired enemies spawning in the arena space, looking to take you down in a myriad of different ways. There’s a diverse range of enemies, from some cuboids that aimlessly float in space and are just a nuisance, to snake-like enemies that weave through the environment chasing you, others that fire projectiles, and some mini-bosses thrown in for good measure to get you moving. Each of the game’s five worlds ends in a much larger boss, randomly selected from a pool of them to test your mettle, and its in these sequences where the on-screen chaos can overwhelm players leading to some cheap deaths, but some incredibly exhilarating highs when you navigate the mess, having bested the challenge. For players who wish to go all the way, they will need to complete each of the game’s five worlds, along with each of the boss gatekeepers, without losing all of their lives; there are no opportunities to back-out and start at world 5, no, you must brutally play your way through world 1-5 without fail if you wish to succeed. It’s rough, but if you persist, you’ll get there in time.
While a successful run can take in excess of 20-30 minutes to see through to completion, you won’t progress far without a few power-ups. Sektori grants these sparingly, with destroyed enemies dropping glimmer, which, if collected, spawns larger collectibles that can then be spent on a range of upgrades. Players can put points into their ship’s speed, its blaster power, missiles, strike (dash) ability, additional shields (lives), or even boost the score bonus for your run, and you will want to take every opportunity that you can to dump points into the aspects that best suit your playstyle. There’s also a rarer, golden power-up that can be collected that gives players the chance to select an extra power-up from a deck, which can grant you drones to help your fight, some additional shields, and more. Players can tweak and customise their deck from the main menu before a run begins, but once you’re in, there’s no changing it, and given that cards are presented at random, it’s important to tailor your deck to your general needs, and then cross your fingers that the cards fall your way.
While on the subject of random drops, enemies spawn randomly, and the arena also stretches, compresses, and contorts at random times, too. The environment will flash red to indicate that it’s about to disappear, but players won’t have long to adjust, and this is particularly challenging when you’ve entered the game’s rainbow mode. Collect the letters to spell out ‘MIRAGE’, (or ‘SEKTORI’, and ‘REVOLUTION’ at harder difficulty levels), and you’ll enter a chaotic rainbow coloured mode where your damage output explodes, and colours fly frantically. In this state, when the environment shifts, it can be super hard to track, leading to some cruel endstates (yes, no number of shields will protect you from instant failure if you fail to escape from an environmental shift.
Beyond the standard campaign, there are a number of other ways to engage with the Sektori experience. From ‘Boss Rush’ modes, to ‘Gates’ where shooting is off and damage can only be done by flying through gates in the arena, ‘Assault’ where the player has some manual control over the difficulty increases, ‘Crash’ which is all about utilising that Strike ability, ‘Surge’ where you’ll ship frequently changes form, prompting the need to rapidly upgrade and boost damage output, and then ‘Classic’ mode which sets you in a static level, where the game can be played more akin to Geometry Wars.
Sektori is brutal; it looks to crush you under its sheer force at every turn, such that getting to the game’s end will be one of the most satisfying moments that you’ll find in gaming in 2025. It looks beautiful, is incredibly overstimulating, hates your guts, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Sektori was reviewed on PS5 with a code kindly provided by the publisher.
