Sektori is psychedelic, tough as nails, and worth the pain

Sektori is an old-school twin-stick shooter. Created by a former developer at Returnal studio Housemarque, it puts you in the role of a little ship that blasts through swarms of enemies, and you have to weave through them to get upgrades to help you survive. Often, my runs end after less than a couple minutes, like a retro arcade game. But creator Kimmo Lahtinen brilliantly weaves modern ideas from roguelikes with pulsing visuals and music that make Sektori a mesmerizing experience.

A key part of what makes Sektori good is how it puts you into a flow state. “Sektori is a place, a form of being, a method of transformation,” reads the description of the game’s campaign mode. “Sektori is seeking, processing, shaping. Sektori is a specter of your zero state.” It may be fancy, high-concept language, but bear with me as I detail how the game actually works. It took me a while to understand it, and how everything connects is what makes the game actually reach those lofty heights.

When you start a campaign mode run, your tiny ship is dropped into a small playing field. You initially have two ways to attack: a gun that fires infinite laser bullets in the direction you point your right stick and a “strike” that surges your ship forward but has a short cooldown. Enemies are mostly polygonal shapes that briefly appear as red outlines, giving you a moment to get out of the way before they solidify and become threats. If you take a hit, you lose one of the three shields that you start with. When you destroy enemies, they leave little triangles called “glimmer,” and if you collect enough, you can pick up upgrades.

The upgrade system is the game’s secret sauce. On the left side of the screen, you’ll see a list of upgrades covering speed, score, strike, shield, missile, and blaster. When you pick up a selector token, it moves the potential upgrade up one notch on the list, but when you actually pick an upgrade, it starts the selector from the beginning again. So, for example, if you pick up enough selector tokens to get a missile upgrade, the next selector token you get afterward will make you eligible for a speed upgrade.

The system means you’re constantly having to make decisions, often while surrounded by enemies, about whether you want to take a more easily attainable speed or strike upgrade or hold out for the more valuable improvements higher up the stack. Complicating things further is that you can only use selector tokens to get five extra shields total during a run, so you’ll often have to weigh if you want to pick up a shield or gamble on staying alive to grab a missile or blaster upgrade that could help more offensively.

Occasionally, you’ll come across “evolver tokens” that give you other, more substantial upgrades you can pick from a deck, like drones that fly around your ship or a gun that fires behind you. Every once in a while, you’ll also see a token with a rotating set of letters, and if you pick up all of the letters to spell a word (the harder the difficulty, the longer the word), you’ll enter a brief, rainbow-filled superpowered state that’s kind of like getting a star in Mario Kart.

Complicating things even further is the fact that the arena is constantly shifting and changing around you. Every few seconds, the map grows, shrinks, and sometimes even briefly blocks you off from previously accessible areas. If you’re in an area that gets cut off the map when it’s removed, which is marked by flashing red spots ahead of its disappearance, it’s an instant game over. Survive for long enough, and the arena shifts into a boss battle, such as a giant, Moldorm-like snake, and if you beat the boss, you’ll move on to the next, harder level. Survive for five levels and you’ll win the run.

It can be a lot to manage. Most of my runs never get off the ground because I can’t get upgrades fast enough to survive the onslaught of enemies. Even with a strong build, success feels like it hangs on a knife’s edge. But that’s what makes the game gripping; when a run gets going, Sektori turns into something special as you zip across levels, blast away enemies, keep chasing upgrades, and, against the onslaught, keep surviving — all while colorful graphics and the driving techno soundtrack overload your senses.

I’ve only beaten the game a single time. But during that one magical run, I finally understood what Sektori is all about.

^{Sektori is out now on PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X / S.}