In 2012, Housemarque worked on the Angry Birds Trilogy compilation, the quintessential experience of throwing things at a wall and seeing which one will break it. In 2021, the studio developed Returnal, once again a quintessential experience of frustratingly throwing things at a wall. Now, in 2026, the studio is back with Saros, an experience with more of the same but with more flair and the accessibility to more easily break down those walls.

Turn back time over and over again

Like Returnal, Saros is a roguelike shooter. Players start every run from almost-scratch, earning Lucenite along the way. Upon death or winning the run, Arjun Devraj, the playable character, returns to the starting hub and spends his earned Lucenite to unlock meaningful (and permanent!) upgrades for the next run.

Along the way, Devraj finds an armory of available weapons and powerups that subsist through a single run, adding enough variability to ensure that no two runs are completely the same. Coupled with tangible upgrades, Saros creates an ever-changing experience but ensures that you feel stronger with every consecutive run.

It’s also a visually stunning game with designs that border on Lovecraftian. Enemies are so well designed that it’s impossible not to stop and stare at how detailed the monsters are.

A smoother, hypnotic fight

Saros plays like butter. Normally, shooters played on a controller are too finicky for me, but Saros just works. The game features a good number of auto-aiming weapons that help you focus on dodging projectiles. Even the native aim assist on non-automatic weapons is useful enough for making shots.

There’s also Power Weapons, or high-damage attacks that use consumable Power. There are a handful, and all of them are powerful enough to help win a difficult battle.

Fighting, then, is simply fluid. It didn’t take long for me to breeze through runs without focusing on muscle control. This makes for an easier game overall. Whereas Returnal has players beating their heads against the wall for hours, Saros is more accessible. It wants you to win. It wants you to get stronger.

As mentioned, each permanent upgrade is palpable. Devraj does get stronger. You can feel it when you rush past the starting area in no time. There are caps, but each cap is unlocked when you first beat a boss.

That said, the game still offers a challenge. Often, bosses take a few runs to master. Sometimes, you’ll get bodied by a surprise barrage from behind.

Variability that eventually runs out

The key to making a great roguelike rests on how different every run is. Some even have game-breaking combinations with ultra-rare pickups that wreck all of the game’s challenges.

At the start (especially before everything is unlocked), Saros does feature enough variability that invites you to discover everything that the game has to offer.

However, it does become clear that this variability has a limit. Once I had everything unlocked, I was defaulting to only a few combinations: a smart rifle (with auto-aim) with powerups that improve health and Lucenite drops. Plus, since I already had rerolls unlocked, I could just reset every drop until I got what I wanted. Experimentation doesn’t seem like a major draw for players; instead, it’s more about discovering the combination that works for you and grinding until you find it in every run.

Additionally, the map doesn’t really change. Though there are miniscule changes, none of which alters the experience that much. Each room features different terrain, but they’re all essentially identical to one another: fight the horde that spawns in and collect the reward afterwards.

Despite being treated as a major change to the map, even the self-imposed eclipse mode (from which the game derives its title) doesn’t add much besides the corruption status effect. At first, there’s a sense of dread going into the eclipse, as the game says that enemies are more powerful and unpredictable, but it will eventually teach you that eclipses are just part of the level design. There is zero tradeoff.

Every run has a lingering sense of sameness to it. This should be appealing to some, especially since it helps make the game more accessible. However, this approach will naturally run into a wall, particularly after you spend 2.5 hours on a run only to die on the final boss.

What story?

Saros is an exercise in Lovecraftian worldbuilding. Like all stories of the same bent, the game’s plot focuses more on the insanity of its world, rather than its characters.

The game does not say much about the story besides the bare brushstrokes. Devraj is part of the Echelon IV expedition to the planet of Carcosa. While his main mission is to find the past expeditions, he has a secret motivation to find Nitya, a member of Echelon III and his lover.

Similar to The King in Yellow by Robert W. Chambers, the game features allusions to madness because of “the Yellow”. Both previous expeditions and members of his own team succumb to the madness. However, the game never gives players enough time with any of these characters, so when they reveal themselves as victims of the same religious insanity, it’s never treated with the gravitas it deserves. People die, but you’ll barely miss them.

The same, unfortunately, goes for Devraj himself. Despite the world descending into cosmic horror around him, he stoically continues his mission to find Nitya. He doesn’t seem too affected by death. And, as such, he doesn’t really have a lot of qualities to latch on to, as a player who should be invested in the development of their playable character.

It’s atypical for a first-party PlayStation game to prioritize world-building over character writing. Most of the platform’s titles have incredibly memorable characters, but Saros just doesn’t. That said, the world-building is phenomenal; I just don’t want to spend hours reading through journal entries to find out what’s wrong with this world.

Is Saros your GameMatch?

If you found Returnal too difficult, Saros is a lot more approachable. It didn’t take me long to reach the game’s latter parts. If anything, the difficulty is finding two hours to go on an extended run. With the substantial progression system, it feels meaningful to restart and go again. Fans of roguelikes will easily Swipe Right on this game.

However, if you’re looking for a meaningful story to sink your teeth into, the game heavily prefers environmental storytelling. Prepare to spend hours just poring over lore. Even then, you won’t really get a sense of which characters to root for. For that, it’s a Swipe Left.