Sektori

There are a few genres that I personally am not very familiar with. This may sound like a kind of modest boast, which is absolutely not my intention. The point here is that as someone who plays a lot of different kinds of games, I think I have a pretty good handle on most of them. So-called "twin-stick shooters" are however something I have played overall quite little. This is despite the fact that I bought an arcade stick a few years ago to dive deeper and get more involved in the genre. I also haven't (at least as far as I can remember - memory fails easier when you pass 40) reviewed anything like this so it was a fun gap to fill in. So in advance this was something I was looking forward to. Very much based on the aforementioned factors.

Sektori is a frantic shoot em up where you control the ship with one stick and aim and shoot with the other. It has a minimalist stripped down design with a soundscape of pumping techno. All this, combined with high speed, makes for adrenaline-fuelled rounds. What's quickly noticeable are the red squares that appear on the track to signify that it's about to change. They can shrink, expand, split into different sections. You have to keep an eye on these visual warnings to keep your ship (shaped like an arrow) safe. Otherwise, a shield goes up and after three hits it's game over and restart. In addition to surviving this somewhat "battle ground element that occurs at frequent intervals, there is also, of course, a lot of shooting. Enemies appear as different coloured cubes and you have to steer clear of the increased number that almost fill the screen towards the end of a level, try to shoot them to pieces and survive the constantly changing levels.

Each level ends with a boss.

In addition to the ship's usual bang-bang, there is also the possibility of ploughing ahead protected in a small rush. You can simply make a charge that both moves the ship quickly and destroys whatever is in your way. It is as much for destroying as for moving away quickly and after you use it, it must be recharged. What you shoot or plough into pieces leaves behind small symbols that you collect to fill a meter and when it reaches different levels you can equip the ship with a power-up.

Sektori is not much more than this content. There's a five-level campaign, the ability to change the look of the ship, and some challenges and different game modes. But everything is extremely stripped down. The whole thing is developed by a single person who used to work at the game studio Housemarque (known for Returnal and the upcoming Saros). The developer himself has emphasised the importance of the game having unique rounds, with randomly changing paths rather than a shoot-em-up where you need to memorise everything.

There will be a lot of symbols on the screen towards the end.

I think this particular bit works quite well. It's fun to see how the level changes for each game round, even if the result of how the game plan will be in the end is pretty much the same. But the order in which they appear is then random for each new round. The playing field can become narrow, grow larger, sometimes split into several sections where a portal takes the ship between the different parts. The pace is fast and each round requires a good dose of concentration. The classic "just one more time" feeling has occurred many times, when I've meant to sit down to play for a short while but ended up sitting there trying to beat my old record. The nature of the courses changing and not following the same pattern or order in each new round of play still makes it a bit refreshing.

Unfortunately, it never gets sufficiently varied. The visuals are pretty cool, a deliberately simple stylistic design choice that, against pumping techno, gives the whole thing a distinctive surface. But it also becomes that very surface, after a short while. Interfaces, lines, symbols, colours... Everything is very clean, stripped down, but it doesn't change. There's an hour or so of "oh, nice" about the whole thing, but since we're not offered any directly different environments, no visual surprises beyond what's on screen - you could say that what happens on screen during a round - that's all you'll see. Over and over again. Equally monotonous is the gameplay loop itself. A more nicely presented campaign, or just that the different game modes differed more, would have pulled it all up. It becomes like one of those mobile games where you sit and stare at and do the same thing over and over again, in the end. Or well, here it's actually a matter of keeping up with a lot, so I shouldn't really be so mean with the comparison.

When the levels look like this, it's pretty easy to stay alive. However, they are constantly changing.

I also think that the way you collect and activate power-ups contributes to the feeling that it is monotonous. Because if you choose to, for example, make the ship faster (which is the first power-up you can choose), not only is the meter reset (which is logical) but you also have to collect again to get up to the first of these power-ups, again. Thus, you have to save what you collect for quite a long time to reach what gives, for example, missiles or new shields. A kind of "risk and reward" system that is mostly just frustrating and contributes to the monotony. The idea here is that it should be tricky and difficult all the way through instead of becoming too strong. But then I would rather have seen that the challenge matches this instead. Instead, the round just feels the same whether I'm one or seven minutes into it. Which feels boring.

Although the soundscape is driving, it's not that memorable either. The bass box next to my TV gets to work, but it would have needed a little more catchy tones to make it feel extra fun to jump in. The feel of the whole thing is almost visually reminiscent of the brilliant Tetris Effect but without the superb soundscape that shows how to make stripped-down design memorable. My play sessions, which have lasted roughly twenty or thirty minutes at a time, have all ended with me realising that I'm not having much fun in the end. It's a bit too simple and quickly becomes mostly repetitive. So even if the content that is available still works and each short dose offers a game session where reflexes and patience are properly tested - everything falls into oblivion the second I switch off.