For a very brief period before becoming PC Gamer's weekend newshound, I wrote a newsletter dedicated to rounding up the best Steam demos of any given week. By far and away the best demo I played during those days was for a little game called Sektori.
If you haven't heard of Sektori, it's a geometric shoot 'em up in the vein of Housemarque's Resogun and Nex Machina, before they became all about ultra-hard third-person shooters like Returnal and the upcoming Saros. There's good reason for the similarity. Sektori's creator, Kimmo Lahtinen, worked at Housemarque for 13 years, before departing to pursue his own projects, like a hack 'n' slash game called Barbarian, and a match-3 life sim called Day Repeat Day.
Neither of these games made much impact, and I don't know whether they deserved to or not. But I believe Sektori does. Housemarque's lineage oozes from every glowing, spinning polygon. You control a little 3D arrow (known in-game as a 'ship') blasting shapes as they spawn all around a top-down arena. If you get touched by any shape or projectile, the game is instantly over.
It sounds almost stupidly simple, but when I jumped into the demo this time last year it revealed its genius almost immediately. These games are often described as being "kaleidoscopic", but Sektori suits the term more than most. Not only because of its colourful visuals, but also due to how the arena shifts as you play almost without you noticing: expanding, narrowing, changing shape, splitting into two.
It also has a neat mechanical flourish where you can use your arrow as a projectile, launching it at enemies for a huge damage boost, but at the risk of putting yourself directly in the line of fire.
Unfortunately, the demo is no longer playable. Lahtinen pulled it offline in August because it "doesn't necessarily fully reflect the state of the final game anymore". The good news is this is apparently because the final game is "naturally better," which is hugely exciting given how deeply the demo got its claws into me. The full game will include a five world campaign mode with those dynamically changing levels, plus alternate ships accompanied by roguelike-ish upgrade decks to customise them with, and six alternate game modes.
Lahtinen's goal with Sektori is to "create a shoot 'em up where every run feels familiar, but is still completely unique", and that was the impression I got when I played it. The final version could still disappoint, of course, but I'd be very surprised if it did. Sektori launches on November 18. I strongly encourage you to mark it on your calendar.
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