Sektori

Written by Jason Dailey on 11/18/2025 for PS5  

I’ve been playing Sektori off and on for a little over a month now, which is a crazy amount of lead time for reviewing a video game these days. Every time I spent a few days with it, I adored it, and when I stepped away for a spell, I missed it. I take some exception to the level of challenge its easiest difficulty presents, but that doesn’t keep Sektori from being one of the best arcade twin-stick shooters I’ve ever played—and one of my favorite gaming experiences of 2025.

Created by a former Housemarque developer, Sektori wears its Resogun and Super Stardust Delta influence on its sleeve, and I would place it right alongside both of those games in terms of quality. If you enjoy the old Housemarque arcade shooters, or the genre in general, then Sektori is an absolute no-brainer. Play it. Even if you’ve never played its predecessors, go play Sektori. It is a special game.

But here’s the thing: I haven’t been able to beat its campaign. Sektori is tough as nails, at least for my aging gaming skills. The campaign is structured almost identically to Nex Machina, if you’re familiar, where you blast through scores of enemies before finally reaching a boss wave on each level. The campaign is comprised of five levels, and I’ve only been able to make it to the boss on level three. In fact, it took me seven or eight runs to finally take down my first boss. What’s interesting is that the bosses are random, so you typically won’t see the same boss on each level, but it’s the inherent challenge of the level that gets me—an increase in number and types of enemies on screen.

Funny enough, the default difficulty is the lowest available, and it’s called “Experience.” There’s a descriptive blurb about how it’s for players who want to enjoy the experience of Sektori while learning the ropes. And let me tell you: I don’t know if I’ll ever get off the ropes of its starter difficulty, but they’re right: it is still one hell of an experience.

So, while I may be showing the patina of decades of gaming, I can still see the forest for the trees with Sektori. It truly is an experience, blending not only that signature Housemarque DNA together, but tossing in the sensory stimuli of something like Tetris Effect or Thumper. Sektori has a thumping techno soundtrack and kaleidoscopic background visuals that feel both euphoric and oppressive. Even in the main menu, if you take too long selecting, the tempo and volume of the music increases until you start the game, which made me chuckle. The soundtrack is incredible, with a nice variety of tracks. For a while I didn’t think I was ever going to hear the same song twice. Audibly and visually, Sektori gets a chef’s kiss from me. It is always an absolute assault on the senses and is best played with a good pair of headphones.

Your senses aren’t the only thing being assaulted, though, as each run starts off relatively simple, with just a few of a basic enemy type on screen, and it crescendos from there. Enemies are mostly just geometric shapes with different attack patterns. Some move to the beat of the music as they chase after you, some shoot projectiles, and others move like a snake with a shielded head and weak serpentine body. And that’s only a few varieties. There are easily over a dozen enemy types, with more added as you progress through levels.

As a twin-stick shooter, you’re probably familiar with the mechanical setup: move your polygonal ship with the left stick, and both aim and shoot with the right. The ship feels a little slower than I’m used to within the genre, but that’s because its speed skill can be upgraded extensively, along with other skills such as scorestreak, strike (dash), shield, missiles, and blasters. Upgrades are acquired mid-run by collecting glimmer dropped by defeated enemies. Gathering enough glimmer spawns a token which grants an upgrade by simply pressing X on PS5. The catch is that you must gather additional tokens to upgrade the various skills in sequence.

The bottom skill of the tree is speed, meaning acquiring one token lets you upgrade your ship’s speed. Two skills up the tree is strike, which means you must not take any damage while collecting two more tokens to climb to the strike skill, and then press X to upgrade your strike attack. It’s far less complicated than it sounds, and it creates this risk versus reward gamble that allows you to choose a ship build on the fly that fits your playstyle. Not very good at avoiding enemies? Focus on upgrading your shield. Want to maximize your damage output? Try to hold out for the top of the skill tree and upgrade your blasters. But if you wait that long, make a mistake and take some damage, it’s back to the bottom of the skill tree you go.

In addition to the upgrades of base skills, another type of token called a selector token will occasionally appear or can be forced to appear by destroying yellow obelisks. These tokens pull additional abilities from one of your chosen decks of potential upgrades. Decks are pools of abilities that you equip before starting a run, with more decks unlocked as you complete challenges.

For instance, you may equip the shield deck, which contains upgrades such as the ability for your shield to zap enemies that get too close. One of my personal favorites is the drone deck, which can grant you drones that follow you around and provide cover, shooting enemies for you that you’re not focused on. The catch is that you can only take eight decks on a run, so you’ll have to choose your approach wisely.

There are two other mechanics I want to be sure to touch on: strike and mirage. Strike is just a dash attack but with a little more functionality than is typical. It must be recharged, but striking into a token to pick it up automatically recharges the strike, and it also produces an explosion that wipes out nearby enemies. Sometimes an ideal strategy is to strike between tokens and portals to get yourself out of a sticky situation. Strike is also helpful to nab out of reach tokens or carve a path through enemies as the levels are constantly evolving, with some areas getting cut off, or going away altogether. Getting caught in part of the level that is about to fall off means a game over, as you might imagine.

Meanwhile, Mirage is a sort of ultimate ability that allows you to collect tokens of the letters in “mirage,” which doing so triggers an intense kaleidoscopic period of extreme damage and limited vulnerability for your ship. Collect the last letter needed at the right time and you can wreak some serios havoc. Just don’t forget to blink or you’ll be seeing floaters and psychedelic symbols for hours. Ditto for breathing and falling off the edge of your seat.

Despite failing repeatedly to complete the campaign mode (though I am unwavering), several other game modes are on offer as well. Two of these are unlocked by completing challenges in the campaign, and the remaining four are unlocked by getting a D-rank or better on one of the other modes. These include Classic mode, which makes the level static, rather than changing shape and layout constantly. There’s also Boss Rush, which is exactly what it sounds like. I found these two modes to be good practice for the campaign, though, I guess they haven’t helped me a ton, but it’s probably a skill issue, if I’m honest.

The other game modes are Surge (my favorite) where your ship is underpowered until you collect a token, which supercharges it for a short time; Crash, which only lets you defeat enemies by dashing into them; Assault, where you decide when to up the difficulty of incoming enemy waves against a countdown timer; and Gates, where you can only harm enemies by crossing rotating lasers. Regardless of the game mode you’re playing, each features an online global leaderboard tracking your high score against players from around the world. I’ve enjoyed being top 10 in the world for the campaign these last several weeks. Time to kiss it goodbye.

Sektori came nearly out of nowhere and blew me away. It went from not being on my radar, to being one of my favorite games of the year. Now I am here to tell you that it should, without a doubt, be on your radar, and probably in your game library as well. I know it’s earned a permanent place in mine. It is a breathless blend of music, art, and exquisite twin-stick shooting that is hard to walk away from. It will totally ensnare you with its pulsating techno soundtrack and visual spectacle of exploding enemies. I’m not sure if the difficulty is tuned incorrectly, or if I’m just getting that bad at video games, but regardless, I still think Sektori is something special.