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Saros, the successor to the roguelike game Returnal, is shaping up to be one of the best games of the year.
Finnish developer Housemarque has refined a great deal, added new elements and pushed the game close to a fully fledged third-person shooter, while remaining true to its roots and delivering a wild, challenging experience.
The game, a PlayStation 5 exclusive, opens with a striking introductory sequence: a telescopic survey has discovered a previously unknown, seemingly inexhaustible deposit of the mysterious element Lucenit on the planet Carcosa.
Three interstellar missions – Echelon I, II and III – are dispatched to explore and take possession of the distant land so that the raw material can be extracted. Then, communication with the missions goes dark.


Players step into the role of Arjun Devraj, a member of the Soltari civilisation. As a so-called Enforcer and a part of the crew on Echelon IV, he is tasked with tracking down the previous missions. His true intention, however, is to find his partner Nitya, who travelled to Carcosa with Echelon III.
The planet is shrouded in mystery and strewn with the ruins of another civilisation. The game’s art director, Simone Silvestri, has described Carcosa as a “violent beauty” and has designed it to feel like a real planet with its own history.
It is divided into eight explorable biomes with different designs and enemies. Hordes of monsters and machines create a sense of dread, and players must run, sprint and jump to survive.
Each biome is ruled by so-called Alphas, and the enormous level bosses – the godlike Overlords – become a challenge precisely when you think things cannot possibly get any harder.
The plot and narrative structure are multilayered in classic Housemarque fashion. The story is conveyed to players through voice-overs, cinematic cutscenes, audio logs, conversations between non-player characters and holograms. Each time Arjun dies, an ever more surreal and mysterious narrative unfolds.

After each death, Arjun returns to a temple known as The Passage, and he discovers that time on Carcosa is distorted. In the time it takes him to move a short distance from base, several days may have passed for his crew.
Speaking of the crew, its members – such as the pilot Stack and the botanist Sebastian, with their personal conflicts – play a decisive role in building tension throughout the game.
As is typical for a roguelike shooter, death is part of Saros. Combat demands precise manoeuvring between energy orbs, laser beams and melee attacks. Players must find their rhythm between moving and attacking, or adopt a defensive stance with a special shield that absorbs the energy of projectiles and channels it into a powerful counter-attack.
The unlockable ability “Second Chance” lets Arjun get straight back up after being hit, rather than returning to the starting point – a feature long requested for Returnal and which provides extra incentive to push through difficult fights.
There are also the so-called Carcosa modifiers, which allow players to adjust the difficulty level on various fronts. It is, however, a balancing act: every adjustment made for self-protection gives the enemy an advantage elsewhere. Hardcore players can take this to the extreme by deliberately weakening themselves or deactivating the protective modifiers entirely.

Developed using Unreal Engine 5 for PlayStation 5 Pro, Saros uses Sony’s proprietary image-scaling technology PSSR 2 for a razor-sharp image at a stable 60 frames per second. The DualSense controller offers trigger resistance for different attack combinations at half and full pressure.
Saros is a unique single-player roguelike shooter with a gripping story set in a dark sci-fi world in the style of H.P. Lovecraft.
Whatever skill level players bring to the table, Housemarque has created the perfect stage for everyone. Saros is a grandiose, mysterious ballad and a dark planetary trip all at once – and already one of the best games of this year.


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Saros is a new PlayStation 5 exclusive game that delivers a wild, challenging experience. Photo: Sony Interactive Entertainment/dpa

A screenshot from Saros. Photo: Housemarque

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Entertainment

Packed with dark sci-fi, brutal combat and time-bending lore, Saros on PlayStation 5 is a wild, challenging experience not to be missed


Packed with dark sci-fi, brutal combat and time-bending lore, Saros on PlayStation 5 is a wild, challenging experience not to be missed.


Sony

Saros review: Returnal successor is one of the best games of 2026 so far

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Packed with dark sci-fi, brutal combat and time-bending lore, Saros on PlayStation 5 is a wild, challenging experience not to be missed

Packed with dark sci-fi, brutal combat and time-bending lore, Saros on PlayStation 5 is a wild, challenging experience not to be missed