Sektori

The pinnacle of twin stick shooting. The Controls, Style, mechanics, music, visuals, everything is really polished and exceptionally well made. My only downside is that sektori is a little light on content.

This might be the greatest bullet-hell type game ever made. While it can be hard at first, you just got to keep at it and you'll start to recognize things instinctively. This is one of those games that can bring you into a state of zen, like when you get really going on Tetris or say something like Lumines. Your brain gets attuned to it you can lose yourself a little bit, and that's what makes it addictive. I got about half the achievements after 20 hours but it will probably take like 100 hours to really master this game.

- Hard as hell. Sektori is the Dark Souls of shapes. - Seamless experience. - Zero glitches. - Getting good at this game might make you a little sharper. - Start on the easiest difficulty and work your way up (seriously, it's HARD). - The soundtrack SLAPS. - The ending is worth the struggle. - BUY IT.

I just played Sektori for the first time and after less than 10 minutes I cannot recommend it enough. If you like Twin Stick control schemes and Techno beats, this is for you. If you like fast paced combat that doesn't give you time to breathe, this is for you. It feels really, really good to play. And it pumps you up the moment you start the game. You can probably use this game instead of coffee to begin your day. 10/10

Shoot 'em up Berlin Edition. You have to play it to understand it I would argue this is a 'perfect' game every (sound) effect is there for a reason and cue's you in to what exactly is happening. Awesome!

for players who seek punishment

The best twin-stick shooter since Nex Machina, thereby cementing Finland as the capital of GOAT twin-stick shooters. What impresses me the most is that it's actually an arcade game disguised as a roguelite, instead of the other way around like usual. Recently we have been getting more arcade-y games like Absolum that try to modernize arcade gameplay with roguelite (meta-)progression systems and randomized level design, but these often end up lost in the sauce and become more about numbers and builds the deeper you get into them. Sektori somehow strikes a perfect balance: it has all the pros of roguelite elements and none of the negatives. It has all the run variation and unpredictability you'd expect of a roguelite, but without outright ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ RNG or the progression systems overpowering the core gameplay. Plus, you can unlock almost everything within three hours of playing. This was inevitably done by reducing how much influence the progression elements have on the gameplay, meaning that you're going to be disappointed if you're the kind of player that likes devising overpowered builds. But for the kind of gameplay that Sektori is going for, I'd say it is a net positive. And unlike most arcade games, Sektori isn't the kind of game that you need to bust open a Practice Mode for to practice stages individually. Hell, it doesn't even have a Practice Mode. It's basically unthinkable for any modern arcade shmup/beat 'em up release to not include some kind of practice mode or stage select, but in Sektori it's absence is barely even felt. Outside of the boss fights, there are no massive difficulty spikes or difficult parts that you would need to memorize, nor would it even make sense to do so with its randomized boss order and arena order. This really is a game that you can just keep getting better at by just playing it instead of practicing it like you're doing homework. The scoring and more randomized aspects ensure that replaying the first few stages remains fresh on repeat playthroughs, but there are still enough unique stage layouts and new enemy types regularly being introduced to make each stage feel distinct. That said, the boss fights do have some "tricks" to their attack patterns that take some time to really understand (like figuring out how to move through the spinny ring boss' rings), and that is exactly where having a more robust boss select would have come in handy. The existing Boss Rush mode comes close to doing that, but it doesn't let you practice bosses individually. Even more impressive is that despite the heavy emphasis on unpredictability and controlled injections of RNG, is that Sektori has a competitively worthwhile scoring system. It is actually highly unusual for an arcade game to do so; newer arcade games (shmups in particular) are rather scared of adding RNG, because RNG tends to not mix well their scoring systems. Basically, there's little point to high score chasing on the leaderboards if how high your score is might depend heavily on luck. The way Sektori pulls this off is that it gives you a lot of means to mitigate the randomness. Most of its scoring comes down to regularly dashing into tokens to keep up a multiplier, but the spawn position of tokens is random. Sometimes a token might be out of reach, or in a part of the arena that is about to change, but you can then mitigate this by keeping a surplus of multiple tokens on the field, instead of picking up every token as soon as possible. So if you can't reach a token in time before your multiplier decays, then you always have other tokens to dash into as a backup. Of course, tokens quickly despawn if not picked up long enough, so you can't build up a ridiculously big surplus either. At the same time there are other pressures at play: sometimes you are about to get overwhelmed by enemies, and sometimes it might pay to dash into a token sooner than intended, as doing so also briefly boosts your rate-of-fire and clears out all enemies/bullets around you. Sometimes your dash is on cooldown right when you need to pick up a token, but you can instantly recharge your dash cooldown by purchasing an upgrade as a sort of fallback, even if your currently selected upgrade isn't the one you currently wanted. It's one beautiful well-oiled machine. Every function serves multiple purposes, and every goal has multiple competing and contradicting goals, where figuring out how to thread the needle to satisfy each one is the satisfying part. It's never 100% clear what is the most optimal way to play, and that is what keeps Sektori fresh on each run. The implementation of the randomness isn't 100% perfect -- there are some randomly chosen areas here and there where it's basically impossible to keep your chain and multiplier going -- but it's good enough. I love this game so much, because it's useful to learn from for arcade and action roguelite games both. For arcade games it shows how to tactfully implement unpredictability with a worthwhile scoring system, and for action roguelites it shows that you don't really need to double down on RPG elements to have run variety. Truly, a best of both worlds.