Review: Sektori

Now that's a font that knows how to pull shapes

Platforms available: Nintendo Switch 2, PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S Platform reviewed: PC Release Date: 18 Nov 2025 Steam Page: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2105620/Sektori/ Sektori immediately gave my partner a headache. We have a lot of cross-over taste in music, but when it comes to the sort of sub sonic bass thumping that Sektori instantly leads with, our paths diverge quite heavily. I'm very much a man who enjoys music that makes me pull involuntary faces. She told me she had a headache and it might have looked like I unsympathetically nodded, but I was already locked in to the beat.

I'd eyed the game up for a while, but it took me a good 6 months to pull the trigger and actually buy it. I might enjoy doing bass face but I'm not a particularly huge fan of Shmups, blessed as I am with the inability to do anything other than fly into clearly marked objects and explode roughly 25% of the way into the second level of whatever game I'm trying and failing to get better at. Sure, I've enjoyed the classics, but there's very few I ever go back to; and those I do go back to tend to have a little something to sweeten the heart-ache.

It's not too complicated if you just remember that everything that isn't you kills you

Gradius, for example. Now, Gradius, and to a greater extend Parodius (because it's fucking stupid) have always been my "let's try and get good at Shmups" games. The variety added by the choose-your-own-powers system has always kept me from throwing my toys out of the pram immediately, and it was this feature that drew me to Sektori more than anything else. Variety? In my arcade shoot 'em up? I'm in. Couple that with the obvious similarities to Geometry Wars, the only other Shmup I ever felt I had a handle on, and I finally took the plunge thanks to a recent Steam sale. Those were the things that made me buy the game, but the thing that kept me playing the game ended up being a lot of the stuff I hadn't quite gleaned from the chaotic trailer on the store page. Sektori has a lot going on. I jumped into my first attempt and... As usual, failed spectacularly. Sektori doesn't mess around with the idea that death is something to learn from, and each attempt will see you learning something new until you reach the glass ceiling... Then the glass ceiling will smash and sprinkle your eyeballs full of delicious shards of teaching you a goddamn lesson.

The nice thing about looking at screenshots after I've finished playing is that I don't actually know where I am Finding yourself constantly swarmed by enemies? Maybe you need to upgrade your missiles, which will swarm away from your tiny ship, seeking out whatever it is they can get their grubby purple trails on. Or maybe you need to diversify and upgrade your charge power, allowing you to crash through everything in front of you for a short burst of "get me the fuck out of here, thanks". ...Or maybe... Just maybe... You're a big fat show off and you'll forgo all your power-ups and just turn them into points instead, and if you do that and you beat my high score, I can guarantee I will have no shame in crying about it.

Points is really why you're here, of course. It's an arcade twin stick top-down shooter at heart and there's online leaderboards for practically everything you do, but it never really feels like you're just here to score points, there's a navigable gameplay loop that you'll most likely be focused on first and foremost, with the idea of a high score coming way down the road, once you've got a handle on the various cogs in the machine. While the game does change things up each time you play, this isn't a roguelite; you're here to murder some bosses, and murder them good.

You'll think certain bosses are easier than others until suddenly you just find them all hard

Every attempt follows the same pattern: Drop into a constantly changing arena full of enemies, kill everything that moves, and pick up the gems they drop which, in turn, will create level up tokens that you need to collect to get more powerful. Do all of this until a boss appears to ruin your run for the fifteenth time that morning - because joke's on you, you put all your level up tokens into points instead of upgrading your speed and now you feel bad about it, well who's crying now? Eh? It's you, you are.

The simplicity of the gameplay is fleshed out through the myriad of little touches that are added to every single aspect of Sektori. Take those delightful level up tokens that spawn when you pick up enough gems; Fist things first, they don't stick around forever, causing you to rush through the chaos to grab them while you can. Secondly, on pick up, they cause a mighty explosion all around them, and your guns become supercharged, firing at a rate of knots you can't normally achieve for a sharp few seconds, so - do you rush in while you can, or do you wait until more enemies have piled up close by? Tick tock, better make a decision quickly, the level is about to morph into a different shape and you've just spawned another level up token on the opposite end of the level. Also, you're dead again.

When the game is in motion, you can actually tell what's happening, I promise

Death isn't instant, at least not in the standard campaign mode. You'll begin with a set number of shields, each singular caress of an enemy causing you to lose one (and setting off yet another explosion, because everything you do sets off an explosion, even the bad stuff). When you're out of shields, another hit will see you dead, but you do have a small reserve of new shields you can buy for those precious level up points. Is it worth it? Do you need them? Did you accidentally just pick up too many level up tokens and now the question is null and void? All these questions and more are yours to answer as quickly as possible as you get bombarded from all sides by some enemies that do this, and some enemies that do that, and don't forget about the enemies that do the other thing as well.

That's the best way to sum up Sektori, really. It manages to combine the requirement for quick reflexes alongside consistent meaningful choices. At any given time, you're dealing with a host of issues: Which enemies to prioritise, which power-ups to grab early on, which enemies to charge through, which enemies to shoot... Should I go for the level up token or should I stick to this side of the arena where I can hoover up more gems? Do I have time for that? Do I have time for anything right now? And while you're answering all of these conundrums, you're almost never doing so consciously, your instincts drive you forward through repeated play, repeated death, repeated play, repeated death. Sektori doesn't require you to learn patterns, it requires you to learn behaviours. Its enemies could appear anywhere at any time (within a slight difficulty remit) and it's up to you to react to those patterns on instinct, not by remembering that certain enemies appear at certain times in certain places as with, say, something like R-Type, a game that all but requires you to memorise its entirety if you actually want to see it through to completion on a single credit. Sektori is about reactive memory, about learning those enemy behaviours, and about responding to them with whatever your dinosaur brain can conjure up.

If Sektori can start or end something with an explosion, it will

You learn the enemies and their patterns. You learn the bosses and their bluster. You learn the power ups to prioritise, and the ones to leave to last. You learn when to pivot from your current build into a different one. You learn when to charge and who to charge at. Ultimately, you learn to be at one with Sektori, to meld yourself with that thump, thump, thump of the bass as you shoot, shoot, shoot through the endless crowds of shapes and swirls and bullets. I've barely scratched the surface of what lies beneath Sektori, because everything that comes thereafter is such a wonderful pile of cherries on a cherry-shaped cake, it's almost an embarrassment of riches. A very soft deck building system that ties in alongside the levelling up? Check. Multiple new modes to unlock just by playing your way through the standard mode? Check. Three different ships, each with different play styles? Check. Bosses which have five different build varieties, so you never quite know what you're going to be up against? Sure, go ahead, check again.

Pick a card, any card. No, not that one.

It is a thing of beauty, Sektori. It looks great, it sounds great, it feels great, it plays great, and while the skill ceiling is something I'll never quite smash through, the fact I've been able to complete the core game, with my shocking levels of ineptitude, tells you all you need to know about whether you should try this one out. A game where you switch your mind off, not because it requires no thoughts, but because the thoughts install themselves directly into your fingers as the bass rattles your eardrums into next week.

Score: 9.6/10

Recommended if you like: Geometry Wars | Gradius | Thumper Not Recommended For: People likely to beat my high score | People who hate losing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcTAuqglcBo