New gameplay and details abound for Housemarque’s Saros, including The Passage, where players can interact with survivors and learn more about what’s happening on Carcosa. More importantly, however, it finally revealed how progression and permanent unlocks work.
By interacting with Soltari’s Primary, you can upgrade attributes and acquire special perks for future runs. You can also adjust the difficulty, changing how much damage enemies deal and even eliminating the “second chance” option. Another game-changing feature is the ability to teleport to any unlocked biome directly.
Then there’s The Eclipse, which corrupts the world, changing enemies. For example, projectiles can reduce max integrity, but kills with the Super Weapon will restore it. Weapons and Artifacts also become corrupted in positive and negative ways.
Launching on April 30th – short delay from its originally planned March 20th release – Saros is a spiritual successor to Returnal. Set on a new planet, Carcosa, it follows Arjun Devraj, a Soltari Enforcer, trying desperately to escape a never-ending loop. The blend of rogue-lite runs, third-person shooter bullet-hell gameplay and cosmic horror is still intact, “tentacle technology” and all.
It’s available to pre-order for $69.99 on PS5 with Digital Deluxe Edition owners getting 48 hours of early access and three armor sets inspired by other PlayStation IPs (including Ghost of Yōtei).