Saros: Zenith lets you slow enemy bullet patterns manually or have the effect kick in when projectiles approach. Out today for free, the bullet-hell roguelike’s first major update adds accessibility settings, a boss rush mode and New Game Plus. The additions are intended to make the game more approachable for newcomers and give returning players more to tackle.
The “Slow Game Speed” setting gives you control over the amount of slowdown as well as whether it activates automatically or through a manual toggle. In the PlayStation Blog announcement, developer Housemarque says it carefully considered how to introduce options that ease the difficulty without losing the game’s core identity. This bullet-time-style feature came out of that balancing process.
“Auto-fire” handles shooting at enemies you’re aiming at, leaving you freer to concentrate on dodging. Housemarque notes that reloading is still manual, including the timed button press needed for a perfect reload. With aliens quickly filling the screen with blue and red projectiles, both settings appear designed to make combat less overwhelming.
What’s being added for those who’ve already played Saros?
Once you’ve beaten Carcosa’s King in Yellow, Overlord Rush provides another way to face the main game’s Overlords and compete for a leaderboard spot. The mode divides its fights into three sets: “Incursion” and “Ascension” each feature three Overlords, while “Totality” runs through all eight bosses consecutively.
Zenith also expands the Carcosan Modifiers with 10 new Protection Modifiers and 10 new Trial Modifiers. These optional toggles adjust difficulty in opposite directions: Protections ease the challenge, and Trials increase it. There’s a limit to how many Protections you can add without balancing them against Trials. Among the new Protections is “Corruption Melee Enhancement,” which expels Corruption to increase damage from close-range strikes.
Those modifiers also feed into Eclipse Layers, the new New Game Plus mode. Your first clear adds nodes to the Armor Matrix in the Passage, Saros’s hub. Unlock the nodes and you can take a gate to the next Eclipse Layer, with progression requiring more Carcosan Modifiers.
Eclipse Layers dresses Arjun in golden armor and a crown whose size increases as you add modifiers. That crown has a practical role, too: at higher levels, it lets you access hidden messages around the world.
How has Saros been received?
Saros earned broadly positive reviews, with critics highlighting its strange, imaginative, fiction-inspired visuals and precise bullet-hell combat. The lower difficulty was more divisive: many reviewers felt that making it easier than Returnal went too far.
Sales seem to have had a slow start. Alinea Analytics reports that the PS5 exclusive sold only 300,000 copies during its first two weeks. Shortly after release, Housemarque co-founder and managing director Ilari Kuittinen retired from the company.
Polygon’s Elijah Gonzalez expressed hope that Zenith would draw the attention he felt Saros deserved.
