A free update to this year’s roguelite shooter Saros is now live. The Saros: Zenith update gives players more reasons to continue the cycle and enjoy the bullet ballet in the King In Yellow-inspired sci-fi world of Carcosa.
A new mode, Overlord Rush is essentially Boss Rush mode. You can now challenge all the bosses, Overlords as they are called in game, back-to-back, as a high-score run with online leaderboards.
New Game Plus (New Game+) has been added to Saros in the form of Eclipse Layers. Not only do you start over with unlocks, you must now have a higher level of Carcosan Modifiers enabled. It’s a tougher run, but players have the freedom to enable any Trials and Protections to customise their difficulty.
More Carcosan Modifiers have been added as well to spice up the roguelite bullet hell shooter. These modifiers can turn any specific mechanic to be less difficult, or more difficult. So if a particular system, like the Corrosion which reduces maximum Integrity (health), bugs you, you can opt to make it less punishing in exchange to making other aspects of the game much harder.
Eclipse Layers also will see protagonist Arjun wearing a crown and clad in golden armour, like a certain King in Yellow. You will not get frenzy damaged by consuming this piece of media, however, but in this mode there are more morsels of lore to be gained, 12 Visions to be precise, and these can only be unlocked by having a higher Crown level which means stack on more modifiers. Heavy is the crown, as they say.
The Saros: Zenith update also adds more accessibility options, including a “Slow Game Speed” option where the game runs at a slower pace. You still have to jump, dash, shield or parry in response to the millions of projectiles hurtling toward you, but for those who don’t have the gamer reflexes, an option is now available so you too can have fun, on your terms.
Zenith is another word for “peak,” and developer Housemarque in the PlayStation Blog has dubbed it as such, that “Saros has reached its Zenith.”
If you ask us, Saros is already peak, but it for sure is now with this free update. Now’s the best time to jump in to the cosmic horror shooter where it’s mostly about being locked in and manipulate those projectiles, with some slices of drama and cosmic horror. Not in the Lovecraftian sense, but more like Robert W. Chambers, who wrote The King In Yellow.
Saros is out now on PS5. Check out our review of the game here.