Sektori review – another indie classic for 2025

The indie game domination continues with a stunning new twin-stick shooter, from a veteran Housemarque developer that worked on Resogun and Outland.

We were distraught in 2017, when Finnish developer Housemarque announced that it was no longer economically viable for them to continue to make arcade style action games. Titles like Stardust (whose legacy stretches all the way back to the Amiga) and Resogun were masterful reimaginings of golden age coin-ops like Asteroids and Defender, while magnum opus Nex Machina was an inspired continuation of the legacy of Robotron: 2084.

Apparently, these sorts of games don’t sell anymore and after the forgettable Matterfall Housemarque changed direction forever. That shift in approach spawned the superb Returnal – one of our favourite games of the current generation – so we can’t really complain, but we do still love the pin sharp focus of a good arcade game.

As you might already have guessed, or we wouldn’t have brought it up, Sektori is by a former Housemarque developer. Kimmo Lahtinen has made the almost the entirety of Sektori himself, with Tommi Lahtinen, who we can only assume is related, doing the music. So that’s just two people who are responsible for one of the best games of the year.

Robotron: 2084 was always our favourite golden age coin-op, so we’ve always had a special affinity for twin-stick shooters, through spiritual sequel Smash T.V. and the genre’s popularity as an indie stalwart. One of the first ever indie games on a console was a twin-stick shooter and as it happens, Sektori more closely resembles Geometry Wars: Retro Evolved than it does Nex Machina.

No matter how much the context might change, the gameplay is always essentially the same in a twin-stick shooter, as you control your character (a low-polygon spaceship in this case) with the left stick and fire by pointing the right stick in the direction you want to shoot.

That might sound simple but getting it to feel good while you play is not a trivial task, even if Sektori makes it seem that way. Not only are its controls wonderfully precise but the sound effects for the lasers are glorious and the thumping soundtrack fits the action perfectly.

The enemies are just simple geometric shapes but not only do new waves of them teleport in every few seconds but the arena you fight in is constantly changing shape. A red outline appears to show where new walls are going to appear and you have to immediately react with a new plan of attack, especially when the arena suddenly becomes more maze-like or different sections can only be reached by using jump pads.

What’s so clever about the constantly changing arena is that it’s not doing it according to a pre-set pattern. Every time you play it seems to be different, including the enemy waves and the boss battles at the end of a section. The latter are not infinite but there’s so many different variations that you literally never know what’s coming next, so rote learning is of almost no use.

Sektori has other innovations too, with a special strike attack that refills on a timer and shoots you across the screen to set off an explosion when you land. It’s often the only way out of a tight squeeze and watching the meter fill up around your ship is wonderfully tense when you’re out of charge. Although you can instantly recharge it if you collect a power-up token at the same time, allowing you to chain long combos of destruction.

The other main gameplay element is the small shards that defeated enemies leave behind. Collect enough of these and a skill point spawns which you can use to activate one of a range of upgrades. This works similarly to Gradius, in that each additional one you collect allows you to select a more useful item, from a simple speed increase to more shields and eventually homing missiles and a more powerful blaster.

On top of this you can unlock additional upgrades, grouped as cards of various levels of rarity, which are added to the available pool. This can include things like helper drones and a backwards-firing gun, with a surprising amount of variety available if you can unlock them.

This is in addition to several extra modes beyond the initial campaign, including one with a static arena, one where you alternate between weak and strong forms, one where there’s no randomisation, and two where you can’t fire but have to set off explosions by going through special gates or chaining strikes.

Predictably, the game is very hard, both in terms of getting your head round its various systems and the baseline difficulty. It rarely feels unfair though, even when the entire screen is filled with a kaleidoscope of different enemies and the floor is threatening to disappear. Start to unlock new abilities and you can give as good as you get, as the game carefully rates your performance and logs your achievements.

Sektori is very reminiscent of existing titles, some of them very old, but it’s still surprisingly innovative. The randomisation works fantastically well and so does the power-up system and transforming arenas. The high difficulty level doesn’t necessarily make it the best choice for those new to the genre but given the meagre asking price you’d be taking only a small risk on what we consider to be one of the best action games of the year.

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £11.99
Publisher: Kimmo Factor
Developer: Kimmo Factor
Release Date: 18th November 2025
Age Rating: 3

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