Sektori promises to “transport you into another state of consciousness”, but what the pulsing soundtrack initially did was transport me to Youtube so I could look up this scene from Spaced, where Michael Smiley raves out to a boiling kettle. By elegant coincidence, that video is about the length of my longest run so far in Sektori’s demo – a very busy 60 seconds or so.
How exactly does Sektori propose to transport you to another state of consciousness? Via the holy medium of techno. And also, via the holy medium of being swamped by fleets of angry Xmas decorations. Yes, it’s a twin stick shooter – a lost cousin of Bizarre’s Geometry Wars series in its specific combination of astral pretties, score-attack arenas and withering odds. I quite like it. Frankly, the only reason I disengaged is that when you perish, the demo takes you to a “wishlist now!” menu with a really annoying three second countdown before you can respawn. Three seconds? Why, I could die at least six times in that time. I have already wishlisted, Sektori – now please, let me get my uninterrupted fill of being murdered by triangles.
The full game will have a variety of modes, including a traditional arcade campaign for the purists, and a choice of ships and modifiers. The demo gives one mode to butt heads with – Surge. This lumbers you with a peashooter and an occasionally life-saving, generally life-endangering rushdown attack that blows up anything in your path. As you harvest the stardust of slain geometry, you’ll activate collectible power-ups that, once you’ve frantically found your way to them, briefly transform you into an absolute geyser of bullets and missiles, causing you to immediately lose track of yourself and fly into a wall. Look, I only played the demo for 10 minutes. I’m sure I’ll improve. The only way is up.
Adding insult to injury, sometimes the arenas shapeshift. Swathes of triangular grid flicker red and fold inward, boxing you in as you strive to thread the throng and reach the power-up across the way.
“With Sektori I wanted to create a shoot’em up where every run feels familiar, but is still completely unique,” comments developer Kimmo Lahtinen on the Steam page. “A game of skill, not memorization. The hand crafted attack waves, levels and even the bosses are combined and randomized and layered with the upgrade systems in a way that creates an interesting challenge for every run.
“The aesthetics of the game are very much inspired by techno music,” he continues. “Fast, detailed, colorful, saturated, intense, aggressive.” I am here for it, and I don’t even like techno. Shame there’s no release date yet.