Saros is more generous than Returnal but it’s still tough as nails. The core loop of punishing death and revival still runs through Housemarque’s latest PlayStation 5 exclusive. It sounds like the studio wants to keep refining that brutal formula for its next project, citing Dark Souls and Elden Ring developer FromSoftware as proof that tough games can be just as successful as the more approachable ones.
In an interview with The Game Business, studio head and co-founder Ilari Kuittinen talked about how Saros is the latest example of a “bullet ballet” subgenre the studio has been pioneering, in which players must dash and dodge through color-coded hazards flying at them from across the level. Kuittinen said Housemarque uses this setup in Saros and Returnal to help players enter a “flow state” where navigating a barrage of projectiles eventually becomes “second nature,” and hopes that, the longer the studio makes games of this style, the more it can go from a niche subgenre to a widely celebrated one like Soulslikes.
Kuittinen explained:
FromSoftware have been doing a similar genre for a very long time and built up their fan base [over that period]. We have two unique games out. Returnal, Saros. It’s kind of a new thing that you need to educate the market about, so that people say, “Hey, these flow states are really cool.”
FromSoftware’s journey from King’s Field to what they are today… We’re not presuming that we would be anywhere close to that, but [like them] we will keep our core, keep educating the market that these are the coolest games you can play. That’s our goal.
Saros launched back in April, and while it didn’t take over the charts right out the gate, Housemarque is hopeful it might gain more traction as more positive word of mouth spreads around the game, similar to how fans kept championing Returnal.
“It’s funny, Returnal, when we shipped, it started gaining traction a bit later,” brand director Mikael Haveri said. “A lot of the community got to unlock it a little bit more and then that tends to trickle down and people get more interested in it.”
Kuttinen added that Housemarque hopes to add more to Saros down the line, though the team is being light on specifics. The studio just added a new photo mode to the game last week, along with several new trophies to add challenges to the game.
“This is just the start of the discussion and conversation with the gaming community,” Kuttinen said. “If you have played Saros, you know that there are a lot of things that we can do and tweak and add. We hope that we can keep on doing that for a while.”