Sector is an old-fashioned twin-stick shooter. Created by a former developer of Recurring studio Housemarque, it puts you in the role of a small ship blasting through swarms of enemies, and you have to weave through them to get upgrades to help you survive. Often my runs end after less than a few minutes, like a retro arcade game. But creator Kimmo Lahtinen brilliantly interweaves modern ideas of roguelikes with pulsating images and music that ensure that Sector an enchanting experience.
An important part of what makes Sector good is how it puts you in a flow state. “Sector is a place, a form of being, a method of transformation,” reads the description of the game’s campaign mode. “Sector is searching, processing, shaping. Sector is a ghost of your zero state.” It may be fancy, high-level language, but bear with me as I explain how the game actually works. It took me a while to understand it, and how everything connects is what makes the game actually reach those lofty heights.
When you start a run in campaign mode, your small ship is dropped into a small playing field. You initially have two ways to attack: a gun that fires infinite laser bullets in the direction you point your right stick, and an ‘attack’ that propels your ship forward but has a short cooldown. Enemies are usually polygonal shapes that appear briefly as red outlines, giving you a moment to get out of the way before they solidify and become a threat. If you take a hit, you lose one of the three shields you start with. When you destroy enemies, they leave behind little triangles called ‘glimmers’, and if you collect enough you can pick up upgrades.
The upgrade system is the secret sauce of the game. On the left side of the screen you will see a list of upgrades covering speed, score, attack, shield, missile and blaster. Picking up a selector token moves the potential upgrade one step up on the list, but when you actually choose an upgrade, the selector starts again from the beginning. For example, if you pick up enough selector tokens to get a rocket upgrade, the next selector token you get after that will make you eligible for a speed upgrade.
The system means you’re constantly having to make decisions, often while surrounded by enemies, about whether to take a more easily achievable speed or upgrade or stick with the more valuable improvements higher up the stack. Complicating matters further is that you can only use selector tokens to get a total of five extra shields during a run, so you’ll often have to weigh in if you want to pick up a shield or gamble on staying alive to grab a missile or blaster upgrade that can help offensively.
Occasionally you’ll come across “evolver tokens” that give you other, more substantial upgrades that you can choose from a deck, like drones that fly around your ship or a cannon that fires behind you. Occasionally you’ll also see a token with a rotating set of letters, and if you pick up all the letters to spell a word (the harder the difficulty, the longer the word), you’ll enter a brief, rainbow-filled super-powered state that’s kind of like getting a star in Mario Kart.
Complicating matters further is the fact that the arena is constantly shifting and changing around you. Every few seconds the map gets bigger, smaller and sometimes even blocks you from previously accessible areas. If you are in an area that is cut off from the map when it is removed, and is marked by flashing red spots before it disappears, the game is over immediately. If you survive long enough, the arena turns into a boss fight, like a giant, Moldorm-esque snake, and if you beat the boss you will move on to the next, more difficult level. Survive five levels and you win the run.
It can be a lot to manage. Most of my runs never get off the ground because I can’t get upgrades fast enough to survive the onslaught of enemies. Even with a strong build, success feels like hanging on the edge of a knife. But that’s what makes the game gripping; when a run starts, Sector turns into something special as you zoom through levels, blasting away enemies, chasing upgrades and surviving despite the onslaught – all while colorful graphics and the driving techno soundtrack overload your senses.
I’ve only completed the game once. But during that one magical run, I finally understood something Sector is all about.
Sector is available now for PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S.
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