Housemarque’s upcoming sci-fi roguelike shooter Saros has seemingly been made substantially easier than the developer’s previous release Returnal, thanks to the inclusion of auto saves from the jump as well as multiple save slots. This, it seems, was included due to player feedback to Returnal.
Speaking to IGN, creative director Gregory Louden said: “I think the lesson we learned from Returnal was that people really loved what we created, and we were going on the right track […] But I think the feedback we did get is that more players wanted to love Returnal; they wanted to get further. So for us, it was about providing that ability. So it means we don’t dilute the challenge; there’s still a very challenging game there, but there is also the ability to kind of modify the challenge.”
In Returnal’s original release, you had to sit down and beat a run in a single sitting, as leaving the game paused during a run wasn’t possible. This was patched in the game’s 2.0 update, which was wonderful news for those who couldn’t set aside the time to finish a run all at once. This feature will be included in Saros from day one.
Saros will also have a selection of options that players can interact with to ease their way through the game. These include permanent upgrades (as you’d expect from a Roguelike), second chance revival mechanics, and Carcosan modifiers which change up how the game is played during runs.
According to IGN, each run of Saros is meant to last around 30 minutes, a substantial decrease from Returnal’s typical run duration. As associate design director Mitja Roskaric told IGN: “It’s a challenging experience, but every time someone dies, we want them to bring something out of it, right? Even if it’s not the resource that they will use to level up, maybe it is a lesson from that run. And if it’s a short run, I think it’s easier to get more and more lessons in a frequent cadence, right? So I think the 30-minute session lengths that we have are kind of the sweet spot for this kind of experience.”
Saros, an upcoming powerhouse in Sony’s single player release strategy, is releasing solely on the PS5. The game was initially meant to be released this month, but was delayed back to April late last year.