Sektori is absolutely one of the best modern twin-stick shooters

Sektori blasted onto Steam recently and I've been absolutely loving it, this is easily one of the best modern twin-stick shooters and fantastic to play. Note: a key was provided to GamingOnLinux.

If you've ever played and enjoyed anything like Geometry Wars, this is an absolute must-buy. This is what you want in a modern take on the genre that just feels incredible to play and smash through all the enemies. It will fry your brain just as much as your eyes, as the action truly gets intense.

The campaign mode is especially incredible with the way the battlefield changes as you go through. You start off with a small space, that gradually morphs into different shaped arenas as you progress through it. The floor lights up giving you a warning on where it will change, and then it all smashes into play with the new shape. No level loading interruptions, it's all action and no filler here. One you have to experience to get the full feel for it, especially with the thumping techno music that give it a thrilling atmosphere for the challenge.

With an in-battle upgrade system the way it all just keeps the game continuously flowing is incredible. As you destroy enemies you'll see big flashy upgrade tokens to collect which you can spend across boosts like speed, score, shields, your blaster and so on. But here's the interesting bit, the upgrades are in a list where collecting more changes what you will be upgrading - so you can choose to upgrade speed which is at the bottom or collect more tokens to upgrade your blaster which is at the top. All while you're flying around shooting, blasting through enemies and dashing to get away from them. It's true chaos of the best sort.

You also evolve your ship during battle through special evolver tokens, which you pick from a stack that you have unlocked to give you more powerful bonuses like giving you drones to help, repelling enemy bullets, fire bullets behind you and lots more.

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The style of it too is seriously slick. With bright neon colours surrounding you, and simple but effective 3D geometric shapes for the enemies - it looks spectacular with the way enemies drop down onto the battlefield too. Everything about it is just so wonderfully designed.

From the press release: “Sektori is an evolution of the classic twin-stick shooter, offering a mix of randomization with deliberate strategy as you decide when to cash in your points for power-ups,” said developer Kimmo Lahtinen. “It’s classic arcade action with a smidge of roguelike DNA with the ability to spec your ship differently in each run. It’s easy to have fun right out of the gate, but there’s infinite room for improvement as you aim to tackle higher difficulties, climb the leaderboards, or just beat your own personal best attempts! But most importantly, I wanted to focus on game feel, with kaleidoscopic colors and pulsating techno beats that lock you into a hypnotic flow state.”

On Linux there is one specific issue with Proton. The backing video behind the menu and battlefield is broken on Valve's official Proton. For it to work properly, you'll need GE-Proton. Other than that, no issues at all and it took me a while to even notice that was actually an issue until it suddenly clicked that I was sometimes seeing the Proton test image behind the scenes. Goes to show how intense the action is that I didn't even notice it initially. But for the full experience, you definitely want GE-Proton until perhaps they can use a different video codec for it.

If you're a fan of twin-stick shooters this is an essential pick. Absolutely brilliant.