SAROS

You are Arjun Devraj, a Soltari enforcer on the colony world of Carcosa, and the planet keeps rearranging itself underneath you. It's a PlayStation 5 exclusive, it has no multiplayer at all, and it released on 30 April.

What you are doing on Carcosa

Arjun arrives with Echelon IV to find out what happened to a colony that stopped answering. Soltari's interest in Carcosa is Lucenite, and securing the mining operation comes before the welfare of the colonists. You spend the game finding out how badly that went.

The reason a run resets is written into the world. Carcosa sits under an Eclipse that repeats on a cycle Soltari can't predict, and during one the native creatures get faster, stronger and more aggressive. Maps stop being accurate afterwards. The territory you cross is genuinely redrawn between attempts, so learning a layout is a temporary advantage rather than a bank you keep.

You move between a handful of named regions: the rocky, hostile Shattered Rise and the subterranean Ancient Depths among them, with The Passage as the hub. The Passage is the one place hostiles will not follow, which makes it the safehouse and staging ground you come back to between runs. You spend what you earned there and go out again.

The shield is the combat system

Most of the depth lives in two inputs. Standard shots, blue with the default colours, feed the Soltari Shield: hold it up as they arrive and the absorption builds Power. The shield also drains Power to stay active, so holding it while nothing is hitting you is a straight loss. Read the incoming fire or don't raise it at all.

Then the left trigger does two jobs. Pull it halfway and you fire your equipped weapon's alternate attack; pull it all the way and you discharge a Power Weapon built from what the shield swallowed. Those Power Weapons are the big damage. The named examples are Prominence, Dispiritor and Illumine, each with a different idea of what killing looks like, and they cost a large amount of armour power for every activation. Their unsettling connection to Carcosa also ties the weapons into the story.

Corruption is the complication the Eclipse keeps adding. Corrupted shots, yellow with the default colours, cut into your maximum armour integrity rather than just your health bar, and the Power Weapon is what scrubs that corruption back off. Nova shots are a third category again, and the colour settings exist so you can tell all three apart on your own display.

Artifacts are the other answer to the same problem. They change what your armour can do, including resisting damage and Corruption, or pulling more from the environment, but the effect holds only for as long as you stay conscious, and some carry adverse side effects. That makes them a resource to spend well inside a run rather than a permanent upgrade.

The fight then comes down to what Power buys you. The shield spends it to stay up and the Power Weapon spends it to fire, so every activation is a trade against the next volley you were hoping to absorb. That tension, more than the size of any damage number, is what the combat is built around.

Second Chance provides a revive when available, but the Trials below include one that removes it outright.

Difficulty you set yourself

Carcosan Modifiers are the reason two people can describe SAROS and both be right about how hard it is. At Primary in The Passage, between runs only, you choose Protections that reduce the challenge or Trials that increase it, and the screen asks for a balanced pair; turn on the Unlimited Protection Modifiers setting and that limit comes off. None of it can be touched mid-expedition, so the decision is deliberate rather than reactive.

The Protections are concrete. Damage Enhancement raises what you deal. Shield Power Enhancement stops the shield consuming Power while active, which effectively hands you more Power Weapon uses. Overlord Restoration puts you at full armour integrity when you walk into a boss. On the other side, Growth Incapacitor I removes Second Chance and Growth Incapacitor II strips out every Armour Matrix upgrade, for the people who want the version of this game that hurts.

Underneath all of it is the Armour Matrix, the permanent progression you feed between runs, plus the Artifacts you pick up along the way. The Matrix is the part that accumulates; an Artifact is a run-scoped change to what your armour can survive and harvest, which makes it part of the build for that attempt rather than permanent progression.

None of this is buried. The modifiers are the game's own difficulty menu rather than a hidden setting, and the launch build ships accessibility options alongside them, including the colour controls that let you tell Normal, Corrupted and Nova projectiles apart.

Playing it on PS5

SAROS is built for one player and it is offline-friendly: single-player, 1 player, Remote Play supported, with no co-op and no competitive mode anywhere in it.

The expensive edition is cosmetic. Digital Deluxe adds three armour sets inspired by Returnal, God of War and Ghost of Yōtei, and the upgrade is sold separately as an add-on. There's no extra region or story behind it, so the standard copy is the game and the Deluxe copy is the game in different clothes.

There is also a way to test it first: PlayStation Plus Premium includes a 2.5-hour full game trial of SAROS. For a run-based game where the loop either grabs you or doesn't, that's worth knowing about before you pay full price.

What is coming, and what you have now

SAROS: Zenith is a free update announced for later in 2026, and it is worth knowing the difference between that and what you can play today. Zenith adds Overlord Rush, a mode for fighting the main Overlords back to back for a high score with worldwide leaderboards, plus Eclipse Layers, a harder new-game-plus that opens after you finish the game. It also brings high-contrast visuals, gyro aiming and a toggleable Slow Game Speed option.

Not all of that is missing today. The colour controls for Normal, Corrupted and Nova projectiles are already in the launch build, and Zenith is the update that adds the further visual and control options on top. Overlord Rush, Eclipse Layers and the leaderboards are announced for 2026 with nothing firmer than that, so don't buy this copy for them. What you're buying today is the loop and the modifier menu, which are already in the box.

Should you play it

Yes, if you want a run-based action game that hands you the difficulty dial along with the shield. The projectile-absorbing Soltari Shield and the left trigger split between alternate fire and Power Weapon give you a real decision in every fight, and the modifier menu means the challenge is something you set rather than something you endure.

Skip it if you want a shared world, because there is no multiplayer here, or if you're not on PS5, because it has not been released anywhere else. The other question is what you want out of a finished run: if you would rather see credits and move on, SAROS asks you to lose, come back and lose again, and the world redrawing itself between attempts is the whole structure rather than a setback on the way to something else.