Housemarque put its difficulty critics on notice with Zenith, the free update to its PS5 bullet-hell roguelike Saros that went live on October 19, 2026. Beyond the New Game Plus mode and boss rush headlines, Zenith’s accessibility options are the sharpest answer so far to a complaint many reviewers leveled from day one: that it was tuned too easy.
The update is out now on PlayStation 5 and free to all players, the studio announced on the PlayStation Blog alongside a launch trailer, where Housemarque also said it had put considerable thought into balancing features that make the game easier against its core identity.
The centerpiece is a new Slow Game Speed setting, which lets players dial back the speed of enemy bullet patterns. It can run as a manual toggle or kick in automatically when projectiles are closing in, which matters most in a game built around dense, screen-filling waves of incoming fire.
An Auto-fire option rounds it out, making protagonist Arjun automatically fire at whatever he is aiming at and freeing players to focus on dodging. Housemarque stopped short of automating everything: manual reloads stay in, and a perfect reload still requires a well-timed button press.
The full set is wide. Game speed, motion-sensor aim and high contrast can all be toggled at any time, mid-run, so nobody has to restart a cycle to find a comfortable configuration.
Accessibility in front, more teeth behind
For players who found Saros softer than the studio’s previous bullet hell, Returnal, the update leans the other way. The New Game Plus mode, Eclipse Layers, opens Armor Matrix nodes in the Passage hub after a first completion, and each gate onward demands more Carcosan Modifiers stacked on the run. Ten new Protection Modifiers and ten new Trial Modifiers give the difficulty curve more combinations to work with, and the new Overlord Rush boss rush mode, split into Incursion, Ascension and Totality sets, puts a leaderboard spot on the line across all eight Overlords.
Why it lands where it does
Reviewers generally praised Saros at launch but many felt its easier difficulty compared with Returnal amounted to an overcorrection. Zenith splits the difference instead of picking a side: the front door gets wider, and the back rooms get meaner.
