Ultros is at its core a Metroid-Vania but it doesn’t quiet follow a lot of the core mechanics that you’ve come to expect from the genre. Ultimately it excels at its presentation being one the most beautiful games I think I have ever played; the sound design is fantastic and the visual language is breathtaking. Unfortunately, Ultros is held back by a few odd mechanics and lack of clarity in its requirements of the player.

The first few hours of gameplay and exploration are honestly some of its best. You wake outside a crashed space pod in a hallucinogenic strange world with no direct and merely a puddle to view yourself in. Your only immediate option is to venture out into the organic depths below you and hope to make sense of what is going on. This is when you will be introduced to the games narrative and one of the few character that seem to be lurking in this ship of some kind. The narrative is present in written format where other characters will talk at you and you can see reactions from the players sprite. The story is generally quiet intriguing but seems to lose focus throughout the game. I had a general idea of what was happening but some of the characters and hidden lore seemed a little random or to vague for me to understand on a first playthrough.
The premise is some kind of time loop where you and everyone else is stuck re living a moment while a big ball creature (Ultros) grows in the middle of the ship. Almost ever character has no idea they are in a loop with the exception of one who seems to remember you after you progress the story. I believe there are possibly 2 or more endings to Ultros but unfortunately, I wasn’t particularly satisfied with the outcome I received.

The core objective seems to be killing or reviving 6 of these mummies that are linked to the big ball thing but I’m not really sure why. Once one of these mummies has been slain you go back to the big ball and the loop restarts with some dialog and cool visuals beforehand. Your options are to either slay all the mummies and end the game or once they have been killed bringing some kind of organic tether to them which will cleanse them in some way. Ultros expected you to figure out that this is an option purely by trial and error which could very easily be missed. I do like that this allows the player to pick if they want to put the effort in for an alternative ending but it becomes beyond tedious and for a smaller game there are very little resources online to help.

The exploration in Ultros is similar to your average Metroid-Vania but less focused on upgrading manoeuvrability and unlocking shortcuts. This became one of the first major problems I had with the game, it took so long to get anywhere fast and it was quiet exhausting to explore new paths. Instead, you are encouraged to use seeds that will grow into different kind of plants / trees providing vines to swing on or platforms to jump on. In concept, this is a really cool idea and it defiantly had moments that were quite impressive. However, some plants will take a time loop to fully grow meaning you are not able to use the new “shortcut” until you progress to the next loop. Similarly, this also became a problem when you are not sure what plant to grown where or you do not have the correct seed available to grow the required tree.
The previously mentioned tether that unlocks the alternative ending requires a strong knowledge of what plants to grow and paths to take. This is because you will be leading a tether from 1 area of the map to another in a plant-based daisy chain. Unfortunately, after a few hours of trying to figure out how to make this chain, the slow movement speed and lack of clear direction made me quit this endeavour and instead get the “bad” ending.

Initially while playing Ultros I was quiet impressed by the combat and encouragement to play well and with variety. The system they use rewards new combos and variety by giving better rewards based on how well you perform in combat. There's a mix of different doges, backsteps, stealth attacks, parry’s and much more which was initially quiet exciting. You unlock these moves and other abilities by leveling up your skill tree from eating a variety of grown fruits or carcases from the enemies you kill. However, the skill tree is very limited and you will quickly be maxing everything out as the consumables are also your healing items and there is a lot of them. I believe this is intentional though as when a loop is completed you will be returned to 0 skill points and no weapons as if you just restarted the game. Unfortunately though you can mitigate this almost completely, as with the use of additional hidden skill points found in the world this will keep any chosen skill permanently unlocked. This then feeds into another problem where you become either to strong in combat or you use a skill tree ability where most enemies will completely ignore the player; this allows you to waltz on right past them completely ignoring all future combat.

As I think back on my time playing Ultros I feel honestly more disappointed about what could have been than what has been. The beautiful visuals paired with some great combat ideas and an intriguing set up for a story sounds like a recipe for a brilliant game. But unfortunately Ultros just doesn’t deliver in the execution and that makes me really sad. I hope the small team continues to make games and refine their craft as there’s absolutely passion poured into Ultros and I would to see what’s next from the studio.

I found Ultros through Skillup's weekly news video, where in the "Put this on your radar" segment he talked about playing its demo. It's a metroidvania with so called "psychedelics visuals." The vibrant art style got me interested and he said that the demo was a lot of fun. When looking into this game that word "psychedelic" was repeated over and over, which did set of a bit of a red flag since that was about the most anyone said. When the full game released I got it on steam, and enjoyed the first hour or so same as I expected. However from there my enjoyment really went downhill. At some point I remember thinking "This game's shortcomings remind me of Scorn" and sure enough when I checked, it was the same publisher (different studio though). Unlike scorn however, I don't really recommend Ultros.
The great stuff in Ultros really starts and ends with the pretty visuals. It is far too easy to feel confused, lost, and like you are doing something wrong. Like scorn, Ultros seems to not understand some of the "Language of videogames." Most issues seem like they could be fixed with a little playtesting and feedback. There are a lot of times you'll be running back and forth constantly opening the map with no clue as to what you should be doing. The exploration aspects started to frustrate after the first hour, that frustration only got worse as time went on. Combat felt too janky to pull off a smooth kill, but other people may take to it better than I did. The story and characters are boringly shallow, never giving enough info to push the story beyond "look at all this pretty stuff, is the music convincing you this is impactful?"

Very Minor Spoilers Below


The time loop angle is questionable, I don't feel like it ever improved the game and only was an annoyance to make you re-earn skills and gear. I didn't click with the gardening mechanics, usually only planting when necessary to make progress. I really don't get what they were going for with it, usually you have the correct seed on you to do any task and seeds are just sort of spread out on the map randomly so it didn't change the way I played. And I literally never had to feed a monster to make a planting location. I got early on that they wanted to do a "You are the bad guy for killing all these bugs" angle but it failed miserably. There is a weird lack of emotion to everything this game says. Once I got to the bad ending the gardener guy said that it's okay to leave and there really isn't any more for you to do. I was so relieved that I could stop there, and just watched the other ending on YouTube. If you like the visuals enough maybe this is worth a try for you, but I won't be recommending it to anyone which is pretty rare for me.

The goopy and slimy alien design of this game is a huge selling point - the sheer artistic creativity here is off the charts, and it gets really gross at some points. Very phallic and butthole-like things here. If the idea of exploring a completely original feeling world made up of organic and industrial matter in a Metroidvania fashion sounds good to you, definitely put this on your radar.

But there was a lot here that pushed me away despite only taking a few days to finish the main story. There are 2 endings, I think I got the "evil" one... but the game kind of forces you in that direction anyways, so they expect you to go back and try it all a second time to find a "nice" way of finishing things. I felt done by the end though, and satisfied with what I had ended with.

The exploration of the environment is exactly how you'd expect if you're familiar with the genre, and lots of those games have sprawling interconnected maps and systems that are easy to get lost in. Ultros was maybe the most lost I've felt playing a game like this. It's very big, and absolutely full of rooms and hallways that are a slog to run and jump through. They felt like unnecessary padding than anything. Something about this game made it feel like more of a chore than anything about halfway through, when I got lost and unaware of what my next objective was when I got stuck in an area. There's unlockable abilities after you complete a section/boss as per usual, but there's a slightly complicated gardening/seed system that the game kind of haphazardly explains to you. I'll admit, I wasn't using these seeds/plants to their full potential until I was almost done the game, and I think they did that on purpose - to show you, now that you've probably figured out how this shit actually works, go play the game a second time and do all the extra stuff. And one of the endgame things here is to connect all of the sprawling systems on the map. It just feels like too much work in the long run, I didn't really enjoy my time in this world and I was ready to get out.

That being said... I could see myself going back to this in a year or so and trying it again. So for now, 3 stars for a general feel of the game after completing - but there is stuff worth exploring here for lots of folks