Saros Launches March 20, 2026 for PS5 - News
by William D'Angelo , posted on 24 September 2025 / 3,301 Views
Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment and developer Housemarque have announced third-person action game, Saros, will launch for the PlayStation 5 on March 20, 2026.
View the gameplay reveal trailer below:
Read details on the game below:
This is a dream project, by a dream team. Please watch our gameplay first look below:
This gameplay is captured on PlayStation 5 at 60fps using Unreal Engine 5 and is still a work in progress, so expect tweaks, fixes, and upgrades when you’re playing Saros on PlayStation 5 or enhanced on your PlayStation 5 Pro in 2026.
For this extended gameplay reveal we wanted to establish the world and story and then focus purely on our deep 3rd person action, and how we take things to the next level with Saros.
The Shape-Shifting Planet of Carcosa
The events of Saros take place on Carcosa, a shape-shifting, hostile alien planet; one that changes on every death, and offers a wide variety of environments and enemies for you to encounter. In this gameplay first look, we see our protagonist Arjun Devraj (performed by Rahul Kohli) exploring the planet as a total eclipse nears. Along the way he finds Nitya Chandran (performed by Shunori Ramanthan), one of our ensemble cast, and a key character. The stunning environment Arjun explores is that of a lost ancient civilization fueled by the twisted enlightenment of the eclipse. This is just one of the biomes our amazing team on Saros are creating.
How Our Action Gameplay Has Evolved
For our first look at gameplay we wanted to show real and unedited action gameplay from Saros, and then layer by layer detail some of the new elements we have added on top of Returnal‘s award winning third-person action. Our goal with these new elements has been to add more depth to our gameplay by adding a wider variety of tools.
Arjun’s Soltari advanced combat suit allows him to dash, melee, jump, and more. At the start of every run you will select your loadout from a mix of Soltari human weaponry and Carcosan alien weaponry. In this video, Arjun is using the Soltari Phosphorous Shotgun to defend himself and melt the hostile machines housed in the lost ancient city. As you can see from our extended gameplay, you can expect spectacular bullet patterns from enemies, and brutal weapons to use which fuel the science-fiction power fantasy.
Weaponry and Abilities
Let’s talk about Arjun’s unique abilities. Firstly, we have the Soltari Shield, activated by holding R1. In Saros, you can run into the hostile projectiles, absorbing their energy to defend yourself. Once absorbed you can hit back hard with your Carcosan Power Weapon. This second unique ability allows you to charge up the weapon with energy harvested from hostile projectiles (by pulling the L2 adaptive trigger fully), then discharging this explosive energy at enemies with R2.
Power Weapons transform Arjun’s right arm into an eclipse-fuelled weapon, corrupting him in the process. This gives him an alternate, and customizable, way to deal devastating damage to hostiles.
Storytelling in Carcosa
We also wanted to highlight how we are expanding our storytelling in Saros. Along with grounded voice-over, stunning cinematics, haunting audio logs, and conversations with our ensemble cast of NPCs, there are also Soltari Holograms detailing what happened on Carcosa as you explore. If you choose to collect them, they are vital to discover what happened on this hostile planet. There’s also more surreal and mysterious storytelling sequences, but we will share more with you about these moments ahead…
The final element we highlight is the “Second Chance” ability. On death, Arjun has the ability – once discovered – to use eclipse corruption energy to rise back up on first death. This is one small part of the permanent-progression systems we have added in Saros, which will allow you to always come back stronger after each death. These systems include the ability to upgrade your Soltari advanced combat suit & abilities if you choose to do so.
We are super proud of how Saros plays, and cannot wait for you all to experience it. Saros has been built by a dream team of collaborators; for this PS Blog post we wanted to shout out all of our superb PlayStation Studio partners including XDEV, Nixxes, PlayStation Studios Creative Arts teams and many more.
Nixxes are working closely with Housemarque’s creative, gameplay, art, and production leadership on key elements of the art and gameplay in Saros. They have been an amazing collaborator, and you can see their stunning work in this gameplay first look.
After our award-winning collaboration on Returnal, PlayStation Studios Creative Arts are also back working with the team at Housemarque. The sound and music you hear in this reveal is the result of this continued collaboration, and we are building something exceptional together.
Last but not least, the dark-electronic meets drone-metal score featured in this gameplay showcase (and in our earlier cinematic announcement), was composed by the fantastic and two-time Grammy Award-winning Sam Slater. His past work includes collaborations on the acclaimed Chernobyl and Joker, as well as being part of the team behind the score for the cult film, Mandy.
Expect a deep dive into our musical score and Sam’s process as we get closer to launch. We set out to create a bold and innovative score unique in any medium today.
In the future we’ll be sharing more about our mysterious, monstrous, and moving story including our plot, ensemble cast of NPCs, and the lost off-world colony on Carcosa you will experience.
A life-long and avid gamer, William D'Angelo was first introduced to VGChartz in 2007. After years of supporting the site, he was brought on in 2010 as a junior analyst, working his way up to lead analyst in 2012 and taking over the hardware estimates in 2017. He has expanded his involvement in the gaming community by producing content on his own YouTube channel and Twitch channel. You can follow the author on Bluesky.
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Nothing special there. And even if there was, I'm not thrilled by the idea of controlling mister Zero Charisma. ... But yeah yeah, it's beautiful and there are lots of pretty visual effects, sure...
Imagine calling "pretty visual effects" to a projectile in a Housemarque game ... oh boy. If you have no idea of who you are talking about you could just say so lol.
Your loss at one of the best gaming experiences
Loved the hell out of Returnal. My favorite release Sony has released this gen. Can't wait to see how Housemarque refined their gameplay.
I know right. I can't recall playing a game where i was itching to get back into, like i experienced with returnal.
Still haven't played returnal, looks absolutely sick!
Love Housemarque but I could just not get into Returnal, I just found it too hard and too much of a struggle to progress after deaths. I hope this has more friendly progression.
It will, that's one of the first points they touched after announcing the game in February.
Its hard until you release that you can kind of make your way towards checkpoints , and finding special rooms to level up, buy health, upgrades. The game can be much easier if you explore and learn gane mechanics .
Like you I struggled initially, almost gave up. So glad I didn't. One of the best games ive played in a long time.
Don't deny it wasn't good, it was fantastic a game and will probably get Saros because I love Housemarque but I did a lot of that. I tried to stay in the first area collecting things, get more HP etc but more time I spent there, the more draining it got. The first 2 bosses after a while became trivial to me. The shortcut seemed pointless as it meant you'd go into later parts of the game weaker because you didn't find items/upgrades.
My most successful run was about about 5-7 hours in, I happen to get a great gun, can't remember what it was called and it leveled quickly, good HP pickups, all that jazz but failed still. I was never able to repeat that feat in the next 15 hours.
Maybe I just suck (haha, "maybe") but I saw myself get noticeably better in say Hades, where it took 28 runs to win the first time and after my 120th run and the plat, I started a new save and beat it in 4. I just didn't feel like I was progressing here.
Maybe I should give it another try.
