Ultros review

What is it? A colorful metroidvania about growing trees in a psychedelic space uterus.
Expect to pay: $25
Release date: Out now
Developer: Hadoque
Publisher: Kelper Interactive
Reviewed on: Windows 10, AMD Ryzen 5 PRO 4650G, 16GB RAM
Multiplayer: No
Steam Deck: Playable
Link: Steam

Wandering Ultros’s cosmic uterus in search of an eldritch monster I had to stop from being born, I couldn’t shake the feeling that I’d been there before. The game is a metroidvania, and for a while it seems like almost exactly what you’d expect (minus the whole uterus thing). But just as I started to get comfy in the embrace of genre familiarity, the creature hatched, killed me, and sent me blasting back in time to the beginning. 

Ultros is a time-loop game, but it's more than just time that loops. Everything does, swerving and connecting back to each other to convey a singular vision in this circle of a game.

Ultros is blasted with vibrancy, a perpetual explosion of acid hues swirling in hypnotic patterns. Red globby juices dribble down iridescent orange ivy; dark purple liquid submerges holy green statues; a giant tree with glowing autumn leaves bears searing blue fruit with eyes. Every inch of the game is a joy to behold when the backgrounds aren't packed with so much handmade love that I lose track of what’s decoration and what isn’t. Several accessibility options exist to assuage this by blurring or desaturating the background, but hours in I still caught myself trying to hop onto pillars that weren’t there.

I found it hard to care too much about the occasional whiffed jump when everything looks so nice, especially when accompanied by a perfectly in-step soundtrack of ambient ragas: shimmering violins, muted saxophones, and humming electronics giving way to discordance in Ultros's most intense moments, casting a mystical, reverent air over the entire experience.

Which is appropriate given the story, an obscure time-looping Zen journey that cuts the preamble and drops you into an ocean of