Ultros

• Title — Ultros • Developer — Hadoque • Publisher — Kepler Interactive • Director — Niklas Åkerblad • Designer — * Mårten Brüggemann • Hugo Persson-Bille • Programmer — * Mårten Brüggemann • Hugo Persson-Bille • Artist — Niklas Åkerblad • Writer — Pelle Cahndlerby • Composer — Ratvader • Platforms — * macOS • PlayStation 4 • PlayStation 5 • Windows • Nintendo Switch • Xbox Series X/S • Released — * macOS, PS4, PS5, Windows • February 13, 2024 • Switch, Xbox Series X/S • February 13, 2025 • Genre — Metroidvania • Modes — Single-player • Engine — Unity

Players control a space traveler who wakes on a spaceship called the Sarcophagus, which imprisons a demon named Ultros. Players must prevent Ultros from waking. The ship has become overgrown with plant life, and various aliens live onboard. Interacting with these aliens can give players seeds, which can grow into edible plants. Because of an endless time loop, some of the aliens have been driven mad and are now bosses that must be defeated in combat. Players have different kinds of attacks. Eating plants and defeated bosses allows players to increase their skills. Making precision attacks with advanced skills to defeat bosses gives players more powerful power-ups. The time loop allows players to return to the start of the game. Although some aspects are kept, players' skills are reset after each loop; however, their skills are now easier to increase. The world changes, too, based on players' choices in previous time loops, which can open previously inaccessible areas. This is often done via jumping on platforms, as in Metroidvania games. Dying causes players to return to their last save point.

The artist, Niklas Åkerblad, said he wanted to create a coherent world. As a child, he believed Sonic the Hedgehog was more coherent than the competing Super Mario series, which he said felt like "an amalgam of very different ideas". The design of the Sarcophagus was influenced by H. P. Lovecraft's depiction of Cthulhu, who retains an influence on our reality despite being trapped elsewhere. Åkerblad wanted to evoke the ecologically-themed terror and wonder of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and the difficulty of communicating with a non-human intelligence of Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The time loop mechanic was designed to mimic karma, so that actions in one life carried forward to the next. The developers also wanted players to be able to experience decisions from different perspectives. The studio is based in Sweden, but composer Oscar Rydelius traveled to Peru to record indigenous instruments and ambient sounds in the Amazon rainforest. He then pitch-shifted the sounds and experimented to find ways to balance making them sound both familiar and otherworldly. Ultros was released for macOS, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Windows on February 13, 2024, and for Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series X/S one year later on February 13, 2025.

• Year — Ceremony — Category — Result — Ref. References • 2024 — Golden Joystick Awards — Best Indie Game • 2025 — New York Game Awards — Chumley’s Speakeasy Award for Best Hidden Gem • Game Developers Choice Awards — Best Visual Art — Honorable mention • Independent Games Festival — Excellence in Visual Arts — Honorable mention