Scar-Lead Salvation Review – Where There’s a Willow, There’s a Way

They say “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”, but sometimes the opposite is true. While today’s featured game differs slightly in its flow, any Dark Souls enthusiast will tell you “Death is not the end”. This newer breed of games introduces mechanics that encourage growth after death. Revival brings players another chance to correct their mistakes, hopefully fresh with the knowledge of where they went wrong.

Introduction

Scar-Lead Salvation is a third-person shooter game with rogue-like level design and bullet hell features. Developed by Compile Heart and Neilo, and published by Idea Factory International, the game would release for both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 on May 29th, 2025. The rogue-lite gameplay and setup means levels are procedurally generated.

When protagonist Willow is killed, she loses all of her equipment and must start over from the beginning. The gameplay and structure are similar to PlayStation’s 2021 rogue-like shooter hit, Returnal, albeit with an anime aesthetic. In-game progress is saved by temporary, interim save files which are created by suspending a game in progress through the main menu and can be re-loaded once by continuing play.

Defeat may seem inevitable as the threat increases, but death certainly isn’t the end. With each death you’ll resurrect back where it all started, and maybe learn a little in the process as story triggers are activated. Only by reaching the end can Willow finally escape this loop and discover the truth about herself and the strange military facility in which she finds herself.

Story

In an unfamiliar facility, a young woman clad in futuristic combat armour awakens from stasis with no memory of either herself or her surroundings. Upon exploring the facility, she is attacked by robots and displays a natural affinity for handling weaponry, leading her to conclude she is a soldier. However, she is soon outnumbered by robots and seemingly killed.

The woman revives back in her stasis chamber, determined to try again and learn the truth of her origins. This time, she is aided by an AI voice who gradually reveals information about the military facility and the state of the world outside. Our heroine, Willow, begins battling through the ever-growing waves of robots blocking her escape and successfully resurrects after each defeat.

Without any real semblance of who she is or where she came from, can she really trust the AI who aids her? Or is it yet another enemy? Escape becomes Willow’s ultimate goal, but what truths lie at the end of her journey? And what sort of world awaits her outside if she is successful in her escape?

Gameplay

Every door we pass through leads to another procedurally generated arena. Here, we’ll encounter an endless army of mechanical foes in fast-paced combat. Each floor will present a randomised selection of equipment to grab. Willow can use a variety of ranged weapons and mêlée attacks, take advantage of status effects, and power up with unique skills to give her an advantage in battle.

Enemies can fire waves of energy projectiles reminiscent of ‘bullet hell’ combat. To survive, Willow can dodge and parry enemy attacks with precision to build up ‘Exo Force’. When enough Exo Force is built up, she can unleash ‘Onslaught Mode’ and become temporarily invincible. Battle difficulty can also be adjusted from the main menu to modify enemy aggression.

There are still significant penalties for death. We’ll be sent back to the start again and will have to retread some areas as a small selection of teleporters allow for some skipping, however doing so may prove to be a hindrance as this will result in missed opportunities to grab additional upgrades and weapons, all of which will be lost at the point of defeat.

Graphics/Sound

Visually, the game is something of a mixed bag. Bright explosions, futuristic neon lighting, and glowing energy beams and particles illuminate what is otherwise a very dreary setting. Each arena is a collection of recycled assets with little colour variation. Walls are a constant, endless reuse of grey metal panels interrupted only by the inclusion of the occasional grey box to use as cover.

Enemies are certainly varied, beginning with clunky, boxy robots which make for easy targets, before evolving into stationery gun turrets and aerial drones. Bosses are very different, and include unnaturally giant mutated flora and fauna with intricate details and behaviours. As our only human character, Willow has received a pleasingly detailed design with complex, multi-layered armour and an exposable bodysuit beneath.

The anime aesthetic doesn’t work quite so well for Willow’s face, with almost all other assets receiving more detail and Willow appearing rather emotionless as a result. The lip-synching looks a little halfhearted, but is softened by solid voiceover work done by a familiar-sounding English dub cast. This would be the best aspect of the sound, as the dull, ambient tones present are a poor substitute for a catchy soundtrack.

Conclusion

Our friends at Idea Factory are long overdue a heavy hitter after what has been a slow start to 2025. Sadly, Scar-Lead Salvation isn’t that game. A game modelled on the triple-A titan that is Returnal may sound like a reasonably smart choice on paper, yet it’s one that needs to be delivered with a similar budget in mind, and also a similar passion for the world they’re crafting.

Neilo’s Scar-Lead Salvation undoubtedly gets some components right. It’s a perfectly solid shooter with stylish movement, fast-paced gunplay, and simple, responsive controls, all of which harmonise to produce some genuinely fun shootouts. It’s everything in-between where the game falls short. For starters, the occasional subtle hint from Willow’s banter with the AI, along with rarer data discoveries make for a plot that’s spread incredibly thin.

It’s the repetition that really costs the most points though. While some grind would be expected from an almost arcade-like death loop, the near-endless ocean of dark grey rooms and only mildly different map layouts make for an unfortunately boring experience in between those moments of exciting gunplay. Certainly not a bad game, but one that fails to impress with its mixed assortment of ideas.