Salt and Sanctuary

Release: 2015
Developer: Ska Studios
Platform: PC
Genre: 2D, Metroidvania, Action
Gameplay Stats: 25 hours, 31/37 achievements

Alright, so this game is pretty much 2D Dark Souls. The problem with that is that the game kind of turns into a Metroidvania, but some of the conceits for Dark Souls these don't add to a this style of game. It's probably important to point out that this game was made primarily by two people, a married couple.

Visuals: This game does a pretty cute hand-drawn, chibi style. I quite like it! I guess this is a calling card of the studio, but this is the first of their games I've played. There's not a whole lot of detail in the visuals, but that's alright. A lot of other Metroidvania titles are done in pixel art after all. Lightning and Fire are the primary elemental effects and they both look fine. There's not a whole lot of frames to each animation, so the game almost looks like a strange disjointed flip book sometimes. A character model will move across the screen fluidly, at a consistent pace, but the animation doesn't update as often as I feel like it should. Additionally, since this is a hand-drawn game, it's a little hard to tell where hitboxes are sometimes. This is kind of one of those things that goes along with hand-drawn animation, so I expected it going in, but it really does suck sometimes. My final comment here is that the animation layering is not great... There are lots of large enemies and bosses and when your character is up against them, you actually can't see yourself. Like, the game displays their character model over yours and since it's a 2d game, there's no camera rotation or anything like that.

Audio: The sound in this game is okay. The music that is present is kind of metal themed, which suits the feel of the world and the style of the game. The boss music is pretty good, without being distracting. The sound effects are also pretty okay, mostly expressing what needed to be expressed in the game world. The only issue that I have is that there's not much music in the game. Dark Souls uses some soft ambiance most areas to help keep you engaged, but Salt and Sanctuary does not. It just results in a lot of dead air.

Gameplay: So here's the rub. Dark Souls works well because the entire game works on the same set of rules, it's internally consistent. Salt and Sanctuary is not. Enemies take less fall damage, don't get staggered nearly as often as the player, and have hitboxes that are largely not communicated well. Additionally, there is no map to get around, so it's very easy to get lost. The world is fairly forgettable and fairly large, so the lack of a map is actually a killer here. The combat works well enough, even if not all the rules are communicated. A bit of surfing on a wiki and you're in good shape. The platforming is similarly aggravating because the movement abilities come with animations that you get locked into, so you can literally dash into a platform edge and your character is locked in the animation for so long that you can't grab it. It doesn't make sense.

Plot: The plot here is pretty minimal, in true Dark Souls fashion. What is there is kind of interesting, but it seems like every character has their own character arc that doesn't necessarily fit into a larger story. With Dark Souls, every character has an arc that ties in well with the overall story of the world, but here their arcs seem to ignore the world to talk about their own backstory. It makes for a less engrossing experience. It seems like maybe there is more here to explore, but it's not covered anywhere. Maybe NG+ has more story, or a second playthrough would make it better, but I'm not willing to give it the time.

Overall: It makes sense that if you have a graphic artist and a programmer making a game that the story and music would suffer, but why not just bring on a composer and someone to write a bit of story? This game seems like a fun kind of homage to make, but it doesn't necessarily translate into a good game. There are lots of little things that make me feel like it was a passion project, but it also doesn't feel like it was tested thoroughly before release. Not in the sense that there were bugs, as I don't think I encountered any, but in that it's not very fun to play. This'll scratch an itch if you have one for this kind of genre, but I don't think I could recommend it otherwise. There are so many better games to play. [5/10]