Salt and Sanctuary

Hi there,

Years after years I keep going back to salt and sanctuary, and can’t find anything new to replace it.

I first looked into « metroidvania-likes », but learned that a proper character progression/build diversity is a must have for me.

(So no hollow knight, blasphemous, etc…)

Do you guys have some recommandations for me please ?

Many thanks in advance.

EDIT : So I tried The last faith, death’s gambit and grime.

I definitely can’t get into the last faith and death’s gambit. Character progression looks ok here from what I can tell. But gameplay wise they are miles and miles behind salt and sanctuary for me.

I find the gameplay of grime very smooth on the other hand. Still refunded it though. I definitely plan on playing it at some point for its « uniqueness », but it’s not what I’m looking for right now.

I will try the deepening fire next and see if it can fulfill my S&S urge.

This game has really caught me off-guard. Well, I knew I'd probably like it. I like Metroidvanias and I like Dark Souls. Yet, Salt and Sanctuary has surpassed all my expectations.

It has been sitting in my backlog for years and I don't really know why it took this long for me to start it up. But once I did, I just couldn't stop. I have now done 3 playthroughs, taking my strength/heavy armor/wisdom (essentially a paladin, even though I started as cleric) build to NG+2 and taking my mage (full magic with light armor) to NG+1.

About when I started with Salt and Sanctuary, I also gave the latest God of War (which recently came to PC) a go. I like playing two games in parallel, having a 2D indie game and a huge, spectacle 3D game to mix things up seemed like a good idea. I haven't touched God of War in weeks. Every time I think about starting it, I see the Salt and Sanctuary icon next to it and think "well, I'd rather play that". And then I do. For hours.

So what is it all about? Basically, Dark Souls in 2D. You have the typical character options: Magic, prayers, strength based weapons, dexterity based weapons, shields, light and heavy armor. Equipment weight, rolling through attacks, fast/mid/slow rolls. The Dark Souls combat system was wonderfully adapted for 2D. Heavy weapons have the same heavy feeling as they do in DS. Hitting enemies just feels right and satisfying. As Metroidvania, it also has a lot of platforming and it pulls it of amazingly well. As you progress, you unlock movement abilities and the game goes from feeling slow and almost slugging to zipping around disappearing platforms with dashes. All while controlling very precise, at least after I re-mapped movement from the analoge stick to the D-pad. Which, luckily, the game makes very easy and I absolutely recommend doing so. And while you are at it, best re-map attacks to RS/RT as well, otherwise casting spells and aiming (with the right analoge stick) is near impossible.

Some minor nitpicking: Builds are not balanced. Strength based heavy weapons, ideally with weapon buffs through either consumables or support magic, are just stronger than anything else in NG because they reach their scaling soft cap the fastest. Magic comes close but falls off in NG+ since the highest damage magic spells put a debuff on the player, increasing damage taken. Which is fine in NG, but in NG+ I found that I just die all the time if I go for those spells and the ones that don't debuff the player are great, but ultimately can't compete with a buffed greatsword. A str (or, sooner or later, any melee) build on the other hand just becomes immortal in NG+/NG++ (well, except for gravity, the actual main boss) when, after soft capping str/wis/will, endurance is high enough for the heaviest of armors. Another minor issue, well, at leat for me: There are skill points findable as loot in the game world. Which are missable. I went into NG+ without collecting all of them, which means now my main character is 2 skill points short of what he could have at his lvl/NG-status. Which ultimately doesn't matter since scaling is negligible after the soft cap, but I still find it annoying. And the game should really have an in-game map. Navigating it would be much better with one. But it's easy enough to look one up online anyway.

Back to praising the game: Another thing it copies from Dark Souls and does so in an amazing way is the connected world. You unlock shortcuts and end up in familiar places, which feels really great. Teleporting between sanctuaries (essentially bigger bonfires) is quick and easy as well, as it should be, which makes the shortcuts and the connected world ever more awesome. They took the best design lession to heart: Design a world as if there was no fast travel, but then add fast travel anyway. Convenient and immersive, in this case you can really have your cake and eat it, too. I absolutely love it! The environments are diverse, each one unique and challenging and absolutely infuriating in its own way. Yes, they even have a kind-of Blighttown ...

Another great thing about it is the skill tree. Like in Dark Souls, you get one stat point each lvl up. Unlike Dark Souls, you don't just increase the stat, you unlock nodes in a rather huge skill tree, each node increasing the associated stat by one. But nodes also unlock the ability to use equipment. So in order to use heavy armor, you need high endurance but you also need the corresponding heavy armor node unlocked. It adds a nice bit of customisation to builds and it also encourages diversifying stats at least a little bit, because to get to those nodes you usually have to pick some other useful stats (e.g., going down the route to swords will automatically also increase your endurance and willpower a bit) along the way. It also means that unlocking skills which you ultimatley don't end up using isn't bad at all, as long as you can use the stat they boost.

This game is one of my highlights this year. I've played The Last of Us 2 this year, I've started God of War, I've played Bayonetta 2 and I'm having way more fun with Salt and Sanctuary than with any of these AAA titles. And better yet, the successor, Salt and Sacrifice will launch in Mai. I might just not be patient with that one ...

It’s got a big discount on Steam rn. I was wondering what people’s opinions were on the game, I’ve seen some people praising it, but some disliked it. Personally I’m a huge fan of soulslikes and soulsy meroidvanias so I’m interested in it. Any thoughts? Or other recommendations?

Hello! We're Michelle and James of Ska Studios: the two person, two cat development team responsible for Salt and Sanctuary. Our little Seattle-based studio has also made a bunch of Xbox 360 games, including The Dishwasher: Dead Samurai, its sequel The Dishwasher: Vampire Smile, Charlie Murder and the cult classic (and twice-named le gem on ) I MAD3 A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES 1N IT!!1

Like so many, we fell in love with videogames playing Nintendo as kids, so being able to bring a title we made to a Nintendo console for the first time ever is some kind of crazy dream come true. In fact, when James was 10, he would draw game design documents (mostly maps and monsters) hoping to somehow turning them into games someday, and Michelle even got fan art in Nintendo Power when she was 14!

We'll be here answering your questions for at least two hours, so please: ask us anything!

Update: We can go for another 20 minutes, then we have to call a guy about some stuff! Thanks for all the great questions!

Update 2: It's been 4 hours, we're going to call it! Thanks so much for helping us have an awesome first ever Ska Studios AMA! We're going to try to reply to more questions tonight, but this has really made our day! Thanks!

So I played about 3 hours of it this morning and loved it. Only found one boss and looking at the trophy list there are tons of bosses. So the game must be big. I love how they designed the 2d world to feel like Dark Souls. The transition between areas is excellent. The whole feel of the game oozes Souls Series and it's done so well.

The atmosphere is perfect so far but even more importantly the game feels like their is immense depth to it just under the surface that you don't quite understand yet. One of the most important aspects of the Souls series is that depth that is just below the surface that you need to dig into. For instance I was exploring a new area and found this weird shrine. I talked to it and the screen gets really tight and distorted and a voice asks me to kneel. Of course I say no fuck you buddy. Then he goes into a big threatening speech and basically says "oh you will kneel... Eventually". Then later on I come back to that space and it's gone. Like yes! This is what a Souls game feels like and having it with this awesome art style and in a 2D genre is so perfect!

Adding onto the Dark Souls and Metroidvania inspirations this game has the Path of Exile/Final Fantasy X style skill point Web, which I am a big fan of. Just browsing through it seems like there is a lot of variety to the type of character you can make.

I gotta say this game is really speaking to me in a way few games do. I'm the perfect audience for it being a big Souls fans and a big 2d Metroidvania fan. Still the ideas can be really good but from what I've seen the execution on these ideas is just stellar. Its all really come together to make a great game. Its sooooooo good!

Bought Salt and Sanctuary and Salt and Sacrifice on sale after I watched a bit of a gameplay video and I liked it but man, I can't even defeat the first boss. I made a cleric first and after being wrecked by the boss I thought that class might be hard to use so I started all over with a knight and got trashed again. Tutorials are a bit shit because no one told me that with rolling you can dodge attacks, but I got trashed regardless.

So my question is, is the game omega hard or am I just missing something or am I bad and trash?

I just didn't have the time yet due to being too invested in other games, but now I felt I should look into it again and every time I revisit the game, I'm amazed by how good the combat is, how smooth everything feels and how good the level design is.
Is there a secret tip to feel the same way about Salt and Sanctuary? It still feels a little clunky to play it and I have even less an idea of where to go, it's so immense and there is no map.

It's strange that the game which most closely captures the feel, tone and joy of playing through the original dark souls is a low budget 2D platformer, but there it is. I've played through over half a dozen soulslikes hoping to recapture the magic that Dark Souls first exemplified, and the little game Salt and Sanctuary just leapt to the top of that list.

Anyone familiar with dark souls will immediately be hit with nostalgia as early as the character creation screen, which is VERY heavily inspired by Dark Souls both aesthetically and game design wise. It almost feels TOO similar at first in a way that makes you wonder if this is literally just a cheap clone of Dark Souls, but thankfully the gameplay, design, and lore are good enough to let it stand on its own.

The stamina system is implemented really well, which gives the combat that same deliberate pace we're used to in DS1, but exploring and platforming still feel seamless and fluid.

Most importantly though, the game just feels fun to explore. You encounter new areas at a very good clip, and so far every enemy type and zone has felt very inspired, clearly paying homage to Dark Souls in feel and tone, but introducing challenges and mechanics that are perfectly suited to the 2D design. Definitely worth checking out if you want an awesome 2D souls-like experience.

I realize I am in the minority here but I hate this game. There is simply no direction at all. I have no idea what anything does or what any of the icons mean and nothing in the game explains it. I upgraded weapons and now I cannot hold them and nothing explains how to hold them. I simply do not have time to figure stuff out and I am moving on to other games. Also I have heard many people call this a Metroidvania, however I would not consider it that at all. Someone can try to change my mind but good luck.