We’ve been looking forward to Saltsea Chronicles for a while. This is the latest game from Die Gute Fabrik, the Copenhagen-based developer responsible for delivering the rather excellent Mutazione back in 2019. We loved Mutazione, and so we’ve had high expectations for Saltsea Chronicles. Both games have a heavy focus on narrative, but deal with storytelling in a very different way. It’s safe to say that both games are equally special, too: this latest offering has not left us disappointed in the slightest.
It’s probably easiest to describe Saltsea Chronicles as a visual novel. It’s text heavy, with its story unfolding through dialogue and written composition. There’s no voice acting or speech of any kind, except the odd exclamation word heard faintly in the background as you read the game’s dancing text. Literally dancing at times; the words here feel alive and jiggle on the screen for your attention. There’s a lot of emotion stacked into Saltsea Chronicles’ choice of typefaces: a change in font represents a change in language, for example. Small text illustrates a thought, or a mumble under someone’s breath. Large, dancing words represent shock, exclaim or intrigue. Words are very powerful here, and their visual representation is just beautiful.
But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Just what is Saltsea Chronicles? Boiled down to its core, this is a mystery adventure that puts players in charge of a motley crew aboard a ship. Their leader – captain, or in the case of one crew member, their love – has gone missing. Disappearing into the night, they’re unsure if she’s been taken or if she’s simply absconded of her own free will. Some crew members aren’t even sure if she’s still alive. Nevertheless, they’re to set out on the open water to try to find her, trailing from one island to another, gathering clues as they go.
The choices you make while playing Saltsea Chronicles matter a lot. Which crew member do you choose to head out on an expedition? How do you react to a certain situation? What questions do you ask a random person you meet on your journey? What makes the choices here rather different is that you’re not simply controlling one character, so you can’t simply decide their personality type and run with it. Rather, you’re overseeing the entire crew, making choices that affect them all. Your decisions will have an impact on crew relationships and individual characters’ morale, so choose carefully.
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You can also choose your path through the world of Saltsea, to an extent. At each chapter’s end you’ll have the choice of two paths to follow, navigating to one island or another. And so, if you want to see everything that the game has to offer you’re probably going to want to play through multiple times. It’s worth it to see more of Saltsea Chronicles’ beautiful environments, too. Set in a mysterious, flooded land, there’s a lot to learn about the world around you. You’ll always have questions remaining, sure, but each new island you visit tells you slightly more about where you are and the people surrounding you. Brought to life with a whimsical, colourful art style, every screen here looks absolutely divine.
Environments can be interacted with: panning left and right across a scrolling location will reveal numerous spots that can be clicked on. Some will simply provide a modicum of detail – perhaps a note about a work of art, or something about one of the weird and wonderful sea creatures that lurks in the waters around the island you’re standing on. Others will reveal an interaction: maybe your crew mates will talk amongst themselves or you’ll meet a new person to converse with. Important interactions are marked with a different icon, and some interactions simply cannot be missed at all, refusing you to move forward until you’ve witnessed it.
You don’t have to click on every single thing that Saltsea Chronicles offers up, then, but there’s a good chance you’ll want to. It’s all so beautifully presented, its dialogue and narrative elegantly written and packed with so much personality that you’ll want to eke out every possible interaction. Clicking on one point might reveal several more, and occasionally you’ll find buildings you can enter, inside revealing many more points of interest. Scroll back to the other end of an island and you might find there are suddenly new points of interest, or new conversations with character you’ve already met. We could only move on once we were sure we’d interacted with everything.
What deserves a special mention is Saltsea Chronicles’ very own card game. Called Spoils, you’ll find a player of the game on most islands you visit and, if you so wish, you can take a respite from the story to join in. You absolutely should, because Spoils is a joy to play. Fiendish, for sure, but simple enough to learn. Rules are learned piecemeal, with new tutorials becoming available as you progress through the game, making it very easy to wrap your head around.
We’re not going to regurgitate the rules of Spoils here, but it’s safe to say that it’s a highlight of the game: we’ve eagerly sought out every game of Spoils on every new island we’ve visited. It may not be pertinent to the story progression, but it’s a very welcome addition that adds yet more flavour to this colourful, mysterious world.
Your search for your missing crew member will take you to some intriguing places in Saltsea Chronicles. This narrative-focused adventure will hook you with its gorgeous art and its expertly-written prose. Action-heavy this is not, but with the choices you make having real weight and the mystery of the story keeping you on your toes, there’s a good chance you’ll find it impossible to tear yourself away. And when you’re done, you’ll probably want to jump straight back in to experience it all again, seeing what other paths you could have gone down.
Saltsea Chronicles Review – GameSpew’s Score
