Salt and Sanctuary

Salt and Sanctuary took the structure and mood of the Souls games and translated them into two dimensions without losing any of their weight. The player is shipwrecked on a grim island full of monsters, crumbling fortresses and silent priests, and gradually discovers an interconnected world in which shortcuts open from the inside, and every new path feels like a genuine victory. The story is not told directly; it is pieced together from item descriptions, fragments of conversation, and what the environment itself suggests about what once happened here.

The combat system is slow, weighty and demands patience. Every strike costs stamina, every roll has its windows, and enemies punish greed. Weapons are divided into many categories with differing reach and rhythm, joined by shields, bows, spells and prayers. Experience, in the form of salt, is lost on death and can only be recovered by returning to the place you fell. Character progression runs through an extensive skill tree that resembles a constellation and offers considerable freedom in how you build your character. Instead of bonfires, sanctuaries serve as rest points, where the player chooses an order that influences the services on offer and the nature of resting.

The hand-drawn graphics with sharp, dark silhouettes give the game a distinctive face and set it apart from imitators. The audio is restrained, relying more on silence, wind and the clash of weapons than on grand music, which only heightens the sense of loneliness. The PlayStation Vita version launched shortly after the release on the big console, and despite being a technically demanding title, it runs surprisingly well on the handheld and offers the complete content. Critics received the game favourably and called it the finest two-dimensional take on soulslike principles of its time. It is also worth appreciating that the game did not simply imitate its inspiration but added its own ideas, such as moving along walls and ceilings, or the order system that changes the entire course of the game. For players who enjoy a hard and deliberate style of progress, it is one of the most substantial experiences on the Vita altogether.