Salt and Sanctuary

Salt and Sanctuary is a 2D action RPG clearly inspired by the Dark Souls series, carrying over its combat toughness, stamina system, and risk of losing progress into a side-scrolling view enriched with metroidvania elements and exploration of an interconnected world. As a shipwrecked pilgrim, the player explores a dark, cleverly interconnected island full of monsters, cults, and mythological horrors, gradually collecting weapons, armor, and spells, and building the character through an extensive skill tree that visually resembles a night sky full of constellations. Combat is deliberately slow and methodical, requiring precise timing of dodges, blocks, and parries, and punishes carelessness with the loss of accumulated salt, the local equivalent of souls from soulslike games, which can be recovered by returning to the spot where you died. The choice of weapons is meanwhile very wide, from heavy two-handed weapons through fast daggers to magic staves.

On PS4, where the game originally launched ahead of other platforms, the carefully animated pixel graphics and hand-drawn environments worked very well thanks to the dark, gothic atmosphere and gloomy, choral music underscoring the despair of the whole island. The level design tightly connects individual areas through shortcuts and hidden paths, which rewards thorough and patient exploration just as in the big action RPGs the game openly draws inspiration from.

Salt and Sanctuary is considered one of the most successful combinations of soulslike mechanics with a classic 2D metroidvania, and it inspired a number of later indie titles in the same genre across platforms. It is still praised today for its fair, honest difficulty, dense atmosphere, and depth of possible character builds, without needing the budget of a large studio to achieve it. The optional cooperative and competitive multiplayer, moreover, offered something that wasn't entirely a given in soulslike games of the time.

Why play: For soulslike fans craving a dense 2D metroidvania with fair difficulty and depth of character builds, plus the option to play cooperatively or compete with another player.