God, I love video games.
Looking back on all of the notes I took while playing through Die Gute Fabrik’s latest joint, it was a running theme and a recurring notion throughout. God I love video games. This medium, a beautiful merging of an entire history of human art, can do so much to elevate itself beyond strictly the image, the sound or the word when it comes to telling stories. Stories that are exciting and grandiose, or quiet and haunting, warm or romantic. Saltsea Chronicles is all of these things and more, another fantastic example of how storytelling has so much to gain from video games, and vice versa.
It all starts with a ship, and a crew, at the end of the world. Or in a world after the end, after a Flood of biblical proportions has all but hit a reset on humanity, and especially the relentless march of progress, leaving a new world to flourish with brand-new ideas and a collective trauma turned quasi-religious aversion to “old world’ technology. In a unique idea among relentlessly unique ideas, you play not just as one member of the crew of the De Kelpie but as the entire group, steering the course of their journey through conversation and action as they navigate the disparate islands of the Saltsea archipelago in search of their missing captain and a steadily-unravelling conspiracy.
While there are plenty of other examples of games that let players shape the course of a story through interaction and choice-making, I’ve seen very few that come close to being as malleable and intricately-networked as in Saltsea Chronicles. Across a single playthrough of its 12 chapters, you’ll frequently have the opportunity to not only choose your next destination – often at the expense of never setting foot on the alternate – but also which members of the crew of the De Kelpie to take ashore. This means that not only are there multiple possible ways to experience the major narrative beats, but everything from where you go, to what you do, and who is present at the time can have long-running ramifications and significantly alter how you experience each moment.
Saltsea manages to make its island-hopping adventure starring a playable party of up to eight incredibly diverse folks work by emphasising dialogue and narration over “gameplay,” trading out direct player control with a simple map-like interface of landscapes and interior cross-sections where each possible action is denoted by an appropriately-located icon. The beauty of deciding what to do next is that each of these icons very clearly signals what effect it’ll have on progress – be it a quick observation, a critical conversation or an action set to move the story forward.
With so many potential narrative threads weaving in and out of each other, the game’s Issues mechanic proves to be a particular masterstroke. As things progress you’ll occasionally see critical character conflicts recorded as Issues, which instead of implicit “gameplay” challenges are more guiding stars to cut through the murk of evolving relationships. It might be that your crew is struggling to trust a new shipmate, or that two have unresolved feelings for one another, but how or even if you decide to address these is up to you. Issues can be resolved with enough work, left open and active, or entirely scuppered, and the answers – as with real world issues – are never as obvious as facing things head on. They also work as a neat added device in communicating the state of each crew member coming out of major conflicts or triumphs, and of course they work to affect the many outcomes of the tale being told.
I’m profoundly fond of Die Gute Fabrik’s approach to the world its created in Saltsea Chronicles. There’s an innate and immediately obvious understanding of the human condition on show that’s informed the way in which the Archipelago’s history, cultures, people and potential have developed and it manifests in some very real-feeling social situations. Where it would traditionally be easy and obvious to take the high ground in games where branching dialogue allows and rewards it, it’s rarely the case in our own lives, and in Saltsea you’ll reach a deep enough level of empathy with these wonderfully-written characters that you’ll learn the real right things to say in the moment to get where you need to be.
All this is to say that while Saltsea is laid out in a gorgeous, printerly aesthetic that echoes the charm of the studio’s previous masterpiece, Mutazione, there’s a lot of reading here. If that doesn’t sound like your bag, this probably won’t be. Initially I was intimidated by the sheer volume of text in Saltsea Chronicles, but that apprehension faded fast when I realised how magnificently laid-out everything is. Dynamic formatting and generous use of negative space makes it a friendly read with an approachable tempo that shows the studio had everyone in mind when deciding how folks would read their game. It’s a constant reminder that the diversity in the game’s characters, relationships and ideas isn’t a fluke – its a product of a forward-thinking collective.
Putting aside the wanky critique for a moment, I almost didn’t get this review of Saltsea Chronicles written up in time for the arbitrary embargo deadline that us all video game critics feverishly crunch to adhere to. Not because there wasn’t enough time to get it done, or for lack of enthusiasm for writing it. Rather, it was wholly and entirely because of Spoils.
Not since Final Fantasy VIII’s Triple Triad has a game-within-a-game so entirely captured me, to the point that what should have been a roughly 10-hour experience could easily have ballooned out to double in just my first playthrough. Die Gute Fabrik has crafted an original and stupidly compelling card 2v2 game that, like Triple Triad, has evolved geographically to keep things interesting as you travel and continue to play. The studio supposedly used machine learning to teach CPU-controlled characters how to play effectively and it shows in how to-the-wire most of my wins have been. It’s intoxicating.
If I can eventually pull myself away from Spoils (conveniently playable at any time from the main menu), I’m going to continue to poke and prod at the seemingly-limitless possibilities in its story. Thankfully, I’m able to jump straight back into the beginning or end of any chapter and split it off into a new save to see where and how it branches based on where I steer my ship – or even who I take on board. Hopefully before I’m entirely done, Die Gute Fabrik will have tackled the fairly nasty screen tearing on PS5 along with some awkward UI bits and the occasional typo. Small issues in the face of what is a superb achievement but a noticeable mark on the experience nonetheless.
Coming from Mutazione, which has a soundtrack that I still listen to regularly, it’s also quite noticeable how much less ambitious the sound design is this time with little in the way of ambient soundscapes and an inoffensive but not overly memorable soundtack.
There are genuinely thousands more words I could write about what makes Saltsea Chronicles great though, perhaps even eclipsing Mutazione as an all-time favourite. The crew themselves, from the motherly Stew to the delightfully-awkward Kittick, are folks I’ll be sad to eventually leave behind. The jazzy little intro to each new chapter that spins the whole thing as an episodic drama gets under my skin every time. There’s a whole bloody island of cats. It’s all so brilliant and unapologetically different from anything else.
