Beautiful game, well written, and deeply charming. Explores many rarely encountered character archetypes, making this relatable to huge numbers of people. But I think it is slightly weak as a game. It's mostly a kinetic novel. You do get some choices (like which characters to bring on a given chapter or which island to visit next), but there's no real interactivity within any of the game's scenarios. For instance, one chapter is a rather cute take on a murder mystery where the victim is a shattered glass dome which contained a biome. The characters do a cute little Agatha Christie thing, complete with a big reveal at the end where the detective gathers all the suspects together and does a "j'accuse!". But there's absolutely no investigation on the part of the player. All you do is click through lots of dialog. The game attempts to juice up its game-y-ness or interactivity with the bridge minigame (called "spoils" in the text), but it's purely optional, to the point that it felt extraneous to me. For example, in one chapter, a character is finally to be reunited with a lost loved one, who is just at the top of a hill -- but first they stop for a dozen rounds of bridge? C'mon. Still, this game is an impressive feat of games writing. In particular, it achieves a huge amount of worldbuilding and character development without an excessive wordcount, which is impressive. It's disappointing that the studio had to close, as I'd like to see them continue to experiment with bringing interactivity to their art pieces.

Ay Die Gute Fabrik. Ya de por sí una pena que uno de los mejores juegos narrativos recientes no estuviese teniendo tanto impacto en el momento, aun si quizá en el futuro vaya cogiendo la misma fama que ha ido consiguiendo Mutazione.
Sigo sentirme sin ser preciso en lo que quiero escribir, pero siendo una ocasión así, mejor decirlo que callármelo, aun si sea tropezarse hacia delante.

Que un juego tenga un informe de su impacto climático y que vaya de mareas, un post-mundo y sus distintas gentes no es una ironía en la cara pero encapsula bastante lo que está siendo y lo que vendrá de 2024: Una calamidad (que se quiere hacer pasar por natural) que va a destruir o dejar en los huesos a muchos equipos. Porque aunque los videojuegos van a seguir existiendo tras un año tan malo, cómo no querer dejar la industria si prácticamente todo ámbito creativo está sangrando.

Pero bueno, sin querer centrarme tampoco tanto en esto aunque sea lo inmediato, también quiero aprovechar y elogiar la obra porque aun tras tanto tiempo me sigue calentando la cantidad de personajes NB, que los personajes suenen como personas reales (no sólo por sus experiencias vitales, si no sintiendo sus diferencias de edad, gustos y objetivos. Sin querer sonar redundante, enfatizo con ganas que se caracterice tan bien a adolescentes y ancianos, cuando en tantas ocasiones se siente a alguien de 20-30 años haciéndolo desde una visión muy estrecha, por mucho que sea inintencionada) y que sin entrar en spoilers, con respeto y seriedad en varios capítulos troncales se nota lo bien que consiguen lograr empatizar tanto con la tripulación al igual que toda la gente que te encuentras.
Que ya de paso, se habla mucho de Writing for Games Theory & Practice como buen libro, pero también me sirvió para recordar mejor Mutazione y ver que Saltsea fue la culminación de las ideas de este equipo liderado por Nicklin (Es que de lo más evidente tras leer el libro es por ejemplo la inolvidable secuencia animada entre capítulos que hace parecer al juego una serie de las que menciona siempre como sus mayores inspiraciones)

Tras esos pensamientos dispersos, cierro con lo que escribí (con pocos cambios) al terminarlo allá por Octubre:
Uno de esos juegos de rutas en los que cada persona que lo juega tiene una experiencia distinta.
Pero en este caso, nunca había tenido antes un apego tan grande con el universo del juego.
Me he querido resistir a recomenzar el juego porque aunque tenga ganas, quiero que respire un poco: Como si al empezar una segunda tan pronto, fuese a mancillar la primera.
Hasta ese punto he sentido que esa fue mi tripulación.

I played mutazione, an earlier game of this developer's, a couple years back, and enjoyed it. aspects of the gameplay somewhat often dragged that experience down, but unmistakeable in the game was an abundance of creativity and heart. so when I saw that Die Gute Fabrik had released another bright, intriguing game with an intriguing cast of characters, I decided to lead gut first and check it out, with minimal pre-research

and I am so delighted I did! I loved this experience

to start, the art design is exceptional. lush. unrelentingly creative. the world and its characters are so gorgeously realized. and not just in the classic ways, like with its stunning color palettes, but also in how it interprets every locale, building, character.

the character designs in particular are my favorite, in part because though they can seem abstract in style, they do a better and more meaningful job capturing the beauty and breadth of human visual diversity than every other game, movie, tv show, comic that stacks itself with template mannequin models. zo's nose, kittick's body, stew's eyes, amrita's face—I see these wonderful features in the world around me, but rarely reflected in art.

and this embrace of variety and diversity reflects in the game's themes and narrative. it's a story about community, and finding healing and growth and hope in connection. the crew as the main character is quite fun, and tending to their relationships via the choices you make at each island really drives home the importance of acting as a community

and mechanically, I commend how the game makes it so accessible to explore and tinker with save states and make new choices. the format encourages exploration in a way far improved from mutazione, and every chance taken to learn about the world of saltsea and its players felt so rewarding

I have some potential notes on some final act storytelling choices that I'm still chewing on. nothing capsizing. but I do find myself wondering if they were delivered as well as they needed to be, or if that gnawing is just part of the experience.

all in all, an absolute superb end-of-year surprise from what has now become one of my favorite developers. a sequel isn't necessary for the completeness of the experience, but boy howdy would I not be mad at one. I'll remain dreamsailing until then

i loved Mutazione and voraciously raced through my first playthrough of this. the art is gorgeous, it feels like you're zooming around a big picturebook. the story takes place long after the world is destroyed due to climate catastrophe, and people have only legends and remnants of the world we live in today. the islands of the Saltsea Archipelago have developed tenets to prevent another catastrophe - they practice collectivism, restorative justice, and shared grief.

the cast is full of delightful, nuanced characters. there are so many choices and branches (and a cool card game with different rules on each island!), it's really a level up from their last game. definitely recommend this (and Mutazione!) for fans of modern narrative adventure games like Kentucky Route Zero, Night In The Woods, Pentiment, Citizen Sleeper, etc

Saltsea Chronicles throws you straight into the action without establishing why I should care about our missing captain. It’s a slow burn story-wise, where I wasn’t invested in the characters initially. I learned to love some of them though, and enjoyed how distinct and real each of them felt, flaws and all.

Its gameplay is sort of a visual novel, where choices don't drastically change the ending of the game, but have many branching effects on the characters' interpersonal relationships. Picking which island you go to has the biggest impact on your playthrough, since depending on your choice, you'll run into different characters with a few of them being recruitable for your sea voyage. They try to make it seem that bringing on more characters has drawbacks (not as much food to go around and cramped living spaces) but it only changes some of the dialogue scenarios. The other biggest choice is which characters you pick to go to shore. It only changes the dialogue, but it's a fun way to try out different characters. See which ones you like.

The writing is all great, but unfortunately there aren't enough moments of levity. It's all very serious and somber in tone. The main reason why I had a difficult time fully enjoying the story. There is a twist near the end that rocked me to my core lol. I won't be spoiling that here. The whole game just felt so safe with my crew. Reminded me of Spiritfarer, where you think it's a chill/somber tale, but then turns you into a sobbing wreck by the end.

Random comments:
Had a fantastic and novel art style. Rich colors and beautiful moody music as well. The intro cutscene that plays at the start of each chapter is slick! Gives you a little glimpse of each character and their personality. When they use words specific to this world, a helpful hint system pops up that gives context to the words that are used. It was a nice addition and helped me keep track of worldbuilding. The scrapbook that fills out over your journey is a fun way to reflect on what has happened. I wish you could walk around these environments instead of swiping between areas. It made me feel a bit disconnected from the world.

Saltsea Chronicles starts slow. Really, really slow. It has its flurishes, I love how characters talk over and interrupt each other, how that is displayed in the text, but for the first ~6 hours SC is cozy, but without anything captivating happening and with good character moments hidden within mountains of texts.
But in the second half, the game ramps up and does not slow down anymore. Characters develop convincingly, tragedy strikes in sad but beautiful ways, and the islands you visited go through great, dramatic changes. Comulating in a satisfying confrontation with the "big bad" (iykyk). And that really made the slow start worth it. SC has a lot to show, a lot to tell, wrapped in strong writing and a simple but beautiful art style (music's a bit grating though).

Also, and this is a tiny thing, but I care about it and so many games get this wrong: SC has a cheerful little intro video with jolly music to play at the beginning of every chapter. When one chapter ends with the tragic death of a character, the next chapter does not play the intro. So many games get stuff like this wrong. The amount of tragic character deaths I ve seen undercut by level up jingles. Two thumbs up for this part alone.

DISCLAIMER:
This review is entirely for my own sake. You are welcome to read it but it may or may not contain spoilers for the whole game.

I sadly didn't get too hooked into the story of this one which led to me playing it less and less and eventually dropping it.
I was really enjoying the characters and was very happy to see that one of them was non-binary.

Overall, dialogue heavy game that I hope to back into at some point.