Saltsea Chronicles (2023)

I really loved Mutazione, but it felt like Saltsea Chronicles was barely on my radar by the time Die Gute Fabrik halted operations. I'm thankful for the friend who gifted me a copy, providing an excuse to push past the sadness over the studio's closure to give their swan song (at least for now) a fair shake.

Many of the things I enjoyed about Mutazione are alive and well in Saltsea:

• The writing! While many well-regarded narrative games lose me with long-winded prose, there's an airy naturalism and concise wit to the Die Gute Fabrik's dialog that always holds my attention.
• The visuals! I really admire the wonky, off-register 70s screen print look. It's so unique and so well suited to the stories they tell.
• The diversity of characters and perspectives! It is always so refreshing to see stories unfold from points of view I hadn't considered.
• The music! Never insistent, but always evocative and compelling.

The biggest changes between Mutazione and Saltsea are its branching story paths, multiple characters and multiple locations. On these elements, my feelings are a bit more mixed.

On one hand, Saltsea Chronicles feels more ambitious and grand. Visiting multiple islands makes the world seem larger, the crew provides opportunities to explore the game's themes more deeply, and the branching paths give the choices you make more consequence (while also encouraging multiple playthroughs).

On the other hand, I never felt as at home aboard the De Kelpie as I did on Mutazione: There's a distance to the presentation of the crew's quarters compared to the rest of your journey. And Saltsea suffers a little from the problem of many "choose-your-own-adventure" games, in that it redistributes some of the impact of its conclusion to those individual choices along the way. I also felt some friction between the game's branching paths and its excellent character development: I wanted to explore other options, but I felt a nagging sense of "this character wouldn't do that, though."

But those are minor critiques. Saltsea Chronicles is a wonderful compliment to Mutazione, and an excellent narrative-heavy point-and-click adventure. Its themes of trust, vulnerability and generational guilt and trauma are really well conveyed. It deserves more praise and attention.