Saltsea Chronicles

Saltsea has a much more episodic format than Mutazione. I was initially skeptical because I liked playing one character and building relationships over time, as you do in Mutazione, but Saltsea won me over. The writing is good, the characters are good, the emotional beats land. The art style is distinctive but a bit sparse. You can jump between chapters, but there's no way to automatically advance dialogue, so it's difficult to see every plot thread. (This might be as intended?) Card games aren't really my speed, and I found them an unwanted distraction when I had the chance to play during the storyline, but what I played of it was fun.

Saltsea Chronicles is a visual novel about heavy themes told through common experiences of love and friendships, worries and regrets. With that, it shares a lot with Mutazione, the studio previous outing. However, it feels much grander in scope, and that's all down to the change of theme. The narrative here is not on the effect of colonialism on an indigenous tribe anymore but is a tale of communities and rebuilding in a post-capitalist world. Everything follows. A full archipelago to explore, instead of a village. A crew to manage, instead of a single protagonist. Even the visual style is now zoomed out, giving the painterly art style much more room to breathe, to play with shapes and colours, free to be abstract. It's a game that stuck with me all year because of these cohesive design choices as much as for the wonderful cast of characters. It even has an in-theme trick-taking card game, what's not to love?