Die Gute Fabrik’s Mutazione follow-up, Saltsea Chronicles, is a poignant nautical adventure filled with endearing sailors.
The stakes are high. My misfit crew of sailors is midway through an island-trotting quest to find their missing captain. Rations are running low and there may be more disappearances to worry about. Yet, here I am partying on an island full of crabs. I see it as a fun reprieve from the stress of a water-logged post-apocalypse at first, but a crew member later posits that there’s something more significant to celebrations than simple fun: They’re an acknowledgment that everything is impermanent and that we have to honor what we have while it’s still here.
That bittersweet theme guides me through Saltsea Chronicles, a new narrative adventure by the creators of 2019’s Seamas McNally award-winning Mutazione. I may be exploring distant islands built on a flooded world, but my journey is anything but tragic. I’m soaking in cultures, earnestly working to understand and appreciate them. A dark fate may await my crew once we finally reach the end of our mystery, but that doesn’t mean we can’t stop to celebrate the miracles that surround us.
So long as you can handle a lengthy visual novel that requires a lot of button pressing to skip through text, Saltsea Chronicles is another moving narrative game from developer Die Gute Fabrik. An engrossing central mystery serves as a sturdy skeleton housing the adventure’s real heart: an endearing cast of characters eager to admire a densely detailed world with one another.Sightseeing in a new world
Saltsea Chronicles is technically a post-apocalyptic game, but that description makes it sound much grimmer than it is. A bit of historical table setting tells players that a once thriving world was destroyed due to climate change exacerbated by mega-corporations. When the tides rose, society was forced to rebuild on a series of islands. Rather than dealing with the immediate fallout of that, the story takes place far in the future where the world seems to be in harmony.
The adventure takes players to a series of colorful islands, each of which is painted in Die Gute Fabrik’s signature visual style.
