Sea Salt Review — Russell Troxel

Oct 26

Oct 26 Sea Salt Review

According to a quick internet search, the god Dagon was originally a fertility god worshiped in several ancient nations in the Middle East. Although apparently worshiped in association with crops and agriculture, Dagon was later confused as a sea god, leading to depictions of him as a half-man, half-fish mermaid-like creature. Then in 1917, horrible racist and author H.P. Lovecraft cemented the association of Dagon as a sea god in his short story Dagon, which was my first encounter with Dagon. Lovecraft and other writers contributing to the now famous “Lovecraft Mythos” repeatedly used Dagon as a nautical terror, carrying forward the false attribution. And continuing the trend, last week Swedish indie studio YCJY released Sea Salt.

In Sea Salt, players take the roll of Dagon, a sea god who holds sway over a vaguely Renaissance-era generic European city-state. For what must be centuries, the people have given worship and sacrifices to Dagon faithfully. Then came the day when Dagon demanded the sacrifice of the Archbishop, head of the Church of Dagon and mouthpiece Dagon uses to speak with his mortal flock. Self-preservation overcomes faith and the Archbishop refuses, enraging Dagon and prompting him to send horrors from the deep against the town to claim the life of the Archbishop. Tragically, the Archbishop abuses his position and convinces the people that the monsters are a test sent by Dagon and must be fought at all costs. So players must carve a bloody trail through the misguided faithful to claim the sniveling preacher.

Making the player the commander of an army of aquatic horrors, Sea Salt could have played several different ways but unfortunately the developers picked what might have been the worst way. The way players control their units is through a vaguely occult circle that players move along the ground with the W, A, S, and D keys and all of the player’s units chase it like a cat with a laser pointer. This control scheme is never fun to use and is often quite infuriating, because Sea Salt gives players access to units that have different movement speeds and are different sizes. This means that the best case scenario for the limited control scheme, a single mass of units, isn’t even possible because some units will move slower than others, changing the player’s force from a dangerous swarm to an unorganized parade. What’s worse, higher health units are typically slower than lower health units, meaning the units that should be leading the charge are often late to the party and the vulnerable units charge head first into enemy fire. Probably the most aggravating facet of this control scheme is that not all units will take the same route to get to where the control circle is. Since there’s no control beyond giving the units a destination, some will go a different way than the majority of the force and wander alone into enemy forces, so players lose units not because they are bad at the game, but because the game can’t be made to understand what the player wants. The only other controls the player have is an interaction button used to activate summoning circles or enter the next area, and pressing spacebar to make their units attack. For some reason, the player’s units do not always attack what the guiding circle is near, instead the units attack whatever is closest to them about 40% of the time. This inconsistency is bad enough on its own, but once players start getting access to units who can attack from range, melee units will often find themselves without support from the ranged units because the ranged units got distracted by other targets within their range. This problem only gets worse when the more interesting units are incorporated into the player’s horde. Leaping ambush units, support units, and self-destructing units all fall flat because the necessary nuance to use them effectively is impossible with Sea Salt’s overly-simplistic control scheme.

I don’t think there is a way a control scheme like this wouldn’t have gotten on my nerves, but the reason I’m so passionately against it in Sea Salt is because I love so many of the ideas the developers have for this game. The first is that, before starting any level, players must decide which apostle of Dagon to employ. These apostles dictate which units the player begins each level with and also changes some aspects of the game. The apostles are fantastic because each of them is brilliantly crafted to feel unique and flavorful. The apostle of gambling and misfortune provides a limited selection of units that the player can summon but also lets players access extremely powerful cheats that have devastating effect, while the apostle of sorcery gives players a handful of magical cultists and grants players the abilities to sacrifice their units in a ritual to gain incredibly rare and powerful units. Beyond the apostles, the units themselves are great. While there are a few unremarkable options, so many are fascinating. My personal favorite is the lich, an undead wizard who does very little damage by itself but also raises fallen enemies as haunting specters to fight for the player. There are also worms that spread caustic slime as they move, creatures that launch damaging adhesive to restrain and kill foes, horrid jellyfish that explode into swarms of crawling units upon death, swamp creatures that use creeping vines to tear down enemy barricades and bunkers, and cats that will furiously leap upon enemies and shred their flesh as soon as they land. Like I said, these are the most interesting ones, but there are also the classic archetypes of strategy games such as fast scouts good for hit-and-run tactics and burly fighters who excel in melee combat.

There is so much good in Sea Salt that is unfortunately stuck behind possibly the worst control mechanic I’ve seen this year. I don’t want to discourage developers from trying new things, but there is a reason why there are set standards for how to control massive armies in strategic encounters. Having seen what the developers at YCJY are capable of in terms of creativity and flavorful world-building, if they created an XCOM-style, turn-based strategy game I would buy it sight-unseen. Unfortunately though, I can’t recommend spending any amount of money on Sea Salt.