Saltsea Chronicles

A crew searches a watery world for a missing friend in this evocative game of exploration and conversation.

At certain points, I couldn’t help but feel like this game was trying to do a little too much. Dealing with themes of climate change, generational trauma, community, and loss is a lot to pack into one game. It also presented an ambitious number of character perspectives for players to navigate. Still, life today with all its woes also feels like a little too much, and I respect a team that unflinchingly sails into the headwinds of the weighty issues that have come with life in 2023.

Involving narrative game reveals little by little the complex relationships of a ship's crew seeking their kidnapped captain

A beautifully written tale about loss, friendship and the ties that bind us together, set in a sumptuous oceanic post-apocalypse. It might not quite stick the ending, but it's the many journeys you'll take getting there, not the final destination, that really make Saltsea Chronicles sing.

There's a lot to like about Saltsea Chronicles. It has a clever structure, low-pressure gameplay, and even a neat minigame to play in each location. Add on top an eye-catching style and meaningful decision-making, and you have a pleasant, ship-shape adventure.

A relaxing exploration of a fictional world in which characters discover themselves as much as they do each other.

Saltsea Chronicles is a poignant nautical adventure about the distances between us and what we gain from crossing them.

My experience with Saltsea Chronicles was a very conflicted one. It’s unlike anything I’ve played before and I appreciated its genuine uniqueness. It boasts an intricately crafted world with an intriguing investigative system, colourful characters and seemingly endless choices. But as much as I liked the narrative conceit, the way it unfolded felt long-winded in a way that struggled to keep a firm hold of my attention.

With an unusual art style and stable of characters you’ll embark on a very story-driven journey with plenty of choices to be made

Saltsea Chronicles, put more simply, is triumphant. It’s up there (amongst very tough competition) for the best game I played this year. I found its measured and realistic portrait of the collectivist society it portrays extremely hopeful. It pushes the medium forward, as cliche as that may be to say, in its insistence on theorizing the specifics of a social and political philosophy to its conclusion.