Salt and Sanctuary

Salt and Sanctuary is Ska Studios' 2D action-RPG that translates the FromSoftware Souls-like formula into a side-scrolling format. A doomed sailor is shipwrecked on an uncharted island in a fog-shrouded, mossy-corpse-strewn world, and the gameplay loop of explore, learn, die, retry maps cleanly onto Dark Souls's mechanics.

Combat is fast and brutal with the same stamina-management discipline as its inspiration. Light and heavy attacks, parries, dodge rolls, and shield blocks all play familiar roles, but the 2D plane makes positioning and timing reads tighter. 600+ items — weapons, armor, spells, consumables — feed the build system, which is genuinely deep, with multiple class branches across the skill tree.

The world is interconnected in classic Souls fashion, with shortcuts unlocking back to earlier zones as you progress and bonfire-equivalent Sanctuaries acting as save and rest points. Multiple covenants and factions to align with affect the available Sanctuary services and storyline outcomes.

Local co-op and PvP are supported. The art style is unmistakably Ska Studios — hand-drawn, dark, painterly, in the lineage of the studio's earlier The Dishwasher series and Charlie Murder. James Silva (the studio's solo developer) calls this his most ambitious title to date, and the praise from the Souls-fan community has held up across the years since release.