As we've seen a number of times now, there's a certain divider where the "Dark Souls-like" appellation either makes sense both thematically and mechanically or has been hurriedly misapplied to games of a particularly harsh difficulty curve. You've probably seen enough cases online where someone refers to a game as the "Dark Souls of [blank]", and it's taken on this reputation as being the telltale sign of a lack of imagination on the part of the critic. To truly be Dark Souls-esque, the game has to embody more than just corpse runs, high difficulty, non-linear exploration, and tense, timing-based combat, all of which have existed in video games long before Demon's Souls first terrorized an unsuspecting crowd of JRPG fanatics and From Software apologists (which is what we called From fans back in the Enchanted Arms/Kuon/Eternal Ring days). In order to craft an effective homage, you have to replicate the feel and the atmosphere of a Souls game also: the oppressive bleakness of a kingdom not so much threatened by annihilation but long since abandoned to it; the monstrous foes and bosses that are as pitiable as they are repugnant; permanently overcast, crepuscular or nocturnal environments; a dour color scheme of muted grays and browns and coppery reds; the other wayward souls you meet along the way, marching along to what is almost certainly a poetic and unfortunate conclusion to their tales; and just a general grim foreboding that never lets up, and really only gets worse the more you learn about the land and its woes. The games most closely hewing to the Souls formula also ensure that their gloomy lore is in check also, not only revelling in the same murk as their chief influence but using it to clarify where their influences lie. Anything else is either barely Souls-adjacent or, well, just a difficult game that would probably be better served by any number of synonyms - challenging, demanding, intense, tough, formidable - than "Dark Souls-like".

Ska Studios, a developer which I had yet to be formally introduced to, went ahead and developed a 2D version of a Souls game with Salt and Sanctuary, basing the mechanics and world design on both the Souls series and their earlier The Dishwasher games; its grim monotone look and real-time combat already a good fit for a Souls tribute. Each character model and piece of equipment is hand-drawn in the studio's inimitable style, and combined together to resemble paper dolls. Beyond that, the game retains much of Souls's miscellany: there are save points, the titular Sanctuaries, that provide succor, checkpoints and a means to level up the player character; there are a multitude of bosses lying in wait, most blocking critical paths and items while others offer an optional challenge; there are covenants to join, each with their own unique benefits; the player earns a resource, the titular Salt, from defeating enemies which can then be put towards upgrading the player character, but is lost upon death unless the player can recover it; the stat system works similarly, adapting later Souls games which had separate stats that govern maximum equipment load and stamina gauge size and either strength or dexterity as the governing damage stat depending on the player's weapon preference (or intelligence/wisdom if they happen to be a caster); weapons that can either be upgraded, transmuted via unique boss items or replaced with stronger base versions; an open-ended progression which isn't as fully non-linear as much as it requires the player to feel out new areas and determine the right path for themselves based on obstacles and enemy difficulty; strong healing items which are finite in number but can be replenished after resting, as well as weaker healing items that can be bought or found; and the always regrettable (in the sense that you will inevitably have your heart broken by it) trial to recover your level up currency upon death from the creature that killed you, adapting Bloodborne's particular variant on Souls's most notable and pernicious feature.

There's some smart tweaks as well. The game retains Bloodborne's idea of having enemies "capture" the player's upgrade resource upon death, forcing to the player to defeat their erstwhile killer in order to recover what was lost - however, because bosses are more likely to kill you several times in a row, they hold on to what they've already taken and cumulatively add what they take on successive runs, returning to you the full amount once they finally perish. [NB: Quick correction here! Bosses don't retain salt indefinitely, but rather return the amount they took last time if you damage them enough. The cut-off is something like a 1/3 or 1/4 of their total health. If you die after this point, the boss takes your salt again plus whatever you picked up on the way. As long as you keep hitting that cut-off, you won't lose anything.] Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to be the case for tougher normal enemies such as the Bronze Knights - the game's equivalent of those deadly Black Knights scattered around Lordran. The game's Sanctuaries work a little differently also: each Sanctuary is aligned with one of the game's covenants, and the player can choose to swear fealty to them or stick with their own covenant, then either using force or a certain rare item to switch a Sanctuary to their own alignment. Sanctuaries that have the same covenant as the player can be modified to include different vendors and other useful NPCs, who in addition to providing services at the Sanctuary will also boost various stats like item drop chance and stamina recovery speed for that particular region. All Sanctuaries serve as both a save point and a means to level up, however, regardless of their aligned covenant. Last is the game's skill tree, which replaces the versatile level-up system of Souls: rather than choosing which stats to boost directly, you follow a Sphere Grid-style skill tree with many nodes that increase stats by a point each, and occasionally include the capacity to hold more healing items (very important) and the means to equip better weapons and armor of specific types. For instance, upgrading your swordsman talent not only lets you use stronger variants of swords and greatswords, but also lets you one-hand the latter weapons of the previous level of expertise - I've been running through the game with a greatsword and shield, and it's been made that much easier.

Because the game is also a 2D exploratory platformer, there are some more overtly spacewhipper elements too. The "brands" that the player earns from various important NPCs can extend their traversal abilities, allowing them access to new parts of the world as well as new areas of regions they've previously explored. The first of these brands, for example, allows the player to flip gravity at certain points, which not only provides access to the next story-critical region of the game but also to a handful of chests and other items scattered throughout the world. Like Souls, the game has no map, so it behooves the player to take notes of inaccessible areas for later: backtracking for these items is usually worth the trouble, at least in my experience so far.

It's an exceptional game, not only in how well it replicates the quality of its big-budget influence but in how closely it feels like one of those RPGs both in tone and in how it plays. I'm a little angry with it right now because I somehow managed to lose a huge amount of salt earned from boss fights - an ironic situation of being salty about a lack of salt - and am worried about being underleveled for the trials to come. Nonetheless I'm definitely invested in seeing the game through to its end, as both a Souls fan and a spacewhipper fan.

Rating: 5 out of 5.