It's coming to PS4 first, and will be released on PS Vita and PC at a later date. It's also leading off Sony's "Launch Party 2016" promotion, which will see the release of six new downloadable PSN games, so it should be getting some nice exposure.

If the developers previous titles are any indication, the promotion will probably be well deserved. Ska Studios is also responsible for The Dishwasher gamer, which did a great job a replicating Devil May Cry style gameplay in a two dimensional world. I have no doubt that they'll be able to accomplish the same thing with a 2D Dark Souls.

In addition to quite a few Dark Souls style game mechanics, the 2D nature of the game lends itself nicely to metroidvania comparisons--there's even a "hunter" class that has a whip--and the combat looks like a nice mix of Souls and The Dishwasher.

Here's a nice overview of the game:

And here's the Giant Bomb Quick Look EX from a while back:

Lastly, for those wondering, here is the full list of Launch Party 2016 titles:

• Salt And Sanctuary - March 15th
• Day Of The Tentacle - March 22nd
• Enter the Gungeon - April 5th
• Stories the Path of Destinies - April 12th
• Invisible Inc. - April 19th
• Alienation - April 26th

Awesome! I had just about forgotten this but I'm glad it's finally getting out there.

I believe this should be available tomorrow at midnight, so less than 48 hours to go. Anyone else hyped for the latest from Ska Studios?

Doesnt really seem to add anything to the souls formula, and taking a modern 3d games mechanics(aesthetic and tone) and making it 2d isn't all that novel anymore. This honestly seems like the most blatant souls clone of them all, im not sure how i feel about that honestly.

I'm interested to see what losing a dimensional plane does. I love how the Souls games move in a 3D space and the design of those worlds. Making it 2D isn't about novelty, really. Its more about the challenge to translate a very specific thing with very specific restrictions.

@spaceinsomniac: Preload is active as well.

I'll automatically play any game that aspires to be Soulsian and doesn't look terrible.

I hope it does well for them. Their games seem to be pretty well-liked generally, but I get the feeling that they don't sell gangbusters.

However, the art style seems off to me. Environments look great, but the actual character designs still seem a bit too cartoonish compared to their surroundings.

Oh damn, I thought Vita was at launch. I'm really looking forward to it but the Vita support was essential to stand out in the next few months.

next they should try to recreate metroid primes gameplay in a 2d setting

Everyone is talking about it being a Dark Souls knockoff, but it honestly has a real Castlevania feel as well.

If anyone wants to see more than the QL EX, I think Jason also played this on one of his Extra Life streams as well. 2015 I think.

@nevergameover said:

Yeah, it would pretty much be impossible to create a souls game in 2D and not have a Castlevania / Metroid feel to the game, because Souls games share that same emphasis on exploration and opening shortcuts.

Anyhow, based on the videos and my enjoyment of the developer's previous work, I went ahead and pre-ordered this. Once I start playing, I'll post some impressions and answer some questions that people might have.

Sweet this game definitely deserves some hype. Pre-ordered as soon as the promotion went live and have been excited since then for it's release tomorrow at midnight. I watched a panel from ska studios from PSX. The studio consists of two people, which happen to be husband and wife. The game from the amazing art to the dark souls like mechanics create a truely beautiful thing. I can't wait to play and I hope this brings great success to the developers and helps them make more games in the future.

Yeah, when I look at games like this and Dust: An Elysian Tale, it blows my mind how one or two people were able to accomplish all of that on their own. The husband and wife team from Ska Studios both appear in the Quick Look EX that I embedded above, so check it out if you haven't seen it yet.

I also just found out that this game supports cross-buy and has a new game plus feature, both of which are now making this look like an even better purchase.

The Destructoid review seemed to indicate that the reviewer spent around 25 hours to finish his first playthrough, which sounds like a great length for a metroidvania type game. Ska Studios games have never seemed short on content to me, which was another reason I felt confident enough to pre-order.

Game seems pretty fucking good so far, bosses are great and areas are varied; controls seems solid as well. They could probably do with a map, as while giant 3D worlds that are intuitively designed can be easy enough to remember based on visual cues in a 2D plane it's very difficult to create uniquely identifying visual cues and/or prevent massive amounts of backtracking.

Here's the first boss (Taurus Demon levels of spoilers, nothing too heavy) if you needed any further motivation to buy the game:

I hope Day Of the Tentacle does well. It's THE best adventure game of all time. It's not as stylish or as "sexy" as other, less old games, but I think it has the most solid gameplay of any adventure game ever made and makes the best argument for why Adventure Games are fun.

(No un-winnable conditions, Multiple puzzles to be working on at any one time, challenging, enclosed area instead of a sprawling area, funny, smart, not needlessly talky and in love with itself like Daedalus games, Etc.)

Engh..

I mean, what is Souls but a modern game that is re-appropriating design concepts that were once popular but ceased being trendy? To make it 2d isn't copying Dark Souls so much as it is just taking more inspiration from older games. I could say this game looks like Faxanadu as much as it looks like Dark Souls...

As far as a map goes, I think the main reason I'd want one is to get back to a sanctuary, and thankfully there are a couple of very inexpensive items you can stock up on to quickly get you back to a save point. It might end up bothering me later, but I'm okay with it so far. At least it's not doing what Shadow Complex did with the map in that game, and show you the exact path to the next area.

It also makes it more Souls-ish, due to having to explore more.

Really liking the game so far, though. If anyone has questions, I'll be happy to answer them.

http://www.metacritic.com/game/playstation-4/salt-and-sanctuary/critic-reviews

Not that user scores are typically anything that people should go by, but this game currently has a 9.4 metacritic user score. Does that strike anyone else as seeming unusually high for a user score?

The game is getting good reviews, though. The critic score is currently at an 87, with only four reviews. I'm certainly enjoying it.

I don't keep tabs on user scores like that but wouldn't be shocking to see the Souls community get behind a well executed game that was so consciously and overtly tapping into Souls.

I'm getting a little worn by this. The game is good but I am not. I know the trick to The Queen of Smiles but can't string it together and, for review purposes, I'd like to get beyond that. Whilst I like the formula, I much prefer it in a 3D space. Weirdly, when I was boss-running to Sodden Knight I thought my salt was stacking every time I got to him and died. Turns out I was incorrect.

And is using the bell causing the game to crash on the PS4 for anyone else?

This kind of car crash is standard fare for my first soul runs so I'll not mark it down for that. I just need to see more of it. And is the gold you use to respawn a percentage of your total?

@shindig: Blocking actually works well against Smiles, in contrast to the first boss. Games tough, no doubt about that; but would anyone be singing it's praises if it wasn't?

I don't care for this. Not sure if I just over hyped myself on it. Or if it plays too much like a metroid game. I really don't like metroid games. This style of game only really works for me in 3d. It feels limited. And the boss fights seem to be more about just making the game as hard as possible for one fight. Making you learn a pattern to beat it. While the rest of the game is just a button mashing cake walk. I might give it another shot, but I really didn't care for what I played last night.

@sterling: Keep at it man I need you for intel. Lords 4 lyfe.

Salt and Sanctuary has like 150 people streaming it on twitch with 0 or 1 viewer; which makes one wonder how insane Dark Souls 3 is going to be. I'm pretty sure there's only like 5k-10k owners right now as well, there'll be a lot more soon of course but damn.

I feel the player characters look a bit too cartoony. Nice to see it's doing well but i can't abide getting this with bloodborne sitting mostly unplayed.

Streamed some this morning with an audience of 3. I can't bring myself to block against the bread and butter.

This was my stream this morning. Came close to beating Smiles with some arrow spam. She will keep her distance for a bit to allow you some menuing.

@fredchuckdave: DS3 can't come soon enough as far as I am concerned. I would also settle for a LotF 2 right now.

Yeah I went in against Smiles playing as a knight and beat it my first try with barely taking any damage. The starting knight shield blocks everything. I had expected that as I wittled her down in health that she would start using new attacks that pierced through it or something, but nah, tanked all of it.

its like a mini, 2d souls game. what is not to like about that? and man, i really like the visual style. its more cartoonish but fucking grim as well.

I got through Smiles. That big whirly attack of hers feels like its completely for show.

That would never work.

Downloaded, ready to go, hoping the combat shares some resemblance to Vampire Smile because that game was incredible.

Can confirm this game is fantastic:

Aside: Game's crashed on me twice today which is more than Lords of the Fallen crashed for the entire first playthrough. Wonder if it'll get any bad press as a result, since that was the main reason LotF's metacritic tanked (I bet it won't).

@csl316: There's Vagrant Story references in the game.

Oh shit, I didn't even realize this game had a release date, let alone came out today. Been looking forward to it.

I thought it was strange when Bakalar started randomly talking about it.

i will also chime in, beat 2 bosses so far and im quite enjoying it

I just bought the game off of PSN. Gotta enjoy that feeling when you realize you still have money in your PSN wallet.

I'm only past the first boss but...

It's such a rip-off of Dark Souls that it's hard to look past that. Say what you want that other games did things similar. But a lot of it (too much) is such a copy paste of Dark Souls.

That being said. It's a lot of damn fun. Quite enjoying it perhaps more than even Dark Souls 2.

@fredchuckdave: 2 hours in, level 20. I fucking love this game.

Well this sucks. Beat a boss, got 7k salt, died to poison with no enemies around me, so my salt traveled across the map to a sack I've already looted so I guess its just unobtainable?

@bezerker285: That's weird . Anytime I've died to something other than an enemy (like falling or w/e) the salt magically turns into a big white bat.

Yeah, it's a percentage. I was losing like1k when I had 12k gold sitting around.

I'm pretty into this game, but going heavy armor with a 2hander is trivializing most bosses. I'm only at that castle past the Bandit Forest place though. I didn't expect the Metroidvania elements, like swapping gravity to get to higher places, too. Also, tons of secrets all over the place.

Edit: I also started a mage dude to play around with and magic (or at least the starting spell) seems pretty weak and worthless based on the cost of lower max stamina. Not sure I like that system. Spells would have to get pretty beefy later on for the tradeoff to be worth it.

It might be best to just safely teleport back to a sanctuary after beating a boss. Even if there is a salt bat that you can kill to get your salt back, why take the chance. One missed jump and you'd lose out on a lot of potential leveling.

@please_love_me: There's a ring that prevents your minimum stamina from going below a certain threshold. Spells are decent mid-late game as far as I can tell.

I'm confused. Freke Out (Souls/BB youtube guy) posted this video (below) of his copy of this game fucking BREAKING in an insane way. He not only has multiple weird ass glitches, but a total crash AND his save gets corrupted. Is this game not totally on fire? Because this video certainly scared me off buying it today. What the hell is going on?

SPOILER WARNING: This video apparently shows snippets of the final boss? I guess his save corrupted on the final boss. That fucking sucks, if true.

Here's his tweet on the matter:

Avoid doing that, I guess?

Very fun. I didn't know what this thing was before today. I had to quit pretty early on (shortly after the first boss) because i managed to die and then on the way back to get my salt back, died again to a trap i had never seen before. I don't like backtracking in games, so that'll be a hurdle for me. The basic gameplay is great though (I don't care for Souls games).

I've had one crash so far when trying to use the homeward bell.

Another report of a crash/corruption situation:

I think I'll hold off until this gets patched. I really want to play it but a corruption would absolutely sour me forever.

damn, thats pretty crazy. maybe ill hold off for a bit as well.

@mathj: I love Ska Studios and I don't mean to blow up their spot, but this just sucks. It looks like, from their official twitter, that they've gotten some crash reports from Sony so they're working on patching I assume, I'm just really nervous to start until this isn't a problem. Doesn't seem widespread, but I have pretty bad luck on these sorts of things and really wouldn't want to potentially lose hours. USB backups may be a smart idea if you're playing now, though.

I think in early access the bell problem was reported. Vaati mentions it in the video on the opening post. Also, three bosses down. Looking at the trophies, there's 21 of them. That's a lot in a short space of time.

Oh, this is just awful. I haven't had a single crash in about three or four hours of play--which is all the time I've played--but I'd really hate to lose my progress. I do have other games I can play until a patch fixes the possibility of save corruption, but I REALLY want to keep playing this. It's everything I'd hoped it would be, so far.

I hope the developer doesn't lose out on too many sales from this, because the game is great.

@quid_pro_bono: or just upload your save to the cloud before each play session