Salt Development Blog

I think every game should have a unique 'sound' to the music, while also integrating with the theme of the game. In Salt, I wanted the music to feel epic. I wanted you to feel awesome when you were manning the helm of a big ship crashing through the waves in the open sea. At the same time however, I didn't want the music to be like very other epic orchestra composition you hear. It needed to have a foundation that was different. That foundation ended up being a piano sound. 

In Salt, most of the music you hear will have an underlying piano sound to it. It's heavily laden with reverb and trails off for a while, leaving a melodic undertone behind the strings. This, blended with the more modern orchestra sounds, gives Salt a unique but still epic soundtrack. My overall goal in doing this is so that when you hear the music, you instantly know it's from Salt. 

We like your experiences and 'moments' in Salt to be spread out. A common theme you'll notice in the game is a stretch of relaxation and exploration, followed by intense moments of adventure and challenge. We wanted to ensure this design element translated over into the music as well. For this reason, we chose to keep music somewhat scarce. 

I went back and forth on this design decision for a while. On the one hand, I liked the idea of some melodies playing while you explored islands, but on the other hand I didn't want to over-stimulate the player. I think far too often games have music occurring all the time. And therefore no moments really stand out with the music. 

You'll notice that most of the music that occurs in Salt happens while sailing in the deep ocean. We thought this was a great place to implement the music. It creates an epic feeling when sailing on the big waves and helps as a time passer while traveling long distances. For exploration on islands, we opted to use atmospheric sounds and really immerse the player in the world. 

As with many other mechanics in Salt, music is conditional. Depending on where you are and what you are doing, will determine the type of music that plays. For example, different music will be play depending on whether you are sailing in the day or at night. 

My favorite area to use these conditions on are bosses. When you fight a boss, you will hear specific music for that boss. This music will reflect the nature of the enemy and invoke a certain emotion to go along with it. These sorts of mechanics can also create a "learned response," where the player hears certain music and it instantly brings in a flood of emotion based on their previous encounters. 

As we go forward with Salt, more music and atmospheric sounds will be added into the game, maintaining with our theme of exploration and adventure. 

- Will Sterling (Game Audio and Design)

One of the primary reasons we decided to go for a more simplistic graphical style is simply that we don't have the resources or manpower to create a visually top of the line game. We are only three people, each with our own set of skills. We decided instead to focus on our strengths and put time into making the gameplay fun and creating an exciting and adventurous game. However, graphics were still important to us. 

With the rise in popularity of indie games, we knew we had some leeway with graphics. With the success of Minecraft, it became evident that a lot of players cared more about content and gameplay than they did the graphics. However, this does not mean that players don't care about graphics all. It means that players are more accepting of different graphical styles. As long as the game is cohesive visually and fits the theme of the world, then players will accept it. 

As of right now there are a few different graphic styles that seem to be common in indie games. One of the most popular being 2D pixel art. We knew we wanted to create a 3D open world game and so this was out of the question. The other options were a cube-based world (Minecraft) or a realistic and dark style of game (Day Z) typically used in survival type games. Neither of these seemed to fit our game and we knew there were enough games with these styles out there as it was. 

This is when we decided to go for a colorful and stylized game. We wanted to do something unique though and not have it be completely 'cartoony'. Therefore we decided to do a blend of realism, such as the lighting and some shading, mixed with the colorful stylized visuals you see in the game now. We took a lot of inspiration from Wind Waker and wanted to incorporate that sort of style into our game. It was important that our game stood out graphically, but worked within the confines of our limitations as a small team. We believe we've been mostly successful at this endeavor. 

A common question we get about our game is, "Will the graphics improve?" The answer to this is, yes and no. The graphics will improve within the confines of our stylized graphics theme. However, we are quite happy with the way a large portion of the game looks and there will not a be a 'graphical overhaul.' What you will see will be incremental improvements to various aspects of the game, graphically speaking. For instance, we are currently looking into ways to improve the grass and make it fit better visually into the world. 

Overall we hope that our choice in using stylized graphics in Salt creates a more unique experience and helps you to immerse yourself in the world. 

- Will Sterling (Audio and Game Design)