A Look Back On Year One

7:33 AM willsterling23 7 Comments

The Road to Steam





Nowadays Steam can be pretty crucial for your success as a small independent team. When we originally released Salt we weren't on Steam, but quickly realized we needed to be. And so we launched a Greenlight campaign and watched as our little Salt game garnered interest and eventually was Greenlit! We were thrilled to say the least and were very excited to be able to bring Salt to the Steam community.





Updates, Updates, and Updates





We're a small team (three people and only two coders) but we knew we needed to work on getting new content out for Salt and pushing the game forward. Some updates went quicker than we expected and some took a lot longer. Overall though, we're pretty happy with a lot of the changes we've been able to make to the game over the past year. Thanks to the very constructive feedback from the community we've been diligent on trying to make the game more fun, adding more content and polish to the overall experience. Here's a look at a few of the major changes we've made over the past year:









Update 1.3 - Merchant Quests













Early on we knew we wanted Salt to be more than just exploration. We wanted Salt to have adventure, and this meant adding in a lot of RPG elements as the game developed. One of the first RPG elements we added were merchant quests. Originally, merchants just sold items and didn't have the little question mark you see today. Adding these quests opened the door for us to add purpose behind a lot of the content in the game, give you direction and a sense of objective, and reward you for taking part in these quests.









Update 1.3.1.0 - Ship Customizations









Mmm...cozy.





This was perhaps one of my favorite updates. In this patch we added the ability to customize the ships you create and find throughout the game. This meant you could add beds, paintings, tables, storage chests, and more. Ship customizations really allowed you to personalize your boat and make it your home.









Update 1.3.1.1 - New Island Generation System and New Grass













John liked to refer to this update as the Cataclysm. Essentially with this update we made some major changes to the way the islands generate, allowing for a much more robust system and much better looking islands. Since the entire world is basically procedurally generated, we wanted this system to be the best it could be. We also updated the grass in this patch and made it look way better. This was a highly requested feature and we were glad to finally be able to bring this to the game.









Update 1.4 - Dawn of the Story









This was probably one of our largest content updates in the game. Our desire with this update was to implement the first portion of the main quest and storyline. Although Salt is very much an open and free to do what you want game, there is a story and purpose behind the world. We wanted to give players a way to discover this story and progress along a main quest line. In this update we added inns, new quests, new enemies, and a lot of new rewards.









Update 1.5 - New Interface













Our original interface was pretty bad and was merely meant to be a placeholder. This was an update that we, along with the players, were definitely looking forward to. With this update we completely overhauled the user interface and inventory system, allowing for more organization, intuitiveness, and completely new content such as player stats. Though we've still got a few tweaks we will likely make to the interface, this overhaul was much needed and I feel really progressed the game forward in terms of polish and experience.





Update 1.5.1 - New Models









I won't lie, the old pirate models still hold a certain place in my heart. They were so horribly ugly and disfigured that you really couldn't help but like them. That being said, we knew we needed to replace these models. Our goal with the new models was to keep the look in the same art style of the game, but to have them far more polished. We are very happy with the way the new models turned out and with the new animations they have as well.





More To Come





In addition to a lot of these major changes, we've also done a lot of work under the hood and work to spread out the content in Salt. Over the past year we've added new island types, new enemies and bosses, secrets, a ton of new items, lore books, quests, and of course a lot of bug fixes and improvements.





We've still got a good ways to go, but we are excited to work with the community through this process and make the game as fun as possible. Here's a list of just some of the content we'll be adding to Salt in the future:





- More island types

- Multiplayer

- Remainder of the main quest line

- Weather

- Factions





We sincerely want to thank all of you who have played Salt and helped us guide the game in the right direction. There is absolutely no way this game would be where it is if it wasn't for the support of our community and the feedback we get from you guys. As always, we'd love to hear your thoughts!









- Will Sterling (Game Audio and Design)









Today I want to look back on the past year, some milestones we hit, and some of the content we've added to the game so far. I also want to talk about what the future holds for Salt.