Salt 2: Shores of Gold Review. A survival game set in a cheeky pirate setting, but without naval battles

Games about sailors and piracy aren’t particularly popular with either developers or gamers. If in the past, series like the legendary Age of Pirates, Sea Dogs attracted a massive audience, nowadays such projects are often niche and don’t aim for mainstream appeal. The fairly well-known Sea of Thieves barely fills its servers with players, and Ubisoft’s recent AAA product — Skull and Bones — completely flopped at launch. Nevertheless, pirate games are still being released, and if you’re a fan of the setting, then a small indie studio has brought out Salt 2: Shores of Gold, where exploring the open seas is perfectly combined with classic survival mechanics.

At first glance, judging by the trailer and screenshots, Salt 2 might seem like a cheap indie clone of Sea of Thieves, focused on crafting, survival, and island exploration. But that’s far from the case. Rare’s project is designed for multiplayer and naval battles, while Lavaboots Studios’ game offers single-player or co-op playthroughs of a story campaign, where most of the action and interesting mechanics take place on land. Despite the visual and thematic similarities, these are completely different games offering entirely different experiences. So Salt 2 is perfect for gamers who don’t enjoy the forced PvPvE mode of Sea of Thieves and prefer simple, relaxed exploration of uncharted lands.

Salt 2’s single-player campaign begins with a classic shipwreck on a deserted island, where the protagonist is rescued by an unknown character. There are no explanations or deep story hooks, so you’re told directly: gather equipment, visit a cave, and build a raft to reach the cartographer on a neighboring island. In general, it’s a classic and simple setup, typical for most indie open-world survival games.

Once you’ve mastered the basics and received your first ship as a quest reward, you’re offered a long journey across an endless ocean with procedurally generated islands. I doubt anyone will play the game solely for its story, since the local pirate-versus-cultist conflicts are unlikely to interest fans of the setting.

Salt 2 has no epic battles, vibrant characters, or mind-blowing plot twists. All quests are hooks that introduce new mechanics and serve as anchors, motivating you to explore islands and solve puzzles. Overall, the single-player campaign is a completely linear, unhurried, and, you could say, “chill” journey from point A to point B. By the way, you can always pick up additional quests from traders and guild members to diversify the narrative, but keep in mind that this is MMO-style content without detailed, handcrafted design. The main focus of Salt 2 is on exploration, not an exciting storyline.

Unlike Sea of Thieves, where the handcrafted open world is filled with interesting locations and meticulously designed islands, Salt 2 offers procedural generation — the content you find depends entirely on a random set of parameters. If you’re lucky, each location will be interesting to explore, and if not, the most you’ll get is a mini-story or a loot cave. At least the game tries to generate not just empty resource islands, but also fills them with lore moments and quests. Yes, after dozens of hours, all possible random variations will eventually run out, and you’ll start encountering already explored dungeons, buildings, and local fauna fragments, but by that point, you’ll likely have finished all available content and completed the main story.

Unlike Sea of Thieves and Skull and Bones, in Salt 2 you’ll spend most of your time on land rather than at sea. Ships serve as transportation and a mobile base. You can customize your vessel and turn it into anything you like, as long as you gather enough resources and blueprints. However, most decorations are purely cosmetic, so at first it’s better to focus on setting up crafting stations and resource processing spots.

Moreover, as you progress through the story, you’ll unlock lighthouses that provide fast travel, allowing you to avoid long and tedious sea journeys. Fortunately, lighthouses appear on procedurally generated islands, which motivates you to explore the open world more thoroughly. Major settlements, guild bases, and locations with story dungeons have their own fast travel points, so it’s a good idea to pay more attention to side quests and the main storyline in order to farm resources later without wasting extra time.

Exploring islands offers classic survival gameplay with resource gathering and location exploration. At first, it may seem that all the islands in Salt 2 look the same, but in reality, this is an issue of the developers’ chosen visual style, not poorly implemented procedural generation. The game consistently delivers various combinations of locations and dungeons so you don’t feel repetitive, but due to strict asset limitations and a standard set of vegetation, the islands’ visuals often look similar. Therefore, variety is mainly achieved through the number of interesting places, rewards, treasures, supplies, and loot.

It’s worth noting that during the first few hours, Salt 2 didn’t offer much engaging content, limiting itself to standard caves and abandoned houses. But the further I, the author of these lines, sailed from the starting location, the more surprises procedural generation had in store. First, new quests with unique characters and local lore appeared. Then, locations with caches that could be opened with rare keys. As I sailed farther and farther, I found blueprints, weapons, and puzzles that, in other games, would have been placed in predetermined locations by the developers. Here, all these things are pure randomness. Each island is like a box that may contain either ordinary crafting junk or a treasure that will be useful for exploring more complex and dangerous locations.

The survival system in Salt 2 is quite simple and doesn’t overwhelm you with restrictions. Thanks to the abundance of supplies on the islands, you won’t go hungry. There are always more than enough resources and materials for crafting. Yes, at first there are level restrictions on mining ore and other elements of progression, but it’s important to note that leveling in Salt 2 isn’t bogged down by grinding, and after just a couple of hours, you’ll have the freedom to engage in any activity you want.

The navigation system is similar to Sea of Thieves, but with its own twists. First, because of procedural generation, your map will be completely empty at the start of the game. To fill it in, you need to use a sextant and determine your position by the Sun or Moon. In addition, you have to manually mark locations and points on the map to gather as much information about your surroundings as possible. If you don’t do this, after a dozen hours your map will simply be a collection of locations that are hard to navigate. On the islands, navigation is done using a compass, which you first need to equip to find the direction to a quest location. The main thing is to read the quest description in advance and get additional information to have at least an approximate route, otherwise neither the sextant nor the compass will help you.

Unfortunately, Salt 2 doesn’t feature naval battles or ship-to-ship combat. You won’t be recruiting a crew in pirate coves or capturing enemy vessels. All battles take place strictly on land. The combat system is simple and doesn’t require memorizing combos — you just bring as many weapons as possible and “click” your way through opponents. The main thing is to keep an eye on your stamina bar, which is consumed with every saber swing and dodge. Buildcrafting in Salt 2 is entirely based on the random properties of weapons you find in the open world.

The developers put effort into enemy variety, so you won’t just be fighting skeletons and ghosts. Pirates, bandits, cultists, animals, and the undead guard islands and outposts, so you can’t avoid fighting them. Salt 2 also offers a good range of weapons, and battles don’t get monotonous. For example, you can create a character who kills from behind and silently clears locations with throwing knives, or you can take a flintlock pistol and clear out a fortress from a safe distance.

Despite the impressive variety of enemies and weapons, combat in Salt 2 is simple and repetitive. There’s no need to hunt for an “OP sword” or craft a ton of resources to clear the next dungeon. Thanks to very simple parrying, you can clear any location without taking damage, and the AI isn’t particularly clever. There are no death penalties or punishments in the game — you simply respawn at the dungeon entrance or on your ship and can return to finish off the remaining enemies.

Unlike Sea of Thieves, Salt 2 also doesn’t have truly challenging bosses. Occasionally, you’ll encounter enemies with colored names above them on the islands, but they don’t pose much of a threat — they just have a bit more health than regular foes. Unique opponents only appear at the end of certain storylines. These enemies do have special abilities, new techniques, and require a specific approach to defeat. To beat some bosses, you’ll need to gather as much information as possible from NPCs or notes to learn about their weaknesses. Unfortunately, there are too few of these unique foes, which is a big missed opportunity for a game with random world and loot generation.

The best-implemented gameplay mechanic in Salt 2 is the combination of crafting and progression systems. Character progression is divided into two aspects. The first is passive: your skills (for example, herbalism or weapon proficiency) develop naturally as you play. The more you gather herbs or fight with swords, the higher the corresponding level becomes. This system, familiar from games like The Elder Scrolls or Kingdom Come: Deliverance, feels organic, although progress slows noticeably by the middle of the story campaign.

The second progression system is active leveling, where you spend earned experience points on specific abilities of your choice. The further you develop your character, the more opportunities you unlock for crafting complex items and improving equipment. This is where crafting and progression blend into a single system: exploration brings blueprints and resources, and improved skills let you use them. However, to access the most valuable recipes and special quests, you’ll need to invest in certain skills, which inevitably leads to some targeted grinding.

Since Salt 2 is primarily a single-player adventure, you shouldn’t expect multiplayer in the spirit of Sea of Thieves. You can’t randomly join a server or another player to steal their ship or resources. For now, the game only offers co-op, where you can create a lobby and invite friends by sending them a code. Hopefully, the developers will add naval battles and the ability to sail the open seas together under a single flag, rather than on separate schooners.

The visuals in Salt 2 are quite simple and lack artistic flair. The characters are angular, and the island landscapes are monotonous. The game lacks stylization or any unique touch that could at least somewhat mask how primitive its graphics are for the end of 2025.

The project is missing unique and memorable art. Without gloomy islands, creepy dungeons, and breathtaking landscapes, Salt 2 loses out in terms of atmosphere — something that often makes indie survival games stand out, especially when it comes to pirate and seafaring adventures.

From a technical standpoint, however, everything is fine. The game runs smoothly even on outdated hardware and delivers a stable frame rate. Fortunately, I didn’t encounter any noticeable bugs or errors during my playthrough.

Salt 2: Shores of Gold is a standard indie survival game in a maritime adventure setting, where ship battles and crew management have been replaced with exploring procedurally generated islands and crafting items. Despite its visual similarity to Sea of Thieves, the project has nothing in common with it, offering a calm and unhurried adventure under the genre’s simplest conditions. Random generation makes every playthrough unique, and the abundance of items and crafting blueprints motivates you to explore yet another island.

Despite the abundance of gameplay mechanics and high replay value, Salt 2 is just too simple, even by indie standards. Its visuals are very weak, combat scenes are boring, the story is bland, and the gameplay loop is monotonous. To be honest, the project overall can’t boast anything special, except for its well-thought-out randomization of locations. Still, that’s enough to spend a couple of fun evenings with friends in multiplayer. At the very least, it’s the kind of game that’s perfect for watching YouTube videos and podcasts in the background.