It's finally time to announce my next game in development! South of the March is a fantasy/horror RPG featuring a hybrid of JRPG-style turn-based combat and semi-open world visual novel exploration. It's set in the same medieval setting as The Salt Keep.
The current plan for the full version of South of the March is a free release sometime in spring of 2024. It's planned for release on Itch.io and Steam, and will run on PC and Mac. It's also intended to function as a prototype and companion game for a larger upcoming project, so keep an eye out and follow for updates!
The full version of the Salt Keep is out! You can purchase it:
On PC or Mac
On Android
On iOS
The Salt Keep is a character-focused text adventure and RPG (think interactive fiction with mechanics reminiscent of CYOA games or classic gamebooks) set in a high fantasy world where the traditional medieval aesthetics of swords and castles are set against the industrial creep of decaying feudalism. Follow traveling salesman Doyle as he stumbles into the brutal mystery of what happened to the village of Cardwyke, struggles to escape the seemingly unstoppable forces pursuing him, and hopes to find anybody who can free him of his debt. You can:
Guide Doyle through the village of Cardwyke and the keep that looms above it.
Collect items and discover their uses.
Equip gear to improve Doyle's ability scores.
Succeed or fail at percentage-based challenges.
Earn experience and level up based on those challenges.
Talk to and work with NPCs to make progress.
Uncover secrets and missable areas.
Risk grievous bodily harm.
Despite the prevalence of choices and risks, there is no chance of death or dead-ends. The story always moves forward. In turn, you'll change the outcome of Doyle's story (as well as those of the NPCs he meets) not just through the things you choose to do, but through the things you fail to do, as well as the things you choose to ignore.
A demo version is playable in the browser on itch.io if you want to see if the story interests you first. It covers the prologue and first chapter of the game (roughly two hours of play time), so it should give you a good taste of both where the narrative is taking you and how the game plays. If you finish or decide at some point you want to continue into the full version, any progress you made can be transferred regardless of platform by following these instructions.
No technical knowledge needed!
To everybody who has followed here or added this to their collections on itch.io over the past year or so, I truly appreciate it. I hope you enjoy this! If you pick up the full version and you’re into it, be sure to leave a rating and/or review on whichever platform you chose. I’m a solo indie dev and this is, as you probably know, kind of a niche genre, so every bit of word of mouth makes a massive difference.
Have fun, and good luck, everybody! Doyle needs it!
I'm currently prepping the latest build of The Salt Keep for a demo version so I can update the itch.io demo. The version there is quite a bit behind the full game in terms of features and UI updates.
One thing coming in this new version of the demo is an illustrated map for chapter 1. Each subsequent chapter also has a map, so you'll have some visual cues as to how all the different areas connect to each other. Returning to previous locations can be pretty beneficial, so this should help you keep it all straight.
New demo and official release date coming in a few days!
OK, I’m announcing it, the full version of The Salt Keep is almost here. Go ahead and follow me here, follow on itch.io, and mark your calendars, because it will be on sale:
February 10th, 2023.
You’ll be able to download Mac or PC versions on itch.io, while Android and iOS versions will be available on the Play Store and App Store (and I’ll link everything here when they're available, of course). The full version comes out to around 260k words with a play-time of about 15 hours for the average player.
NEW DEMO LAUNCHED
Now that the latest updates from the full version have spent some time in beta, I’m also updating the demo on itch.io to include those new features. There are some smaller narrative changes and typo fixes, more noticeable UI updates, and a few big additions, including:
An illustrated map for chapter 1
Chapter introduction art for the prologue and chapter 1
Achievements (though only a portion are unlockable within the scope of the demo)
Play Stats
Also included is a revamped Import/Export system, which will allow you to export your save at any point in the demo and import it to the full version regardless of platform. If you take the time to play the demo, you can continue from where you left off without losing any progress.
NOTE: This only applies to demo saves started from this point on. Too much has changed since earlier versions of the demo to reliably import their saves to the full game.
Thanks, everybody! I hope you’re as excited as I am, which is fairly excited but also extremely nervous and kind of a little bit sick all the time.
The Salt Keep is #43 right now in the app store RPG category for iPhone. I honestly don't know if this actually means anything, especially because the store analytics won't tell me anything in real time, so I have no idea what's truly going in there.
I just submitted The Salt Keep for Apple's App Store review. Hoping to get it far enough into approval that I can start sending out promo codes, as I'm not really sure how to get it to people ahead of release as it is now. It seems like the only way would be to invite people to the beta, but that seems like a clumsy way of doing promo.
The strangest thing about this whole process is how hard it is to find clear information on what other people do. You'd think just about every question is a "solved problem" kind of thing, yet it's really difficult. I'm still a little uncertain exactly what the store page is going to look like or how the release process will work until I actually do the review, which seems like stuff I ought to know before the review.
