HomeFeaturesThe Salt Order
The Salt Order draws on old magic for a unique horror conceptSolo dev Khamelot talks us through the inspirations and difficulties of salt
Solo dev Khamelot talks us through the inspirations and difficulties of salt
A lot (most) of the magic games we’re highlighting this week are in some manner lovely and nice, because witches these days tend towards the cottagecore (ily,Little Witch In The Woods!). It’s nice that witches have changed in our minds to “unmarried lady who lives alone and is good with herbs and cats :]”, when they used to be “unmarried lady who lives alone and is good with herbs and her cat is the devil and she has sex with the devil”.
There’s still room for witches with some threat to ‘em, though, and I love a weird horror game, so you can imagine that when I heard aboutThe Salt Ordermy interest was immediately piqued. It’s a low-poly PS1-style game where an order of witches has tasked you with retrieving a grimoire from a cursed realm of endless trees. You are largely defenceless, except for the ability to draw on the ground with salt. “In many stories that I knew as a child, salt was one of the very powerful magical protective elements against evil spirits,” solo dev Khamelot tells me over email. “During invocations, drawing a circle of salt could act as a basic protection. To prevent the spirits from entering one’s home, you could put salt in front of the openings of the house.”
Top 12 Best Horror Games to Play on PCOur recs for good horror games you can play right nowWatch on YouTube
Top 12 Best Horror Games to Play on PC
As well as being interested in folklore and urban legends, The Salt Order takes inspiration from a wealth of things. Melo citesThief 2,Lost In VivoandAnnaas the first game inspirations they think of, but more broadly there’s Wolfgun’s albumCineres. It’s a dreamy but unsettling collection of “something is watching me” vibes, mixed with some spoken word sections about meeting a unicorn in a wood (kinda), and you get the connection when you play the game. “I am very fond of urban legends and imaginary bestiaries,” Khamelot explains. “I also grew up near large forests which have always been very important to me as a child. I spent hours and hours there, imagining everything that could be hidden there and that I couldn’t see. I wanted to put a part of it into a story, whatever form it took.”
That form has evolved a little. The Salt Order started as a submission to Infinite Noodle’sTwo-Minute Horror Jamon Itch, where the salt drawing worked slightly differently - the salt you used couldn’t be recovered, instead sinking into the ground, and you had to collect crystals for more. “It stayed like that for quite a while. Until I decided to rework the game to make a demo for theHaunted PS1 Demo Disc 2021,” Khamelot says. They were able to see what was wrong with the game jam prototype, and “had a fresh look to refine the feature towards something more permissive. In the end, the feature turned out to be even more fun than expected.”
My (L) and Khamelot’s (R) salt art; you can see Khamelot’s screens are from a new build that has a health bar in addition to the salt
As it is now, you can draw on the ground and right click to recall the oldest line drawn to your supply of salt, or hit R to recall it all, something that was, Khamelot explains, maybe the hardest part of the salt drawing to perfect so far. Sometimes you’d get more salt back than you’d put down, or sometimes less, and they spent a week going over it in their mind before waking up in the middle of the night with the solution (the moral, they say, is “when it doesn’t work sometimes the better thing is just to sleep on it."). It’s more forgiving, allowing you to play around and draw funny shapes, but also throw down sloppy lines in a panic when you need to.
I’ve lightened this screenshot and it’s still dark. Imagine how creepy these are when they come at you out of nowhere.
Khamelot is coy about the other kinds of horrors players might face, although they do reveal there aren’t jump scares. “…At least no more than necessary. I try to find other ways to scare players through the atmosphere of the game,” they explain. “Taking the player out of their comfort zone and breaking the rules that were put in place early in the game can be terrifying sometimes. If The Salt Order gives you a way to protect yourself, the game could also choose to take it back from you at any time.”
From where I’m standing (which is cowering, in a forest) The Salt Order is a super interesting horror premise with a lot of potential, and I hope Khamelot is able to finish it. There’s something very primal feeling about using salt as a protection; as Khamelot alluded to themself, it’soldmagic. The Salt Order seems very blood and earth and fire, an old world where magic has power, but it’s limited and needs to be respected.
