Salt and Sacrifice is Souls-like RPG Metroidvania. It is the sequel to Salt and Sanctuary, released in 2022 for Playstation 5, Playstation 4 and PC. In it, you play as a "Marked Inquisitor", a criminal inflicted with a "Spellbane Mark", allowing them to hunt down the immortal mages that plague the land.
The big new feature this time around are Mage Hunts, repeatable boss battles that you can use to gather experience and crafting materials. And you don't need to go it alone, either, as the game features online co-op and PVP.
Salt and Sacrifice contains examples of the following tropes.
- Ability Mixing: How the game treats the "elements" of the mages, outside of the 6 "pure" mages, the 15 other mages all have a mix of two of the six "elements" present in the game, usually tangentially related to their Whatevermancy name, such as Electromancy consisting of Fire and Light elements, and Hydromancy being Cold and Dark Elements.
- Degraded Boss: Inverted. Once you defeat a Named Mage for the first time, unnamed versions of that mage will show up in the game world. The nameless versions are much, much tougher.
- Easter Egg: Putting the runes that spell "LEMON" into the portal will send you to a difficult platforming challenge that contains carrot-themed special items: the Harvester's armor set and throwable carrots as a weapon. The password is a reference to Submerged Lemon, who made multiple challenge runs for Salt and Sanctuary as well as Salt and Sacrifice.
- Enemy Civil War: Mages and their minions do not get along with each other or with the normal enemies and will often attack each other on sight, and the Hazeburnt enemies will attack everything nearby that isn't another hazeburnt. You can take advantage of this.
- Horror Hunger: Not revealed until you take the Elixir of Truth. Remember how they told you to 'Devour Mages'? Turns out it's quite literal.
- Humanoid Abomination: Mages are mortals whose use of forbidden magics has twisted them into towering horrors infused with and mutated by the magic they wield.
- The Heart of Altarstone expansion makes it clear this applies to Inquisitors too.
- Human Resources: Those crafting materials? Yeah, they're elementally-infused chunks of wizard flesh.
- Mage Killer: The job of all Marked Inquisitors.
- Magic Is Evil: "Magehood" is treated as something akin to a curse that twists the mind and body alike. While the sigils that you use are supposedly safe, the Marked Inquisitors who use them are still treated as outcasts.
- Multiple Endings: Two of them, each chosen at the very end of the game after defeating the final boss.
- Climb: After defeating the Undone Sacrifice, you choose to take their place and lash yourself onto the tree. The camera pans to the sky and mysterious silhouettes manifest amongst the stars.
- Devour: After defeating the Undone Sacrifice, you choose to stab the tree and devour its energies as the camera pans to the sky. Shortly after, a devastating meteor shower rains across the lands.
- Perception Filter: The horrifying effects of your induction into the ranks of Inquisitors isn't perceptible until you imbibe the Elixir of Truth
- Phlebotinum Muncher: It turns out you are physically consuming the hearts of bested Mages.
- Shout-Out: One of the Sanguimancer's attacks looks very much like Dracula's "Dark Inferno" attack.
- True Sight: What is granted by drinking the Elixir of Truth. You can take the Elixir of Peace if you don't like what you see as a result. It also provides extra context to the newly added Heart of Altarstone region
- Whatevermancy: Every type of Mage (and their magic) follows this naming scheme. This ranges from fairly typical Pyromancers, Necromancers, and Cryomancers to more unique examples like Dracomancers, Bibliomancers, and Mechanomancers.
