Salem

Game mechanics

At the beginning of our adventure with Salem, we focus solely on survival and satiating basic needs, like gathering food or kindling fire. As we progress, we will cooperate with other players to build a settlement and widen our activities. With the development of our community, we need more and more space for new houses and farming. This means we must acquire new territories, but those are filled with monsters that we must defeat. The game focuses on constructing buildings and crafting items, with the economy based on players’ actions. Creators made a world which is strongly shaped by users. As one could already guess, the world of Salem isn’t strictly realistic. Aside from monsters, it doesn’t lack spells, alchemy and witches (including players, who can learn dark arts).

Every character is described by a Hippocratic system, based on four fluids that reside within human’s blood (life points), yellow bile (offensive skills), phlegm (magical powers) and black bile (life experience). If one of those parameters drops to zero, our character loses consciousness, and getting attacked in this state will result in his death. The gameplay is truly merciless, as we can assaulted by other players at any moment, not to mention our house can be ignited, and death is permanent, meaning that a dead hero cannot be resurrected by any means. This means we must be carefully think about our actions if we don’t want to start with new character, and players themselves might bring justice to evildoers.

Technical aspects

Visuals of Salem were inspired by classic gothic horrors, with developers taking handful from such writers as Howard Phillip Lovecraft or Edgar Alan Poe and Tim Burton’s movies.