| Sands of Salzaar | |
| Publisher: | XD |
| Composer: | Chan Tang |
| Engine: | Unity[1] |
| Released: | December 16, 2021 |
| Genre: | Action role-playing |
| Modes: | Single-player |
Sands of Salzaar (; trans.: Tribe and Scimitar) is a 2021 fantasy strategy action role-playing game for Microsoft Windows and iOS. It was developed by Chinese indie video game company Han-Squirrel Studio, and published by Hong Kong company XD. The player controls a customized character to battle, recruit troops, manage a fief, and explore dungeons. The game was launched as an Early Access on January 3, 2020 and fully released on December 16, 2021.
The game is set in the fictional realm of Salzaar, a region marred by war after the collapse of great empire with a fantasy blend of pre-modern Turkic,Chinese, Mongolian, and Arabic culture. Each area has settlements in which five major factions vie for control. The player may choose one among eight base classes, or create their own, and pick a side or start their own faction. The game features both story-driven campaign and sandbox mode. Sands of Salzaar has been described as a mix of Mount & Blade, Diablo, League of Legends and Dynasty Warriors.[2] [3] [4]
The game is open-ended with a variety of quests and a focus on large crowd combat with a focus on troop recruitment. The game has two main modes: story and open-world, and has a variety of classes including Berserker, Jackal, Knight Errant, Sentinel, Shaman, Spirit Witch, Spiritmancer and Sultan. Each class pursues their own exclusive quests and skill trees. A variety of equipment is available for the player, while each level-up adds a skill point that can be used to get new skills. The world map is separated into six areas with different biomes: desert, canyon, uplands, snow, and swamp.
Combat in Sands of Salzaar offers a unique mix of ideas. The player brings an army or the enemy army approaches around the battlefield with an instanced map. Each squad moves at different speeds and strong emphasis on troops gathering and strategy commanding the player's army.
The game's RPG approach and isometric view usually brings comparisons to the Diablo series and games like it: the progression, the equipment, the mouse and keyboard oriented controls, the character's set of skills on the bottom part of the screen.
It drew comparisons to the war strategy RPG series Mount & Blade[5] and the isometric strategy-oriented gameplay of League of Legends,[6]