A new name: Saltwarden Online
Until now the game was called Rivenward. From today it is called Saltwarden Online. World, canon and accounts stay, only the title and the address change.
Night scene from Ambercombe, the starting village in Whitmere (map v3, rough draft): a market square with a bell tower and a well, houses with slate roofs and lit windows. A warrior and a priest cross the square, a mage sits by the well, a wolf trots closer, and the Hollowmaw lurks at the edge.
Pre-alpha · MVP in progress · nothing playable yet
Saltwarden Online
A 2D online role-playing game built the way the classics were: slow, social, with dungeons, raids and a realm where death is final. In a world that did not exist before.
Join the waitlist Development status
Solo project. No pay-to-win. No AI images.
9classes with three talent trees each, levels 1 to 60
5 · 10 · 25five-player dungeons, raids for ten and 25
3realms: Haven (PvE), Warfront (PvP), One Life (hardcore)
Vessar. A sea that is gone.
Thirty-one years ago a thirty-year war ended when both sides set off a forbidden weapon. The inland sea between the continents tore open and ran dry. Since then the Ebb has been rising from the dry seabed: the dead come back, magic turns unreliable.
The ceasefire, the Grey Water Accord, was signed on the wreck of the flagship. Both sides sealed their files and tell their children a different story. You are the first generation after, sent to the borderlands as a Warden.
Corvane, the West
The Concordat
Law, registers, memory. A council of crowns under an elected High Chancellor; decisions are slow, written and binding. Slate, limestone, brass, lanterns, canals. The returned dead are citizens by law and unpaid labour in practice.
Human
Ithrenicourt elf
Returned
Dwarf
Varrach, the East
The Free Banners
Clans, the Moot, banners, river boats, stone circles. Every banner rules itself; the Moot decides loudly, quickly and revocably. Wood, leather, copper, thorns. The banners fund themselves by border raids, and their Speakers know what they woke.
Orc
Thorn Elf
Delta Folk
Beastfolk
Race names other than Ithreni (approved in October 2026) are working names. Both sides are right and both are guilty; no NPC calls the other side "monsters".
Classic systems as the foundation, everything else our own.
Saltwarden takes the rules of classic MMORPGs as far as that is allowed and builds its own world on top, with its own content, its own numbers and its own names. What the "plus" means is below.
- Tab-target, three roles
- Tank, healer, damage. Threat is real, interrupts are real, the server decides every hit.
- A world that costs something
- Travel on foot, flight points you have to reach first, mounts at 40 and 60. No instant travel, no dungeon finder.
- Dungeons and raids
- Five-player groups, raids for ten and 25. Boss loot tables, need or greed, attunement chains.
- Talents
- Three trees per class, 51 points at 60, a capstone at 31 points. Specialising is a decision.
- PvP with honor
- Battlegrounds, honor ranks, world combat in the Riven. By Banner Mode on Haven, always on Warfront.
- One Life
- A hardcore realm with its own characters. One life. The Ebb takes what falls.
- Professions and economy
- Gathering, crafting, auction house, player trade. Saltglass as a trade good from the Riven.
- The plus
- Sigils unlock new class roles, a short comfort list, more endgame breadth. No comfort that devalues groups.
- Controller from day one
- Browser, PC, Linux, Android, handhelds. The controls are built for pad and keyboard, not retrofitted.
Nine classes. Three of them first.
The MVP starts with Warrior, Priest and Mage, levels 1 to 15, on the Concordat side. The figures below are rig v3 from the workshop in armour tier 3 (levels 10 to 15); hover or tap to play an attack or a spell.
Warrior
Tank, melee
Rage
in the MVPPriest
Healing, ranged
Mana
in the MVPMage
Ranged, control
Mana
in the MVPPaladin
Healing, tank, melee
Mana · Concordat only
after the MVPHunter
Ranged, pet
Mana
after the MVPRogue
Melee
Energy, combo points
after the MVPShaman
Healing, caster, melee
Mana · Free Banners only
after the MVPWarlock
Ranged, pet
Mana
after the MVPDruid
Tank, healing, melee, caster
Shapeshifting, the Hedge
after the MVP
Pixel art, 48 pixels, by code.
No AI images. Every figure comes from a rig with joints, masks and palettes that lives as code in the repository and can be rebuilt at any time. Armour, weapons, hairstyles and palettes are layers on top (paperdoll). Eight directions, eleven animations, three armour tiers per class.
Maps are built from autotiles with seamless transitions, cliffs, shores and props, generated as Tiled maps by script. What you see here is the workshop state of October 2026: rough drafts; the final zones are built by hand.
Figures, rig v3, three armour tiers
Enemies, quadrupeds after the rework
Environment, side houses and nature
Interface, UI kit with its own pixel font
From the workshop
Everything built by code: Python scripts, rigs, masks, palettes. No AI images, no third-party assets. Click for the large view.
Ambercombe by day, the starting village in Whitmere: bell tower, market square, slate roofs. Map v3, rough draft.
Lanterhall in the rain: canal, covered bridge, weather as its own layer over the same map.
Lanterhall at night: light as its own layer, windows and lanterns glow, everything else cools down.
Reedhouse in Whitmere: quay, sluice crane, tower and a market stall by the canal.
Tidemark Post at dusk: watchtower, yard and rocks, torches instead of lanterns.
Slackwater Mine, the Ebb vein: a dungeon room lit by the Ebb itself.
Enemies in the grass: a scene test of whether the reworked enemies stay readable against the ground.
Desktop HUD draft: a boss fight in the mine with the UI kit and its own pixel font, bars, action bar, target and party frames.
Where the project stands.
Saltwarden is a solo project with about three build days a week. So it did not start with "build everything" but with a four-week spike that tests the three biggest risks before a single quest gets written. Status: October 2026.
- 4devlog posts
- 27wiki pages
- 6forum posts
- 2accounts
Live from the portal database.
From the devlog
A new name: Saltwarden Online
Until now the game was called Rivenward. From today it is called Saltwarden Online. World, canon and accounts stay, only the title and the address change.
#name#rechtThe art workshop: pixels by code
A style guide, a new environment, a new character rig and twenty effects, all built by code and reproducible at any time. No AI images.
#kunst#pixelart#werkstattSpike result: the netcode holds
Twelve hard metrics, all green, even with 200 bots at 150 ms latency. What the spike built, what it measured and what is still open.
#spike#netcode#technikA new direction: a classic-style MMORPG in 2D
On 7 October 2026 Rivenward found its line: the rules of the classic MMORPGs, a world of its own, and an honest test with kill criteria before a single line of game code.
#konzept#recht#scope
Next
- now
MVP plan 1: account and foundation
One account for website and game, login, persistence, zone servers, character creation. This portal with forum, wiki and devlog is the first visible part.
open - next
MVP
Levels 1 to 15, The Concordat, human and Ithreni (court elf), Warrior, Priest, Mage, one starting zone, one capital, one dungeon, realms Haven and One Life. Estimate: about 4.5 months, 8 pessimistic.
planned - later
Full game
Two continents, the Riven, nine classes, raids for ten and 25, battlegrounds, professions, Warfront.
planned
None of this is a promise. If the spike fails a kill criterion, it will say so here instead of the page disappearing.
One e-mail when there is something to test.
No newsletter, no sharing. You get a confirmation e-mail (double opt-in) and after that only mail when a test is coming up or the project ends. The address is stored in our own database.
Questions that already come up.
When can I play?
Not yet. There is a spike with one room, three roles and one boss that tests the technology. A first test with players comes with the MVP at the earliest. Join the waitlist and you will hear about it.
Does it cost anything?
The plan is a one-time purchase, no mandatory subscription, optional cosmetics. No pay-to-win: nothing you can buy makes a character stronger. Prices are not set.
Is this a clone?
No. Saltwarden is inspired by classic MMORPGs and adopts their rules as far as that is allowed. World, story, names, numbers, texts and graphics are our own. There is no connection to other games or their publishers.
Is there AI in it?
Not in the images: all pixel art is made by code and by hand from our own rigs, no image models. AI tools help with programming; a human makes the decisions and every line goes through tests.
What does it run on?
In the browser, as a PC and Linux application, on Android and on handhelds. Controller support is part of the design from the start.
What does One Life mean?
A separate realm with its own characters. If a character dies, it is gone. The exact rules for groups, duels and transfers are in the specification and will be fixed before the MVP.
German or English?
Proper names and the game interface are English. German as a second game language is planned but not decided. This site exists in both languages.