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The Making of Shiny's Sacrifice
At the increasingly enjoyable PC blog Rock, Paper, Shotgun, Keiron Gillen has up a post on the making of Shiny's Sacrifice . A reprint of an article he wrote for the PC Format site, and with extra materials, it goes into the origins of the title with game designer Eric Flannum. From the article: "'One of the biggest things which stood in the way of Sacrifice appealing more was that there were so many different and new things in it we were asking a lot from the player as far as what they had to learn and accept ... From the visual style, from the lack of a disembodied camera ... RTS players especially had a lot of new concepts to wrap themselves around' Of course, these 'problems' were also some of the things which absolutely distinguished the game. 'It was definitely one of the strengths of Sacrifice - its wacky visual look,' Eric considers the issue, 'but at the same time ... well, there's something about 'an archer' which communicates on a very basic level what that unit does. People don't have to learn. But when you've got a little pyromaniac, there's an extra step of learning. They don't inherently know what he does.'" At the start of his post, Gillen mentions the retrospective piece on the game he wrote for his personal site back at the end of last year, which is also well worth reading. I have to admit, I'll take almost any excuse to talk about this game; it's a sorely underappreciated title.
http://thepiratebay.org/tor/3797891/Sacrifice_-_Shiny_Entertainment_RTS_Full_
Go forth and enjoy it.
Clearly you don't appreciate the fact that software wants to be free. Software hording makes baby RMS cry.
MANY hours playing this game back in the early part of the decade.... a VERY underappreciated title, and a lot of fun. Definetly worth a shot if you never tried it.
It's a great game, but I read about it on ancientgamehistory.com the other day and never would have expected to see this here.
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WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
Sacrifice was one of the most impressive games ever created. Massive replay value, an interface that was basically gesture-driven, spectacular spell animations and an epic soundtrack. This game really IS that good and still holds its own. If you haven't played it, try to dig up a copy somewhere. You won't regret it.
End of lesson. You may press the button.
Wow.. I can't believe an article about sacrifice got on /.'s FP. I never saw more than 15 people in the lobby at once, at a tournament... and I played that game for 2 years.
It wasn't the control system.
It wasn't the camera system.
It wasn't because of learning so many new things.
It was precisely because of the "wacky" look. The game feels like an Alice in Wonderland induced drug trip. It has a really creepy feeling that most people just don't like.
Because linking to a torrent is going to kill the sales of a 7 year old game made by a company that hasn't sold a decent title since.
There is a point where any company should be glad their product is remembered at all. It was great in 2000, but these days? Massively outdated.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
So this is how long it takes for an article to make it through the Firehose.
When I first played through I picked Jim (ala Earthworm Jim) as the god for all my missions (I'm glad I did, it turns out he's probably the easiest). This last time I picked Stratos and spent a couple days fighting through, it was much harder this time, but Stratos' creatures always did suck. It's the one game I always wanted to play multiplayer and never got the chance to.
If you can get a legit copy of the game, it works fine in XP SP2. I actually pulled an ISO off the CD with CD Clone and mounted it with Daemon Tools, so no problems there (that way I can always keep it around).
Another great game I managed to get finally working was Dungeon Keeper (pretty much the only reason I never hunted Peter Molyneux down to kick him in the nuts after forgetting about BW and buying Fable for full price on release day). I still can't get DK2 working, but DK was a cinch, ripped and mounted in the same fashion.
The only bad things about Sacrifice were 1) the last mission was disproportionately hard (stupidly so in fact) and 2) no one bought it so it was hard as hell finding anyone willing to play it, or who even knew how (3 tutorials to learn game basics).
It really is one of the best games made since 2000. The visuals and gameplay were amazing. The controls seemed a bit hard, until you fired up a copy of Black and White (then you wanted to kiss the UI guy's feet). The spells, wow, I wish those damn WOW devs had played the game back when I was playing, maybe then magic in the game would be fun and impressive looking!
BTW, Bovine Intervention wasn't Jim's only fun spell, the one that created the huge pit in the island was a blast as well.
His sacrifice has made a difference. May he rest in peace.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
I must say, I totally agree that this game was awesome. What made it so incredible was how different it is from all other strategy games.
First, you're not juts a commander who mysteriously has a top-down view of everything as if from heaven. You were ACTUALLY ON THE BATTLEFIELD FIGHTING ALONGSIDE YOUR CREATURES. This sounds strange at first, but Shiny did an AMAZING job making this work.
The second thing that made it different was the creatures themselves. You had only 2 real resources in the game (Souls and Mana) that you really had to account for. The fact that you were limited on mana balanced the game and made sure you couldn't just rush the other guy with 5-soul creatures the instant the game began. You had to manage your creatures that were alongside you in battle and had to balance whether to summon more creatures, cast spells to help out your army of creatures, or just run away and hope for the best.
Which brings me to another point, spells. This is what really made the game fun. You just didn't go and let your units go out and fight the battle for you (although you could if your army was large enough), you actually joined into the fray yourself. I must say, throwing tornadoes at your enemies (or just opening a gigantic hold underneath them) is a LOT of fun. Along with blowing up random enemy souls. I really think this is what made this game amazing.
The last point that made this game so exciting was the sheer amount of variety that they had built into the game. This wasn't a typical startegy game that had one side pitted against the other. THERE ARE 5 DIFFERENT SIDES to the game, and each was incredibly different from the other. (Try playing Stratos (Weather god) and then playing with Charnel's aresenal (God of Suffering).
With that, I command all even remotely interested in playing a completely different version of a strategy game executed almost perfectly to go and find a way to play this game.
You can buy it on amazon (starts at $5.99), it's worth it. http://www.amazon.com/Havas-Interactive-FGC9510410-Sacrifice/dp/B00004TSX4
Sacrifice is up there amongst my favorite games of all time
I've played through it many, many times, in just about every combination of Gods that you could imagine. The game was just SO incredibly innovative, bizarre, and fun to play.
Here's hoping that one day Shiny gets a ton of money, and is allowed to make a sequel. I think a game like Sacrifice would go over really well these days, and it's an example of an RTS / RPG that could be played on consoles as well as the PC, to give it more mass appeal (of course, PC version > all)
I've been playing this again over the last week and have finished Persephone-only missions, going in turn with each god. Definitely an awesome game all two iterations I've played it and it's definitely sad not to see anything else out there that really takes better, clearer cues from this game.
If anyone needs me, I'll be in the Angry Dome.