Sacrifice is a real-time strategy video game published by Interplay Entertainment in 2000 for Microsoft Windows platform. Developed by Shiny Entertainment, the game features elements of action and other genres. Players control wizards who fight each other with spells and summoned creatures. The game was ported to Mac OS 9.2 in 2001.
Unlike many of its contemporary real-time strategy games, Sacrifice places little emphasis on resource gathering and management. There is no system of workers; the players' wizards collect souls to summon creatures, and their mana—energy for casting spells—constantly regenerates. Players customize their attacks by choosing from spells and creatures aligned to five gods. To defeat an opponent, the player's wizard sacrifices a friendly unit at the opposing wizard's altar, thereby desecrating it and banishing the enemy wizard. Aside from a single-player campaign, Sacrifice offers a multiplayer mode, in which up to four players can play against each other over computer networks.
Sacrifice was created by a small team of developers; most of the work was done by four key personnel. The graphic engine of the game uses tesselation: thousands of polygons are used to display an object and as lesser details are needed, the number of polygons is reduced. By adjusting the required level of detail, Sacrifice can be run on various machines with the highest possible quality of graphics. Complementing the graphics of the game were the voice work of professional actors, such as Tim Curry, and the musical compositions of Kevin Manthei. Sacrifice was praised by reviewers for the novel designs of its creatures and for its humorous content. The high level of attention needed to manage its frenetic combat was mentioned as a flaw. Despite winning several awards, Sacrifice was not a commercial success.
Gameplay In Sacrifice, players control wizards, looking over their characters from behind. Each match starts the player with a wizard and an altar. Using the keyboard and mouse, players move their wizards around a virtual world, directing armies and casting spells to eliminate their opponents. A player's wizard defeats an opponent by desecrating their altar through the magical "sacrifice" of a friendly unit.
Wizards can cast spells that harm opponents (combat spells), heal damage taken, or summon creatures. More advanced combat spells affect large areas of the battlefield, taking the form of tornadoes and volcanoes. Casting spells requires energy, which the game represents in the form of mana. Recovery of mana is slow, but a wizard accelerates the process by staying close to their altar. Close proximity to one of several fountains of mana scattered across the world increases their recovery rate as well. A wizard can monopolize a mana fountain by erecting a structure known as a manalith over it. Because mana can always be regained, it is an infinite resource. Souls are the other type of resource in this game; they are used, along with mana, to summon creatures, who form the mainstay of the players' offensive capability. Unlike mana, souls are limited in quantity. Players start with a few souls and increase their resources by locating unclaimed souls, or by converting the souls of unfriendly creatures their wizards have killed.
Summoned creatures are mainly classified into three classes: melee, ranged, and air (flyers). In a rock-paper-scissors manner, each class is a counter to another. Melee creatures inflict more damage to their ranged opponents, but cannot retaliate against flyers, which in turn are vulnerable to those who can attack at range. Several creatures also have special abilities, such as creating protective magical barriers, becoming invisible, or immobilizing their opponents. Two units, manahoars and sac doctors, have special purposes. Manahoars help to recharge their summoner's mana by channeling energy from manaliths to him or her. Sac doctors are summoned to extract the souls of fallen opponents and bring them back to the altar for conversion. These units are also summoned to hold the sacrificial rituals required for desecrating enemy altars; killing a sac doctor disrupts the process.
The spells and abilities of the creatures are designed along the ethos of five gods. Persephone, the Great Healer, bestows her followers with powers of regeneration and nature. Her counterpart, Charnel, God of Strife, celebrates death and decay; his creatures are undead and his spells drains the life of others. The other three gods—James, Stratos, and Pyro—govern natural elements, granting their followers abilities associated with earth, air, and fire, respectively.
Unlike other real-time strategy games released in or before 2000, Sacrifices gameplay is not focused on large-scale management of resources and bases. Instead, the game emphasizes micromanagement of the players' units; success in the game is linked to meticulous control of individuals or small groups to overcome enemies. Players order their armies to assume formations by pressing an assigned key or navigating through a pop-up menu. The order can also be given by moving the mouse in specific patterns without waiting for the menu to appear.
Single-player campaign Sacrifices single-player campaign begins with a meeting between the protagonist Eldred and the blind seer Mithras on a war-torn world. Through voiceovers and cut scenes rendered by the game engine, Eldred recounts to Mithras his background and the events that led to the world's current state. Eldred was a tyrannical emperor who ruled over the world of Jhera. However, his days of rule were numbered: his subjects were rebelling, and his enemies gathered at the borders of his realm. Turning to the mystical arts for a solution, Eldred summoned a demon, Marduk, to eliminate opposition to his rule. Marduk proved uncontrollable and ravaged Jhera. Eldred fled to the world that he and Mithras stand on. The world—having suffered a past cataclysm—was riven into a collection of five floating islands. A god rules over each realm, seeking to impose their own agenda. The rivalries among the gods are aggravated by Mithras's prophecy of a traitor amongst them. Sensing the opportunity for a new lease on life, Eldred offers his service to the gods.
The campaign spans ten missions. In each mission, the player chooses a god for Eldred to champion, receiving creatures and spells from that god. The player can build up a selection of units and spells from different gods by changing Eldred's allegiance between missions; the selections are used in later missions or multiplayer sessions. As the game progresses, the player's choices align Eldred with one god. Aside from the stated goals in each mission, there are secret objectives that if accomplished bestow bonuses to Eldred's attributes (magical and physical resistance, more mana, etc.).
Midway through the campaign, Eldred encounters Marduk again. The demon taunts the wizard and announces that this world will suffer the same fate as Jhera. Eldred warns the gods; they believe one of them supports the demon and fall upon each other to eliminate the traitor. By the last stage of the campaign, Eldred has helped one god to kill the others. After the end of the wizard's narration, Mithras reveals himself as Marduk. Stratos, the traitor, had planned for the demon to appear on this world and deliver the prophecy to the gods. Marduk berates Eldred for his naivety and starts the final battle. After defeating the demon, the player chooses one of two endings for Eldred: stay and help the last god rule the world, or leave and seek his destiny in other worlds.
Multiplayer Sacrifice features the capability for players to play matches against each other over computer networks; up to four players (human- or computer-controlled) can participate in a multiplayer match. Four modes of play are available: Skirmish, Slaughter, Soul Harvest, and Domination. Skirmish's gameplay is similar to that of the single-player mode; a player wins the match by banishing the others' wizards. The winner of Domination is the wizard who controls a certain number of manaliths. The goal in Slaughter is to amass the most kills, while wizards in Soul Harvest have to collect the most souls.
Initially, the multiplayer games could only be played over small-area networks of computers (local area networks), or over the internet through an integrated matchmaking service. Later software patches added online rankings and the capability to connect computers via Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP), allowing play over the internet without the matchmaking service. The Macintosh version's matchmaking, handled by GameRanger, had to be installed through a patch. Multiplayer matches cannot be played between different computer platforms.
Development
Sacrifices development started in August 1997. The game's lead programmer, Martin Brownlow, was inspired by Chaos: The Battle of Wizards, which was released in 1985 for the ZX Spectrum computer. In the old game, players take turns to control wizards, summoning creatures and casting spells to eliminate each other. Shiny desired to avoid repeating the bad experience of marketing their last product Messiah. Released in March 2000, the game was extravagantly promoted by Shiny during its development, and the resulting heavy scrutiny from the media greatly stressed the team who worked on the game. FiringSquad claimed that until the year of its release, no one outside the company knew of the game. However, Electronic Gaming Monthly printed a number of details about the game in an issue cover dated December 1997, and Eurogamer reported that Sacrifice "has been hyped almost incessantly in the press, and if you placed every screenshot of the game which has been posted on the web end to end, they would easily reach to the moon and back." According to Brownlow, his team was able to concentrate on developing the game without the media or "fan base questioning every decision that gets made along the way".
The bulk of the work was done by a small team. Game designer Eric Flannum, formerly of Blizzard Entertainment, recalls that there were only three other key personnel: two programmers and an animator. As more game features were developed, the team expanded. Flannum was tasked to lead four level designers, and Jon Gwyn joined Joby Otero on the art team. After the basic features of the game had been completed, James Phinney, lead designer and producer of Blizzard's 1998 real-time strategy game StarCraft, was hired to write the plot for the single-player campaign. His first draft was used as the script for recording placeholder voiceovers, which helped the team to judge the atmosphere in the game. Later, Shiny employed professional actors, such as Tim Curry and Brad Garrett, and various voice artists, such as Jennifer Hale, to record the final voices for the game's characters. Audio filters altered the voices for the gods, giving them a supernatural edge appropriate to their roles. The game had three voice directors: Ginny McSwain, Art Currim and Chris Borders with Margaret Tang providing VO coordination. For background music, Shiny hired Kevin Manthei, who had composed many scores for video games and big- and small-screen entertainment, such as Scream 3 and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. His compositions for Sacrifice were played by an orchestra of 25 instruments. Shiny's founder, David Perry, was so busy with the game's development that he passed over the opportunity to create a video game for the science-fiction movie The Matrix.
Graphics