Where to get it

2000 · Shiny Entertainment · Real-time strategy · Strategy

Sacrifice

The Holy War is over. The demons of Gologotha have been banished, yet the cost has been terribly high. The Creator, god of the Fyllid, has been defeated and the faith of the people has begun to wane. Petty squabbles among the five remaining gods has caused the land to split into five mystical territories - each at war with one another. Into this divided land steps a wizard, a man haunted by his past, whose choices will shape the future.

Released: 17 November 2000
Platforms: Windows macOS
Genres: Real-time strategy Strategy
Developers: Shiny Entertainment
Publishers: Interplay Entertainment
Modes: Multiplayer Single-player
Perspective: Third person Bird view / Isometric
Themes: Action Fantasy
Engine: Messiah
Country: United States
Age ratings: USK 12 CLASS_IND 18 ESRB M PEGI 16
Languages: English, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish (Spain)
Time to beat: 9hmain story31hcompletionist
Composers: Kevin Manthei

About

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.

›Story

From the Sacrifice wikia:

Sacrifice's campaign follows the story of a vagrant wizard known as Eldred. Five gods offer him a home, but Eldred must settle with only one. Early on in the campaign, the gods hear a prophecy that foretells their destruction by a traitor amongst them, a traitor that only a wanderer could defeat. As a result of this, their once harmless bickering transforms into all-out warfare, and Eldred must pick a side.

Players say

Media

The articlegameplay, story, development, reception

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.

Development

Sacrifice's 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".

Reception

The PC version received "generally favorable reviews" according to the review aggregation website Metacritic. Lamchop of GamePro said, "A third-person hybrid of fantasy role-playing and real-time strategy, Sacrifice weaves together an intricate story, addictive gameplay, and drop-dead gorgeous graphics."

Initial reactions were favorable. Sacrifice's art was a point of focus for reviewers: the fantasy creatures' novel designs made deep impressions on the industry. The designs were so unconventional that gaming journalist Michael Eilers remarked, "It is as if Salvador Dalí and H. R.