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Sacrifice (computer game)
Encyclopedia
Sacrifice is a video game published by Interplay Entertainment
in 2000 for the Windows 98
platform. Developed by Shiny Entertainment
, it is a real-time strategy
game, featuring elements of action and other genres. Players control wizards who fight each other with spells and summoned creatures. Impressing reviewers with its graphics, Sacrifice was the first commercial video game to make full use of video graphics cards that can process transform, clipping, and lighting instructions. 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 tessellation
: 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, and no sequels are planned.
platform (and in the following year for Mac OS 9.2
), Sacrifice is a real-time strategy
video game that incorporates elements of the action
genre. 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 his or her 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 his or her altar. Close proximity to one of several fountains of mana scattered across the world increases his or her 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.
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.
Initially, the multiplayer games could only be played over small-area networks of computers (local area network
s), 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.
, 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. The video game industry was mostly ignorant of Sacrifices development, partly due to Shiny's desire 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. Learning from this mistake, Shiny adopted a low profile for Sacrifice; until the last several months of its development, no one outside the company knew of the game. 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 Garret, and various voice artists
, such as Jennifer Hale
, to record the final voices for the game's characters. Audio filter
s altered the voices for the gods, giving them a supernatural edge appropriate to their roles. 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
.
was developed from Messiahs. The older game renders its characters by tessellation
, using thousands of polygons to make up character models and decreasing the number of polygons when lesser details are required, such as drawing the object at a distance. A typical object in Sacrifice comprises 200 to 2,500 polygons. Shiny expanded the technology's application to the game's virtual world. The environment is not decorated with grass, flowers, and rocks by overlaying two-dimensional images
of such objects on the terrain model. Instead, many tiny models of these terrain features litter the landscape. Objects in the game are composed of isosceles right triangles, each of which is infinitely divisible into two smaller isosceles right triangles. The array of infinite triangles derived from these divisions is stored in a binary triangle tree data structure
, and the simplicity of the division and its data management algorithms frees up the graphic processor for other duties, allowing more resources to be spent on managing the level of detail
. Sacrifices spell effects are composed of parametric surface
s, which also can be broken down into triangles, facilitating tessellation.
In early 2000, the computer industry released the first video graphics cards capable of processing transform, clipping, and lighting (T&L) instructions. With the appropriate software, these new cards took over the burden of T&L processing from the computer's processor, allowing more detailed graphics and smoother animation. Shiny capitalized on the breakthrough, spending a few weeks to rewrite a portion of Sacrifices software. Brownlow and his team refined and improved the game's graphics, increasing the number of polygons per model and setting the software to scan through scenes a few more times to determine what objects to render and how to display them. Sacrifice was acknowledged as the first game on the market to make full use of the new graphic cards (the GeForce 2 and Radeon
series). Because of the adopted technology, animation in the game was smooth, without the jerkiness associated with overstressed graphical engines.
For the character models, Otero and his team eschewed conventional designs inspired by The Lord of the Rings
and other fantasies. Otero's ideal was that of "form follows function", by which a creature's capabilities or purposes are readily apparent from its appearance. In his opinion, a creature designed to kill enemies by exploding itself would simply be a "cartoon-ish bomb with feet". Otero's simple designs were expanded and fleshed out in detail by Gwyn, who was also responsible for creating Eldred's model. The artists' incorporation of humor in their work did not escape the video game industry's notice; many pointed out the quirky allusion of James, God of Earth, to Earthworm Jim
, star of Shiny's previous games.
s, performance issues, and possible improvements. The game's publisher, Interplay Entertainment
, assigned its quality assurance
department to test the single-player mode. Perry promoted the game by visiting professional game reviewers, such as FiringSquad, and giving copies of the beta version to them. On November 17, 2000, Interplay released the game for the Windows platform. Shiny packaged a level editor
, Scapex, with the finished product, allowing gamers to create their own levels. The tool displays the user's changes as they are added
to the level. Users have total control over the positioning of models and scripting
of events, although the tool does not provide the capability to create new spells or creatures. User-created maps can be shared with other players during the connection phase of multiplayer games.
Earlier in the same month, Macintosh software publisher MacPlay
announced that it was porting
Sacrifice to the Apple computers. It took the company several months to adapt the source code to the Macintosh architecture, and on December 14, 2001, the Macintosh version of the game was released. It has almost the same features as the original version; however, Scapex was excluded from the port. Another feature left out was multiplayer mode, which MacPlay added through a software patch.
3.2 billion in 1995 to $6.0 billion in 2000. "Solid" real-time strategy games could sell more than 100,000 copies, and those that sold less than 75,000 copies were considered commercial failures by the publishers. Many real-time strategy game developers concentrated on enhancing their game's visuals without concern for innovations in gameplay. Shiny was recognized by the industry for its unconventional games, which exhibited humorous content and unique artistic designs. When it became known that the company was developing Sacrifice as its first real-time strategy game, several industry observers were keen to see whether it could deliver a quality product.
Initial reactions were favorable. Sacrifices 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. Giger
got together and played around with 3D Studio Max for a few weeks with a cooler full of Bass Ale between them." To fellow journalist Kieron Gillen
, Sacrifice resembled a version of the strategy game Command and Conquer as designed by Renaissance
painter Hieronymus Bosch. Aside from being impressed by the details in the graphics, GameSpy
's Lee Haumersen found the creatures' movements fluid and believable, remarking, "flying dragons heave their bodies through the air reminiscent of Draco in the movie Dragonheart
." Journalist Tom Chick
summed up the weird experience of seeing his wizard at the head of "a troop of flapping, crawling, loping, whirling, hopping things" as the essence of "what gaming is all about."
The game's spell effects also elicited positive reactions. Next Generation magazine
s Samuel Bass called them "awe-inspiring", while it was "positively breathtaking" for Eurogamer
's John Bye to see "flaming missiles raining down on the battlefield, tornados lifting [his] men up into the sky, or the ground swelling up beneath [his wizard's] feet". Although such effects were implemented in other games, as Gillen pointed out, it was a vastly different experience to watch them from the first person perspective. Reviewers of FiringSquad and PC Gamer were equally overwhelmed by the stunning visual effects. Despite filling the screen with "winged, fully animated demons" and "multiple gigantic twisters spiraling gorgeously into the clouds", Sacrifice performed smoothly on the reviewers' machines, impressing the staff of Edge magazine
.
Aside from the visuals, the game's audio attracted comments. GameSpot's staff enjoyed listening to the story unfold through the recorded voices. They found that the voice actors did not overact their roles despite the extravagant appearances of the characters. Instead, the actors' performance conveyed an extra depth to the personalities of these characters. Haumersen noted a few flaws in the game's vocal presentation: the character models' lip movements did not match their speech, and they had a limited number of gestures to accompany the words. Michael House of Allgame
was not altogether impressed, finding the voice acting to be "spotty[,] ... ranging from hilarious to obnoxious."
To several reviewers, Sacrifice was flawed in its handling of combat. They found that the game's interface—which presented a viewpoint that looked over the wizard from behind—hindered them from having a clear picture of their characters' surroundings. The game's fast-paced combat ensured that fights tended to be messy affairs, where aside from picking out their units from a chaotic mass to issue commands, players had to see to their wizards' safety, and cast spells to support their army. Reviewers commented that once a player had lost a number of early battles, his or her army could never recover from its losses to win the match. Sacrifices multiplayer games, as GameSpot's Sam Parker observed, tended to be long-drawn stalemates until the wizards obtained more powerful spells. PC Zone
s Keith Pullin was disappointed that the game was not designed to reward tactics; in his experience, he achieved victory by continually summoning groups of creatures to attack the enemy. Bass agreed that the game was lacking in tactical play, but other aspects impressed him enough to downplay this failing in his assessment.
The intensity and excitement generated by the frenetic gameplay pleased IGN's Dan Adams, but Bye was so frustrated by his experience that he claimed to have suffered a massive increase in blood pressure. The game's heavy demand for micromanagement convinced Maximum PC
to name Sacrifice the "best argument for gamers [to grow] a third hand", an opinion in line with Chick's comment that the interface "[seemed] to have been designed for one of the game's 13-fingered beasts". Sacrifices gameplay had its supporters; the staff at Edge, impressed with the game's controls and visual perspective, named it one of the "few titles [that took] strategy into the third dimension and convincingly used the extra plane for more than a dazzling 3D makeover".
No sales figures were released for Sacrifice, but several members of the video game industry acknowledged the game did not sell well. James Bell, Infogrames
's Senior Vice President of Creative Development, said that Sacrifice, although an excellent game, suffered poor sales because it was badly marketed and released at the wrong time. Another reason, offered by Gillen, for Sacrifices commercial failure was the small size of its development team. Based mostly on the efforts of four people, the game was built around their gaming preferences, failing to take into account the opinions of a wider variety; hence, the game became a niche product.
as the Best PC Game of the Show. Since its release, Sacrifice has been one of PC Gamer
s Top 100 Games for at least eight consecutive years. Looking back at the history of real-time strategy gaming, Geryk pointed out that Sacrifices "depth and originality" was unparalleled in the genre and often overlooked in favor of its graphics. The staff of gaming site UGO shared a similar opinion, naming the game in 2009 as its eighteenth top strategy game of all time.
Although Sacrifice was honored as a quality game, industry observers pointed out that its qualities were forgotten by most people; the staff of GamesRadar
said the game was "practically invisible to the gaming public", and according to Gillen, few remembered Sacrifice as the pioneer of the mouse-gesture control system, which was praised as revolutionary in Peter Molyneux
's later game Black & White. Gillen further lamented that Sacrifices release heralded the end of Shiny's forays into creative game development, as the company switched to producing more mainstream products, such as Enter the Matrix
. Despite receiving numerous calls for a sequel, Shiny said in 2002 that it would not produce one. Seven years later, GamesRadar repeated the call for a sequel while proclaiming Sacrifice "one of the most underappreciated games of all time".
Interplay Entertainment
Interplay Entertainment Corporation is an American video game developer and publisher, founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by Brian Fargo. The company had been a quality developer until they started publishing their own games in 1988, like Neuromancer and Battle Chess. The company was renamed...
in 2000 for the Windows 98
Windows 98
Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...
platform. Developed by Shiny Entertainment
Shiny Entertainment
Shiny Entertainment was an American video game developer based in Laguna Beach, Southern California, and the creator of several popular titles such as Earthworm Jim, MDK, Sacrifice and The Matrix: Path of Neo. Shiny was founded by David Perry in October 1993...
, it is a real-time strategy
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
game, featuring elements of action and other genres. Players control wizards who fight each other with spells and summoned creatures. Impressing reviewers with its graphics, Sacrifice was the first commercial video game to make full use of video graphics cards that can process transform, clipping, and lighting instructions. The game was ported
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
to Mac OS 9.2
Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's Mac OS before the launch of Mac OS X. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as...
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
Magic point
Magic points are units of magical power that are used in many role-playing, computer role-playing and similar games as an expendable resource that is needed to pay for magic spells and other abilities, such as special attacks...
—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 tessellation
Tessellation
A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a pattern of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps. One may also speak of tessellations of parts of the plane or of other surfaces. Generalizations to higher dimensions are also possible. Tessellations frequently appeared in the art...
: 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
Tim Curry
Timothy James "Tim" Curry is a British actor, singer, composer and voice actor, known for his work in a diverse range of theatre, film and television productions. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California....
, and the musical compositions of Kevin Manthei
Kevin Manthei
Kevin Manthei is a composer for film, television, and video games.-Biography:Manthei grew up in Minnesota. He played the piano in his youth and played the trumpet in high school. He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Music degree in Theory and Composition. He also studied...
. 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, and no sequels are planned.
Gameplay
Published in 2000 for the Windows 98Windows 98
Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...
platform (and in the following year for Mac OS 9.2
Mac OS 9
Mac OS 9 is the final major release of Apple's Mac OS before the launch of Mac OS X. Introduced on October 23, 1999, Apple positioned it as "The Best Internet Operating System Ever," highlighting Sherlock 2's Internet search capabilities, integration with Apple's free online services known as...
), Sacrifice is a real-time strategy
Real-time strategy
Real-time strategy is a sub-genre of strategy video game which does not progress incrementally in turns. Brett Sperry is credited with coining the term to market Dune II....
video game that incorporates elements of the action
Action game
Action game is a video game genre that emphasizes physical challenges, including hand–eye coordination and reaction-time. The genre includes diverse subgenres such as fighting games, shooter games, and platform games, which are widely considered the most important action games, though some...
genre. 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 his or her 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
Magic point
Magic points are units of magical power that are used in many role-playing, computer role-playing and similar games as an expendable resource that is needed to pay for magic spells and other abilities, such as special attacks...
. Recovery of mana is slow, but a wizard accelerates the process by staying close to his or her altar. Close proximity to one of several fountains of mana scattered across the world increases his or her 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
Rock-paper-scissors
Rock-paper-scissors is a hand game played by two people. The game is also known as roshambo, or another ordering of the three items ....
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
Undead
Undead is a collective name for fictional, mythological, or legendary beings that are deceased and yet behave as if alive. Undead may be incorporeal, such as ghosts, or corporeal, such as vampires and zombies...
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
Tactical formation
A tactical formation is the arrangement or deployment of moving military forces such as infantry, cavalry, AFVs, military aircraft, or naval vessels...
by pressing an assigned key or navigating through a pop-up menu
Context menu
A context menu is a menu in a graphical user interface that appears upon user interaction, such as a right mouse click or middle click mouse operation...
. 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 his or her 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 network
Local area network
A local area network is a computer network that interconnects computers in a limited area such as a home, school, computer laboratory, or office building...
s), or over the internet through an integrated matchmaking service. Later software patches
Patch (computing)
A patch is a piece of software designed to fix problems with, or update a computer program or its supporting data. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, and improving the usability or performance...
added online rankings and the capability to connect computers via Internet Protocol Suite
Internet protocol suite
The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols used for the Internet and other similar networks. It is commonly known as TCP/IP from its most important protocols: Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol , which were the first networking protocols defined in this...
(TCP/IP), allowing play over the internet without the matchmaking service. The Macintosh version's matchmaking, handled by GameRanger
GameRanger
GameRanger is an Internet gaming service for the Macintosh and Windows computing platforms. The service includes custom software and unlike other gaming services is not strictly web-based. GameRanger was created by Scott Kevill and was first released in July 1999 for Macintosh with support for 11...
, 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 programmerProgrammer
A programmer, computer programmer or coder is someone who writes computer software. The term computer programmer can refer to a specialist in one area of computer programming or to a generalist who writes code for many kinds of software. One who practices or professes a formal approach to...
, Martin Brownlow, was inspired by Chaos: The Battle of Wizards, which was released in 1985 for the ZX Spectrum
ZX Spectrum
The ZX Spectrum is an 8-bit personal home computer released in the United Kingdom in 1982 by Sinclair Research Ltd...
computer. In the old game, players take turns to control wizards, summoning creatures and casting spells to eliminate each other. The video game industry was mostly ignorant of Sacrifices development, partly due to Shiny's desire to avoid repeating the bad experience of marketing their last product Messiah
Messiah (video game)
Messiah is a third person shooter video game developed by Shiny and published by Interplay.-Plot:The player controls Bob, a cherub sent by God to clean up the corruption and sin on Earth...
. 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. Learning from this mistake, Shiny adopted a low profile for Sacrifice; until the last several months of its development, no one outside the company knew of the game. 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
Blizzard Entertainment
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher founded on February 8, 1991 under the name Silicon & Synapse by three graduates of UCLA, Michael Morhaime, Allen Adham and Frank Pearce and currently owned by French company Activision Blizzard...
, recalls that there were only three other key personnel: two programmers and an animator
Computer animation
Computer animation is the process used for generating animated images by using computer graphics. The more general term computer generated imagery encompasses both static scenes and dynamic images, while computer animation only refers to moving images....
. 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
StarCraft
StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
, 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
Tim Curry
Timothy James "Tim" Curry is a British actor, singer, composer and voice actor, known for his work in a diverse range of theatre, film and television productions. He currently resides in Los Angeles, California....
and Brad Garret, and various voice artists
Voice acting
Voice acting is the art of providing voices for animated characters and radio and audio dramas and comedy, as well as doing voice-overs in radio and television commercials, audio dramas, dubbed foreign language films, video games, puppet shows, and amusement rides.Performers are called...
, such as Jennifer Hale
Jennifer Hale
Jennifer Hale is a Canadian-born American actress and singer best known for her voice over work in video games like Grandia II, the Mass Effect trilogy, Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Tales of Symphonia, the Metroid Prime trilogy, the Metal Gear Solid games, Brütal Legend, and Disney's...
, to record the final voices for the game's characters. Audio filter
Audio filter
An audio filter is a frequency dependent amplifier circuit, working in the audio frequency range, 0 Hz to beyond 20 kHz. Many types of filters exist for applications including graphic equalizers, synthesizers, sound effects, CD players and virtual reality systems.Being a frequency dependent...
s altered the voices for the gods, giving them a supernatural edge appropriate to their roles. For background music, Shiny hired Kevin Manthei
Kevin Manthei
Kevin Manthei is a composer for film, television, and video games.-Biography:Manthei grew up in Minnesota. He played the piano in his youth and played the trumpet in high school. He graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Music degree in Theory and Composition. He also studied...
, who had composed many scores for video games and big- and small-screen entertainment, such as Scream 3
Scream 3
Scream 3 is a 2000 American slasher film created by Kevin Williamson, directed by Wes Craven and written by Ehren Kruger, starring Neve Campbell, Courteney Cox Arquette and David Arquette, released on February 4, 2000 as the third, and originally, concluding installment in the Scream film series...
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
The Matrix
The Matrix is a 1999 science fiction-action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski, starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss, Joe Pantoliano, and Hugo Weaving...
.
Graphics
Sacrifices graphics engineGame engine
A game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of video games. There are many game engines that are designed to work on video game consoles and personal computers...
was developed from Messiahs. The older game renders its characters by tessellation
Tessellation
A tessellation or tiling of the plane is a pattern of plane figures that fills the plane with no overlaps and no gaps. One may also speak of tessellations of parts of the plane or of other surfaces. Generalizations to higher dimensions are also possible. Tessellations frequently appeared in the art...
, using thousands of polygons to make up character models and decreasing the number of polygons when lesser details are required, such as drawing the object at a distance. A typical object in Sacrifice comprises 200 to 2,500 polygons. Shiny expanded the technology's application to the game's virtual world. The environment is not decorated with grass, flowers, and rocks by overlaying two-dimensional images
Texture mapping
Texture mapping is a method for adding detail, surface texture , or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. Its application to 3D graphics was pioneered by Dr Edwin Catmull in his Ph.D. thesis of 1974.-Texture mapping:...
of such objects on the terrain model. Instead, many tiny models of these terrain features litter the landscape. Objects in the game are composed of isosceles right triangles, each of which is infinitely divisible into two smaller isosceles right triangles. The array of infinite triangles derived from these divisions is stored in a binary triangle tree data structure
Data structure
In computer science, a data structure is a particular way of storing and organizing data in a computer so that it can be used efficiently.Different kinds of data structures are suited to different kinds of applications, and some are highly specialized to specific tasks...
, and the simplicity of the division and its data management algorithms frees up the graphic processor for other duties, allowing more resources to be spent on managing the level of detail
Level of detail
In computer graphics, accounting for level of detail involves decreasing the complexity of a 3D object representation as it moves away from the viewer or according other metrics such as object importance, eye-space speed or position....
. Sacrifices spell effects are composed of parametric surface
Parametric surface
A parametric surface is a surface in the Euclidean space R3 which is defined by a parametric equation with two parameters. Parametric representation is the most general way to specify a surface. Surfaces that occur in two of the main theorems of vector calculus, Stokes' theorem and the divergence...
s, which also can be broken down into triangles, facilitating tessellation.
In early 2000, the computer industry released the first video graphics cards capable of processing transform, clipping, and lighting (T&L) instructions. With the appropriate software, these new cards took over the burden of T&L processing from the computer's processor, allowing more detailed graphics and smoother animation. Shiny capitalized on the breakthrough, spending a few weeks to rewrite a portion of Sacrifices software. Brownlow and his team refined and improved the game's graphics, increasing the number of polygons per model and setting the software to scan through scenes a few more times to determine what objects to render and how to display them. Sacrifice was acknowledged as the first game on the market to make full use of the new graphic cards (the GeForce 2 and Radeon
Radeon
Radeon is a brand of graphics processing units and random access memory produced by Advanced Micro Devices , first launched in 2000 by ATI Technologies, which was acquired by AMD in 2006. Radeon is the successor to the Rage line. There are four different groups, which can be differentiated by...
series). Because of the adopted technology, animation in the game was smooth, without the jerkiness associated with overstressed graphical engines.
For the character models, Otero and his team eschewed conventional designs inspired by The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings
The Lord of the Rings is a high fantasy epic written by English philologist and University of Oxford professor J. R. R. Tolkien. The story began as a sequel to Tolkien's earlier, less complex children's fantasy novel The Hobbit , but eventually developed into a much larger work. It was written in...
and other fantasies. Otero's ideal was that of "form follows function", by which a creature's capabilities or purposes are readily apparent from its appearance. In his opinion, a creature designed to kill enemies by exploding itself would simply be a "cartoon-ish bomb with feet". Otero's simple designs were expanded and fleshed out in detail by Gwyn, who was also responsible for creating Eldred's model. The artists' incorporation of humor in their work did not escape the video game industry's notice; many pointed out the quirky allusion of James, God of Earth, to Earthworm Jim
Earthworm Jim
Earthworm Jim is a run and gun platform video game starring an earthworm named Jim in a robotic suit who battles evil. Created by Doug TenNapel and designed by David Perry, the game was developed by Shiny Entertainment and Playmates Interactive Entertainment, released by Sega for the Mega...
, star of Shiny's previous games.
Release
By June, the major features of the game had been implemented, and Shiny proceeded to the next stage of development. It selected a thousand members of the public to participate in a beta test of Sacrifices multiplayer modes, receiving feedback on software bugSoftware bug
A software bug is the common term used to describe an error, flaw, mistake, failure, or fault in a computer program or system that produces an incorrect or unexpected result, or causes it to behave in unintended ways. Most bugs arise from mistakes and errors made by people in either a program's...
s, performance issues, and possible improvements. The game's publisher, Interplay Entertainment
Interplay Entertainment
Interplay Entertainment Corporation is an American video game developer and publisher, founded in 1983 as Interplay Productions by Brian Fargo. The company had been a quality developer until they started publishing their own games in 1988, like Neuromancer and Battle Chess. The company was renamed...
, assigned its quality assurance
Quality Assurance
Quality assurance, or QA for short, is the systematic monitoring and evaluation of the various aspects of a project, service or facility to maximize the probability that minimum standards of quality are being attained by the production process...
department to test the single-player mode. Perry promoted the game by visiting professional game reviewers, such as FiringSquad, and giving copies of the beta version to them. On November 17, 2000, Interplay released the game for the Windows platform. Shiny packaged a level editor
Level editor
A level editor is a software tool used to design levels, maps, campaigns, etc and virtual worlds for a video game. In some cases the creator of a video game releases an official level editor for a game, but other times the community of fans step in to fill the void...
, Scapex, with the finished product, allowing gamers to create their own levels. The tool displays the user's changes as they are added
WYSIWYG
WYSIWYG is an acronym for What You See Is What You Get. The term is used in computing to describe a system in which content displayed onscreen during editing appears in a form closely corresponding to its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product...
to the level. Users have total control over the positioning of models and scripting
Scripting language
A scripting language, script language, or extension language is a programming language that allows control of one or more applications. "Scripts" are distinct from the core code of the application, as they are usually written in a different language and are often created or at least modified by the...
of events, although the tool does not provide the capability to create new spells or creatures. User-created maps can be shared with other players during the connection phase of multiplayer games.
Earlier in the same month, Macintosh software publisher MacPlay
MacPlay
MacPlay was the name used by a series of two American publishers of Macintosh computer games. No game has been published under the MacPlay brand name since 2004.- 1990 - 1997 Period :...
announced that it was porting
Porting
In computer science, porting is the process of adapting software so that an executable program can be created for a computing environment that is different from the one for which it was originally designed...
Sacrifice to the Apple computers. It took the company several months to adapt the source code to the Macintosh architecture, and on December 14, 2001, the Macintosh version of the game was released. It has almost the same features as the original version; however, Scapex was excluded from the port. Another feature left out was multiplayer mode, which MacPlay added through a software patch.
Reception
Sacrifice was developed and released during a period of growth for the video games market; the amount United States consumers spent on video games increased from US$United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
3.2 billion in 1995 to $6.0 billion in 2000. "Solid" real-time strategy games could sell more than 100,000 copies, and those that sold less than 75,000 copies were considered commercial failures by the publishers. Many real-time strategy game developers concentrated on enhancing their game's visuals without concern for innovations in gameplay. Shiny was recognized by the industry for its unconventional games, which exhibited humorous content and unique artistic designs. When it became known that the company was developing Sacrifice as its first real-time strategy game, several industry observers were keen to see whether it could deliver a quality product.
Initial reactions were favorable. Sacrifices 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
Salvador Dalí
Salvador Domènec Felip Jacint Dalí i Domènech, Marquis de Púbol , commonly known as Salvador Dalí , was a prominent Spanish Catalan surrealist painter born in Figueres,Spain....
and H. R. Giger
H. R. Giger
Hans Rudolf "Ruedi" Giger is a Swiss surrealist painter, sculptor, and set designer. He won an Academy Award for Best Achievement for Visual Effects for his design work on the film Alien.-Early life:...
got together and played around with 3D Studio Max for a few weeks with a cooler full of Bass Ale between them." To fellow journalist Kieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen
Kieron Gillen is a British computer games and music journalist, as well as a comic book author. Gillen has worked for many years as a video game journalist and has, more recently, worked on various comics. He is perhaps best known for his creator-owned comic Phonogram, created with artist Jamie...
, Sacrifice resembled a version of the strategy game Command and Conquer as designed by Renaissance
Renaissance
The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...
painter Hieronymus Bosch. Aside from being impressed by the details in the graphics, GameSpy
GameSpy
GameSpy Industries, Inc., known simply as GameSpy, is a division of IGN Entertainment, which operates a network of game websites and provides online video game-related services and software. GameSpy dates back to the 1996 release of an internet Quake server search program named QSpy. The current...
's Lee Haumersen found the creatures' movements fluid and believable, remarking, "flying dragons heave their bodies through the air reminiscent of Draco in the movie Dragonheart
Dragonheart
Dragonheart is a 1996 fantasy adventure film directed by Rob Cohen. It stars Dennis Quaid, David Thewlis, Pete Postlethwaite, Dina Meyer, and the voice of Sean Connery. It was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and various other awards in 1996 and 1997...
." Journalist Tom Chick
Tom Chick
Tom W. Chick is an American television and movie actor, and independent journalist. His most prominent TV roles were as Oscar's lover Gil in the US version of The Office, and the hard-hitting reporter Gordon in The West Wing. As a writer, Tom has contributed to many current and past video game...
summed up the weird experience of seeing his wizard at the head of "a troop of flapping, crawling, loping, whirling, hopping things" as the essence of "what gaming is all about."
The game's spell effects also elicited positive reactions. Next Generation magazine
Next Generation Magazine
Next Generation Magazine was a video game magazine that was made by Imagine Media publishing company . It was affiliated to and shared editorial with the UK's Edge magazine. Next Generation ran from January 1995 until January 2002. It was published by Jonathan Simpson-Bint and edited by Neil West...
s Samuel Bass called them "awe-inspiring", while it was "positively breathtaking" for Eurogamer
Eurogamer
Eurogamer is a Brighton-based website focused on video games news, reviews, previews and interviews. It is operated by Eurogamer Network Ltd., which was formed in 1999 by brothers Rupert and Nick Loman. Eurogamer has grown to become one of the most important European-based websites focused on...
's John Bye to see "flaming missiles raining down on the battlefield, tornados lifting [his] men up into the sky, or the ground swelling up beneath [his wizard's] feet". Although such effects were implemented in other games, as Gillen pointed out, it was a vastly different experience to watch them from the first person perspective. Reviewers of FiringSquad and PC Gamer were equally overwhelmed by the stunning visual effects. Despite filling the screen with "winged, fully animated demons" and "multiple gigantic twisters spiraling gorgeously into the clouds", Sacrifice performed smoothly on the reviewers' machines, impressing the staff of Edge magazine
Edge (magazine)
Edge is a multi-format computer and video game magazine published by Future Publishing in the United Kingdom. It is known for its industry contacts, editorial stance, distinctive anonymous third-person writing style, yearly awards and longevity....
.
Aside from the visuals, the game's audio attracted comments. GameSpot's staff enjoyed listening to the story unfold through the recorded voices. They found that the voice actors did not overact their roles despite the extravagant appearances of the characters. Instead, the actors' performance conveyed an extra depth to the personalities of these characters. Haumersen noted a few flaws in the game's vocal presentation: the character models' lip movements did not match their speech, and they had a limited number of gestures to accompany the words. Michael House of Allgame
Allgame
Allgame is a commercial database of information about arcade games, video games and console manufacturers.Allgame is owned by All Media Guide, along with Allmusic and Allmovie....
was not altogether impressed, finding the voice acting to be "spotty[,] ... ranging from hilarious to obnoxious."
To several reviewers, Sacrifice was flawed in its handling of combat. They found that the game's interface—which presented a viewpoint that looked over the wizard from behind—hindered them from having a clear picture of their characters' surroundings. The game's fast-paced combat ensured that fights tended to be messy affairs, where aside from picking out their units from a chaotic mass to issue commands, players had to see to their wizards' safety, and cast spells to support their army. Reviewers commented that once a player had lost a number of early battles, his or her army could never recover from its losses to win the match. Sacrifices multiplayer games, as GameSpot's Sam Parker observed, tended to be long-drawn stalemates until the wizards obtained more powerful spells. PC Zone
PC Zone
PC Zone was the first magazine dedicated to games for IBM-compatible personal computers to be published in the United Kingdom. Earlier PC magazines such as PC Leisure, PC Format and PC Plus had covered games but only as part of a wider remit. PC Zone was founded in 1993.The magazine was published...
s Keith Pullin was disappointed that the game was not designed to reward tactics; in his experience, he achieved victory by continually summoning groups of creatures to attack the enemy. Bass agreed that the game was lacking in tactical play, but other aspects impressed him enough to downplay this failing in his assessment.
The intensity and excitement generated by the frenetic gameplay pleased IGN's Dan Adams, but Bye was so frustrated by his experience that he claimed to have suffered a massive increase in blood pressure. The game's heavy demand for micromanagement convinced Maximum PC
Maximum PC
Maximum PC, formerly known as boot, is an American magazine and web site published by Future US. It focuses on cutting-edge PC hardware, with an emphasis on product reviews, step-by-step tutorials, and in-depth technical briefs...
to name Sacrifice the "best argument for gamers [to grow] a third hand", an opinion in line with Chick's comment that the interface "[seemed] to have been designed for one of the game's 13-fingered beasts". Sacrifices gameplay had its supporters; the staff at Edge, impressed with the game's controls and visual perspective, named it one of the "few titles [that took] strategy into the third dimension and convincingly used the extra plane for more than a dazzling 3D makeover".
No sales figures were released for Sacrifice, but several members of the video game industry acknowledged the game did not sell well. James Bell, Infogrames
Infogrames
Infogrames Entertainment SA was an international French holding company headquartered in Paris, France. It was the owner of Atari, Inc., headquartered in New York City, U.S. and Atari Europe. It was founded in 1983 by Bruno Bonnell and Christophe Sapet using the proceeds from an introductory...
's Senior Vice President of Creative Development, said that Sacrifice, although an excellent game, suffered poor sales because it was badly marketed and released at the wrong time. Another reason, offered by Gillen, for Sacrifices commercial failure was the small size of its development team. Based mostly on the efforts of four people, the game was built around their gaming preferences, failing to take into account the opinions of a wider variety; hence, the game became a niche product.
Legacy
Impressing IGN with its "wonderful land full of character and imagination", Sacrifice was the gaming site's choice for the best strategy game of 2000. It was honored in the same year by European Computer Trade ShowEuropean Computer Trade Show
The European Computer Trade Show, commonly known as ECTS, was an annual trade show for the European computer and video game industry, which first ran in 1988, with the last event occurring in 2004....
as the Best PC Game of the Show. Since its release, Sacrifice has been one of PC Gamer
PC Gamer
PC Gamer is a magazine founded in Britain in 1993 devoted to PC gaming and published monthly by Future Publishing. The magazine has several regional editions, with the UK and US editions becoming the best selling PC games magazines in their respective countries...
s Top 100 Games for at least eight consecutive years. Looking back at the history of real-time strategy gaming, Geryk pointed out that Sacrifices "depth and originality" was unparalleled in the genre and often overlooked in favor of its graphics. The staff of gaming site UGO shared a similar opinion, naming the game in 2009 as its eighteenth top strategy game of all time.
Although Sacrifice was honored as a quality game, industry observers pointed out that its qualities were forgotten by most people; the staff of GamesRadar
GamesRadar
GamesRadar is a multi-format video game website featuring regular news, previews, reviews, videos, and guides. It is owned and operated simultaneously in the UK and US by worldwide publisher Future Publishing...
said the game was "practically invisible to the gaming public", and according to Gillen, few remembered Sacrifice as the pioneer of the mouse-gesture control system, which was praised as revolutionary in Peter Molyneux
Peter Molyneux
Peter Douglas Molyneux OBE is an English computer game designer and game programmer. He created the God games Dungeon Keeper, Populous, and Black & White, among others, as well as business simulation games such as Theme Park and more recently, the RPG series Fable.Despite the success of his games,...
's later game Black & White. Gillen further lamented that Sacrifices release heralded the end of Shiny's forays into creative game development, as the company switched to producing more mainstream products, such as Enter the Matrix
Enter the Matrix
Enter the Matrix is the first video game based on The Matrix series of films. It was developed by Shiny Entertainment and published by Atari and WB Interactive for the PlayStation 2, Xbox and Nintendo GameCube game systems, and for the PC. It was published in Japan by Bandai...
. Despite receiving numerous calls for a sequel, Shiny said in 2002 that it would not produce one. Seven years later, GamesRadar repeated the call for a sequel while proclaiming Sacrifice "one of the most underappreciated games of all time".
External links
- Official Sacrifice website (archived: April 8, 2002)