The Sacrifice

The Sacrifice is a Ludum Dare 33 game that fits very well into the edition’s theme, ‘You are the monster’. In this game, you have to choose what tasks villagers need to do in order to survive harsh times, and at the end of a season you must choose a sacrifice.

At times, it’s surprising how much quality can be crammed into a small game that’s built in just 72 hours. Jongwoo Kim, Eric Lahaie, Aurelien Folie, and François-Xavier Bilodeau have managed to pull off a great thing.

From a design point of view, The Sacrifice looks very nice. The artwork is excellent and with the great choice of color tones and mood, the game even feels a bit gloomy. Along with the unique aspect, you also get some great audio in this jam build. I’m not really surprised that after a few minutes in I want to see this develop into something better, grander, a real title.

Issuing people tasks in the form of gathering food and supplies, building houses for the people, and praying to the gods is not something new to games. Killing people certainly isn’t. However, The Sacrifice combines these elements and obtains a very nice formula.

Each season you have to choose wisely which family does what depending on their skills and at the end of it, you will have to choose which townsfolk to sacrifice. The game gives no reason for why sacrifices are needed, but surely you are aware of some explanations from books, movies and so on. The interesting part is that you get to decide who gets to die, and it’s always just one person out of five. How do you choose? Well, you have some short and at times bizarre descriptions of the ones in front of you, and it’s based on those that you decide who dies.

In a way, you play the role of a tyrant in The Sacrifice but times in the game are especially hard. You can’t afford to waste resources on everyone, and the sacrifice is not an option. It's an interesting game.