did you think somebody can make another "sacrifice style" game ?

[Laféedusel]

Think about how someone could recreate a game like sacrifice with such good gameplay, totally destructible terrain, huge spells, an army of creatures very different from each other, (the story was good and the acting realy great).

Has anyone copied games? the gameplay is top notch. (especially thanks to the physics and terrain which could be modified. Would it be possible to recreate this type of game and bring it back to 202x style? What do you think or according to your sources went wrong in this game so that it was not as successful as it could have been?

[Darkstorm]

There is like less than 4 active players(there are more but it's hard for the players to gather to have the 2v2 at any given moment).

There is new engine, work in progress. It won't be any significant boost up in graphics unless some artsy soul would want to make new models and animations for literally everything + new stuff.

The game wasn't properly advertised so many people up to this day don't know it ever existed. The steering is total mess but I don't see better way to put up controls after years of expierience.

Maybe game was released too early as it is most likely. Even after 23 years isn't looking as bad as many, many games that came around that time and even quite later.

[Adam Beckett]

These kind of forum posts want me to write a book about Sacrifice. Something, I contemplate for years ... though, others would be way more qualified, to write that story.

To answer the questions:

A) "[Do] you think somebody can make another "sacrifice style" game ?"

Style? yes. Many already did, imho (see below).
Exact the same? No.

B) Has anyone copied [the] game?

I would say, a lot of actual game developers, in many different professional studios, have made games which were influenced by Shiny's "Sacrifice" - but none of those games are a direct copy, the way modders are making "Mario 1:1" levels in other games or 'Indie' devs copy each others 2D platformers making gazillion clones on the Steam store to a degree of 'asset-swapping'.

Over the past decades, I have read from game developers, how they have been 'influenced by Sacrifice'.

So - as discussed in the other thread here "Any similar game like this" - there are 'similar' games, to a distant degree.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/38440/discussions/0/3827541651929139813/

... heck, even 'Demon's Souls/Dark Souls' has 'soul gathering' mechanic!

C) ... bring it back to 202x style?

I highly doubt it, if you think of some sort of "Sacrifice 2".

The simple answer is: "if they coulda - they woulda".

Every game developer worth their salt is aware of this old classic. The game mechanics and systems, the art and story style. Every Action-Adventure, or RTS title released in the past decade or two considered 'stealing' from this game. Since, modern game development is nothing but 'stealing' from each other and - ideally - improving on what others have created before them.

D) [What] went wrong in this game so that it was not as successful?

I would agree with Darkstorm: the marketing was not ideal.

But, it was also a hard game to market. Back in the year 2000, the PC gaming market was full of diverse and original titles. There was no wide-spread Internet. No 'social media' daily bombardment. People bought video games in video game stores (or Walmart).

It was the year the Playstation 2 came out. The Dreamcast and Nintendo 64 were still huge. And Pokemon on the Gameboy beat them all.

PC gaming was only a fraction, compared to it. Selling 100.000 units, what Diablo 2 did that year, was considered a 'success'. Many now legendary PC games (System Shock 2, Deus Ex, etc.) did not sell 'well' on release, according to publisher expectations. These games just had a very narrow window to catch the eyes of potential customers.

If you were like me, in 1999-2001, you bought more than one boxed PC game every single month. From 'Baldur's Gate' to 'The Sims' to Deus Ex, Outcast, Alpha Centauri, Omikron, Descent 3, Age of Empires 2, Everquest, CnC Tiberium Sun, Dungeon Keeper 2, Unreal Tournament, Planescape Torment, Messiah, System Shock 2, Diablo 2, Quake IIi Arena ... etc, etc, etc ... and that were just PC releases - lot's of amazing games. Not a lot of time to play (or buy) all! And there were no 'Steam Sales'. You bought the game full price (50 bucks US).

__________________________________________
The Wikipedia (English Language) page, is a well written summary of the game and it's development and reception.

There are also other sources online (most of them now archived: only available via the "WaybackMachine" (Archive[.]org).

I would also refer you to the 'Post Mortem' articles on "Gamasutra.com" (now gamedeveloper.com - hard to search) and the GDCVault.

What the Shiny developers accomplished with their limited resources, risky (genre-breaking) business decisions and single developer efforts is amazing, considering, it is a lasting legacy.

"Messiah" and "Sacrifice", released in the same year, were groundbreaking, in technical terms as they were gameplay-wise. It caught the eye of the Wachowski brothers, who
hired Shiny to make their 'Matrix' game. At that time Interplay (the publisher) already was in hot waters, financially.

[Darkstorm]

Originally posted by Adam Beckett:

Has anyone copied [the] game?

I only heard that Brutal Legend comes close to copy couple mechanics, but I haven't tried it so I cannot back it up.

Originally posted by Adam Beckett:

... heck, even 'Demon's Souls/Dark Souls' has 'soul gathering' mechanic!

It's called souls but isn't that exp and money in one thing? :)

Originally posted by Adam Beckett:

C) ... bring it back to 202x style?

I highly doubt it, if you think of some sort of "Sacrifice 2".

The simple answer is: "if they coulda - they woulda".

Every game developer worth their salt is aware of this old classic. The game mechanics and systems, the art and story style. Every Action-Adventure, or RTS title released in the past decade or two considered 'stealing' from this game. Since, modern game development is nothing but 'stealing' from each other and - ideally - improving on what others have created before them.

Did you see the new engine? One guy is trying to reproduce game mechanics 1:1 but the assets gonna run from the original game files(unless someone will make them for free, so the models and textures won't be 23 years old).

https://youtu.be/ZMPwX_POkhg?si=NR56WRP_kHEu76qv

Shadows already make huge improvement on how the game looks like, I think.

Originally posted by Adam Beckett:

D) [What] went wrong in this game so that it was not as successful?

I would agree with Darkstorm: the marketing was not ideal.

But, it was also a hard game to market. Back in the year 2000, the PC gaming market was full of diverse and original titles. There was no wide-spread Internet. No 'social media' daily bombardment. People bought video games in video game stores (or Walmart).

I totally agree with this. Sacrifice is quite popular in Poland because it was added to couple of gaming magazines (that costed as much as two-four beers and came with 2-3 full games and few demos) + one newspaper(I thought it was a meme, but it really happened).

[Laféedusel]

Look like atari Sa own it (sacrifice) ? did it's true ?

[Darkstorm]

Originally posted by Laféedusel:

Look like atari Sa own it (sacrifice) ? did it's true ?

Interplay is the rights holder.