Sacrizism by Erkberg

made by Erkberg for LD 43 (JAM)

Welcome to the realm of the Demon King! He demands his annual sacrifices...

A demonic twin-stick-shooter with lots of randomized madness. The game is quite difficult. Choose your battles wisely at the start and don't give up too fast at the end, practice makes perfect :)

All platform versions are available on itch.io: https://erkberg.itch.io/sacrizism
Source is available on GitHub: https://github.com/Erkberg/Sacrizism
Important note: The WebGL version on itch.io is the postjam version. Please use the jam version for rating, which is available as standalone download. (suffix _JamVersion)

~ Controls ~
Gamepad highly recommended! (keyboards may have problems with simultaneous inputs, also: aiming)
Left stick / WASD / ZQSD to move
Right stick / Arrows (mouse in postjam version) to shoot

~ Team ~
Erik "Erkberg" Schulze - Code, music - https://twitter.com/Erk_Berg
Danny "guckstift" Raufeisen - Art, sounds - https://twitter.com/broepi

~ Postjam version ~
The postjam version is now available on itch.io and is the default WebGL version (please use the jam version for rating though, which is available as standalone download.). It includes the following changes: - mouse support for aiming and shooting
- improved narrative through different endings (self sacrifice, pacifist, true pacifist, full "sacribar")
- improved balancing
- minor graphical improvements like bloodstains and idle animations
- three new (weird) powerups

~ Timelapse ~
https://youtu.be/CMPANrsl10E

~ Mini postmortem ~ - worked on other idea until saturday evening (something more serious)
- turned out to be not so much fun working on this, so I switched and joined forces with guckstift
- was a lot of fun then to work on this game as a team
- technical problems at the end (audio imports not working) - satisfied with how the game turned out
- three days jam is much more exhausting than two days :)

If you run into any problems (performance, bugs etc.) please let me know! Otherwise have fun with the game, I'm looking forward to your feedback and playing your creations.

Full disclosure: I made some bugfixes for the game after the deadline ended. Just fixes though, no improvements / additions or anything, so I think it's within the rules. You can check out the changes by comparing the first two releases on GitHub. (note that this has nothing to do with the postjam version)

HTML5 (web)	https://erkberg.itch.io/sacrizism
Windows	https://erkberg.itch.io/sacrizism/download/Y9CruKFw0K3JOBBmwBe_9Yfp_XvAVJC4C_Vb7d3e
Linux	https://erkberg.itch.io/sacrizism/download/Y9CruKFw0K3JOBBmwBe_9Yfp_XvAVJC4C_Vb7d3e
macOS	https://erkberg.itch.io/sacrizism/download/Y9CruKFw0K3JOBBmwBe_9Yfp_XvAVJC4C_Vb7d3e
Source code	https://github.com/Erkberg/Sacrizism
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/43/sacrizism

Ratings

Overall	743^th	3.15⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Fun	541^th	3.225⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	1010^th	2.275⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Theme	867^th	2.875⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	762^th	3⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Audio	223^th	3.575⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Humor	409^th	3.053⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Mood	743^th	3⭐	22🧑‍⚖️
Given		21🗳️	16🗨️

Feedback

Vlad Dae

06. Dec 2018 · 13:45 UTC

Wow! That was fun!) Great job :thumbsup:

A little exploit found - you can snipe stubborn in trees enemy :sweat_smile:

But unfortunately, I can't defeat the boss 😞

Eli Delventhal

19. Dec 2018 · 22:26 UTC

Good game! Nice twin stick, pretty fun. I really like your twist where once you "lose" it's actually a boss battle, so you need to do better to be stronger for it. I didn't manage to beat the boss but I could so it being doable.

I was never clear where my health was displayed... is it the bar at the top?

ryjcio

25. Dec 2018 · 22:10 UTC

At the beginning I wasn't convinced, it seemed to be boring... But the boss made my day :D

🎤 Erkberg

26. Dec 2018 · 11:44 UTC

@vlad-dae: Thanks! Yeah, sniping is possible, but I think that's okay because it doesn't appear in too many situations.

@eli-delventhal: Thanks! Your healthbar is displayed below the player character, just like it is for the enemies. But you're right, the bar at the top might not be clear (it's a "sacribar" and shows the satisfaction of the demon king). I tried to show what it means by placing an angry and a satisfied face of the demon king on either end, but that might not be clear enough.

@ryjcio: Thanks! Why did you think it was boring if I may ask? Did you maybe just get some bad powerups and then couldn't kill enemies fast enough before the boss appeared? Powerup distribution is purely random and so you might've just had a "bad run".

About the boss: Yes, the boss is pretty damn hard and needs some practice to beat, but I just liked the progression curve like this (first you are powerless, then you get super-powerful through powerups, then get stomped by the boss).

ryjcio

26. Dec 2018 · 15:37 UTC

@erkberg: It was far too easy for me, so I did not expect to be a boss there. Maybe I had a bad run, that's why I just got bored because of lack of challenge. I like hard games which test my skills in the fair way. Now, when I'm thinking about it, maybe it's because the first part of a game seems to be so casual, and the boss seems to be more hardcore? I'm just thinking out loud.

Jupiter_Hadley

26. Dec 2018 · 18:28 UTC

Neat game! I included it in my compilation video series of games from the Ludum Dare, if you’d like to take a look :) https://youtu.be/piFMgX8tbrA

mouthlessgames

27. Dec 2018 · 10:30 UTC

Wow that was a pretty hard game. The music and art style is well chosen and I wanted to play as Gandalf as well. :smile:

Thank you for making this game!

Bificommander

27. Dec 2018 · 15:28 UTC

Very fun game, but very hard. The post-jam self-sacrifice was the only ending I ever got to :)

pickens-inc

27. Dec 2018 · 16:48 UTC

Extremely difficult, but I think you know that! Ufortunately I ran into a lot of trouble with controls. The right stick wasn't working for me (using a DS4 controller), and on arrow keys I could only really shoot in diagonals, which is odd. Would have really loved to have been able to fire with the right stick whilst also moving about.

Lots of content though, which is really impressive. Music is great, and the little intro was quite charming too. Well done! Good entry.

hunttis

27. Dec 2018 · 20:01 UTC

Really difficult, don't have a gamepad, so shooting was only in four directions. I liked the intro and the music. For some reason the performance was really bad for me, no matter which resolution I chose (gaming on a surface book). I tried using a lower detail setting too, but sometimes this machine just fails.

Joror

28. Dec 2018 · 16:42 UTC

Nice shooter! Likes that the groups would only aggro when I hit them, makes for more interesting decision making.
Setting is funny and works well. Got to the boss, but stood no chance there.. :laughing:
Possible tweaks:
- Alternate weapons (stuns / area of effect)
- Temporary powerups