I’ve been a busy boy eating goat’s hearts, brains, and lungs these last few hours , all while fighting off evil demons in the basement. It sounds a bit contrived, but it’s the way it goes in Sacrifights.
The main character of Sacrifights never explains why they summon the biggest,baddest demon in demon town. Maybe it was boredom? Either way, they’re beaten down by this creature and given ten days to train themselves before facing off against the big bad to save yourself.
The incredibly busy looking screenshots betray an easy to play shooter where you fight multiple bosses. It might be easy to play, however there are a few tricks required in order to keep an edge against your opponents. Each demon, you see, is summoned using an item, and then sealed into the center of the room using holy seals. If you can keep these seals in place, then the enemy cannot break free of them and roam the room, so upgrading your seal strength and triggering further sigils will be an important technique to keeping the enemies pinned. They’re still dangerous when pinned, though, especially if you stray from the more obvious paths when it comes to the demons. Some will fire projectiles or laser beams at you, and others will spawn little pests which try to track you down.
If you fall in the fight then you lose a day, but even if you win the fight, you carry your wounds into the next battle. It then becomes a case of juggling rest and pushing your luck.
There are ways to heal other than rest, though – there are consumables which summon tougher enemies, but can instead be used in your kitchen to improve your character. This really capitalizes on the ‘push your luck’ element of the game, especially as you only have enough time to fight thirty enemies if you never rest or get knocked out.
The game wants you to proceed down a set route based around an office job which the character or creator obviously detests. However, if you stray from this and start feeding consumables, or bones, or other items, into the rituals, then you’ll start to find a much harder, but more rewarding route.
With a slightly tighter tutorial (regarding routes to progress through the demons), a few different modes, and a little work on menus and hitboxes this Ludum Dare 44 game would be something that I’d gladly pay money for.
Sacrifights is available for free on Itch.io.
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