Sacrificio Inc. by Reality Blind

SACRIFICIO Inc. is actively seeking for a sacrifice technician.
Skills required : You are able to fix and maintain an offering machine. The conveyor belts which compose it are a bit disordered. Your job is to put them back in place and send the future sacrificed straight to the death pit to satiate the blood thirst of the gods.
Be careful ! One misstep and your offering will take to his heels!
Remuneration : To be discussed. But if the crops are bad, it’s on you...

📝 Quick recap on what will change in a future version :
- More levels with different grid sizes
- More tiles with new mechanics
- The timer will change to a move counter
- Losing will not restart the whole room
- Mouse controls will be totally reworked
- Cloud feedbacks for the blocks when they move (and more feedbacks in general)
🔧 Fixes :
- Press "F" to toggle fullscreen on / off
- Tutorial will only play once per launch now
- New game icon
🍻 Our friendly team
- 🎧 Alexandre Meunier (Halesgaar) : Development, music, sound design, voices
- 🎨 Emilie Defernez (Frigolite) : Character design, animations, motion design, main beer supplier
- 🖌️ Quentin Cloos (Cloos) : Backgrounds, UI, community management, GIF master
Play it on Android for better controls! 📱

Thanks everyone for your interest and feedbacks!
Ratings
| Overall | 56th | 4.09⭐ | 197🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 152th | 3.762⭐ | 197🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 625th | 3.01⭐ | 194🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 190th | 3.972⭐ | 196🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 30th | 4.538⭐ | 200🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 43th | 4.061⭐ | 190🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 202th | 3.532⭐ | 187🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 137th | 3.878⭐ | 190🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 20🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
Hey ! Thanks a lot for your feedback ! 😄
It's our first time developping a puzzle game, and we needed a simple concept as we started really late working on it on the first day.
We're actually working on the Android version, it was the first target for this game but it needed a little more work before being available, it will be probably be done by tomorrow 🙂
There is no real reason to make me click the sacrifice button after I have solved the puzzle, do it automatically and save me the click.
I feel the increase in difficulty needs to be much higher, this is feedback for potential future development. I realize time constraints make it hard to come up with a good difficulty curve.
I love the aesthetics, beautiful and evocative.
Great job ! :)
Seriously, the art, theme, design, execution, sound. This is just too good. My only tiny complaint is that if you mess up the level restarts, I would have prefered being able to correct my dumb mistake.
Add some new mechanics, polish it a bit more and you have a great game to proudly release. Congratulations and thanks for being awesome!!!
We have a good starting point to improve the game on a **post-LD** version !
@mtanton : Changing the **grid size** is a very good idea, it could increase as the level goes on (every 15 levels for example).
@baggef : We wanted **more tiles with specific mechanics** to be available, but ended up with only the ones we have due to time constraints, but it will definitely be part of a polished version of the game.
@timeshapers : The timer was more important in the beginning of the development, but due to changes during the following days it became less relevant and will probably be changed by a **move counter**.
@gerardb : Good point, we didn't even thought about that ! **Losing should not restart the level**, after all we already have a button for that 🙂
@wrnk, @spierek, @mortus : **Mouse controls will totally be reworked**, the game was too mobile focused during the development and we never touched the controls again once they were working.
Graphics are extreamly polished for a game jam.
Audio was great but a bit repetitive if you play all 13 levels in a row.
Overall you did an amazing job in that few hours.
Keeping this one installed on my phone you can bet it'll stay there.
And the art style is a 10 out of 10
Congratulations, very nice game!

The whole game feels like one of those frustrating slide puzzles, but with an actual fun methodology to them, with very limited space to maneuver to get everything into place. The mix of the gorgeous artwork, the tribal-esque music and clever levels make this a top-notch entry.
By far, my favorite detail is how the sacrifices scream as they get close to the pit. That's the kind of polish that really outstands. Fascinating job!
[The team](discord.whalesandgames.com) were looking forward to check this out since the game was announced. We're looking forward to seeing where else will this team head in the future! :whale:
It felt like moving the blocks around lacked some feedback.
@madrededios : One of the next steps for our team (we just had our first birthday on this edition of the LD ! 🎂) is getting our licence for publishing on the **Play Store**, so don't be surprised if you find the game on it in a near future 😊
@moski : Thanks for this rather complete feedback 😄 If you want to follow the rest of our work you can find us on **Twitter** (https://twitter.com/Reality_Blind) and **Facebook** (https://www.facebook.com/RealityBlind/) 😊
@papabirb : It was intended to be the case, but I didn't pay attention that it cycles back only if the previous level is unlocked (1 to 16 is impossible in this case), instead of checking and going to the last unlocked level 😅
@pranjalbisht : The game was first meant to be a **"race against the clock while solving puzzles"** (you had a few seconds before the game releases the prisonners) but we then dropped out the idea, solving a puzzle is more satisfaying if you have the time to first think about how you will do it, the timer is the only thing from this idea that is still in place, and it will be removed to a "move counter" which will better fit the new gameplay 😊
We also will add **feedback for the blocks**, clouds coming from underneath when moving will do the trick !
Love the graphics :) I hope we'll see it on the Play Store soon with more levels!
@callavicka : It was intended to have more mechanics, but we did not had time to implement them sadly. For a polished version we already have ideas on what we can add (the prisonners could come from multiple points, more than one prisonner could be send, some of the conveyors could break after a prisonner have passed, forcing you to move another conveyor to fill in the hole, etc)
@skiddings : Actually less than 3 days, we had a hangover on the first day and were not really productive that day 😂
@game-mon : We are 3 in our team, there's my best friend, who is a UI and background artist and designed the levels, my girlfriend who is character designer and animator, and I'm in charge of the coding, music and sound effects 🙂
@captainpilot : Yeah, sorry for the Windows controls, the game was too mobile focused, next time I will develop different controls if different platforms are targeted 🙂
Loved it (i kinda hope it'll be developed further in the future)
Great job on music and art! It's amazing how you could come up with such level of polish in just a week-end!
Of course the art is really great and very efficient. This is a professional game right there.
One of the best entries so far.
Playing it on PC, I did wish that I could drag the blocks all the way instead of having to push it one by one.
My only suggestion would be an efficiency mode - can you solve the level in the least number of moves possible - rather than trying to do this as fast as possible? I feel like that would force you to think through your decisions. I did enjoy it, a lot.
Also, the sound was REALLY loud and there was no way to turn it down, so I had to turn it down from the Windows system tray.
@aurel : That's strange, you're the first one saying that and on all our devices the sound is quiet normal, almost low (even on our good 5.1 the sound was pretty low compared to YouTube musics)
@namnam : You actually have a link to download it on Android 😋
I will post here a recap of what have been said so far, so you can find the answers to your questions 🙂
## 📝 Quick recap on what will change in a future version :
- More levels with **different grid sizes**
- More tiles with **specific mechanics**
- The timer will change to a **move counter**
- **Losing** a level **will not restart** the whole room
- **Mouse controls** will be totally reworked
- Cloud **feedbacks for the blocks** when they move (and more feedback in general)
### Thanks everyone for your interest and feedbacks !
Like some said, 13 levels are too short and also they were really easy...
Well done !
You seem dedicated to make it into full game, yet (and this is personal opinion) it seems very basic to me. The gameplay gets quite repetitive. This is general problem I've had with Ludum Dare games (especially my own games) - they always tend to have too simple concept to build on top of it.
Anyways, I liked the entry and keep up the good work.
The level design however was a bit lacking (I know designing puzzle levels is hard, so I don’t blame you! I just hope you can work on better levels for a future release). I thought that only the last level was actually challenging. Most puzzles (except level 7) seem to have a single solution, so it’s pretty easy to guess the final position by starting from the end. It could be interesting to have more than one free tile beside the sacrificial pit in order to increase the complexity.
Some other mechanics would be great and/or bigger grids.
I'd also appreciate if the game didn't restart the state on reset (rushed to finish the level only to notice I flipped 2 tiles and had to redo the whole thing, which is a bit tedious) and if there were a seperate reset button. The stars score could also be based on the number of tilemoves as opposed to time.
Wasn't exactly able to determine where the thresholds for different star ratings were, most levels were really easy to get 3 stars for, and I definitely think you've got a great game foundation to build upon in future updates. You already seem to be planning the few suggestions I had for how to improve upon the base you've clearly nailed down here, so looking forward to seeing more from you!
Like I said, the art and audio are of a very professional level. My only gripe is that the bottom side of the up/down conveyors isn't shaded similarly to the other blocks, making it look flat compared to the rest.
Overall, a very high quality entry!
Good job, very nice game! :smiley:
Anyway is an amazing polish game! Congrats!! :clap_tone3:
All graphics and sound are really nice. The game is instantly readable and understandable, nice work on UI ! The 13 levels are simple and really fun !
There is just a point on the theme, I don't feel the theme around the mechanics but only around the graphics. It can change wildly and fit to another theme. It's also an opportunity to have more mechanics in a completely different universe.
Otherwise, you've develop the game for every platform, it's huge ! You've prioritize the number of platform to reach a larger number of player, it's well designed !
Well done for the team !
First, the theme didn't really play at all into the gameplay at all. These could have been conveyor belts could have been reskinned to carry anything, and there is nothing about the game itself that relates to sacrificing.
Second, The lack of mechanics . There is only so much you can do with your setup of sliding conveyer belts on a small grid, and I think you covered almost all of them already in 13 levels. Everything is just a little simplistic and unambitious on the gameplay front for my taste.
That said, It is super polished and I am amazed at what you were all able to accomplish in just a short time.
Not gonna repeat the praise from previous comments, it's great all around, so some very minor nitpicks:
- Each stage was 3 stars, but I wasn't really sure what the star rating was for, since I got 3 stars for all. Is it for the timing?
- I assume timing is for star rating, since it doesn't seem to be tied to any mechanic e.g. countdown timer. But I can easily reset and the timer goes back to 0. Maybe keep the timer running?
- I would've liked the option to be able to speed up the sacrifice animation (I'm too impatient to wait 5-10 seconds to see the guy slide down the conveyor :)
- Might be better to package it as an ELF executable instead of a .deb for Linux, since that's mainly for Debian based distros (even though I was also able to unpack it on Arch)
- This game should be played on mobile, I understand that. I played on PC though, and the mouse controls got abit tiring with the click dragging.
Again, want to highlight these are my personal minor nitpicks, it's still an awesome entry. Good job!
- Changing to a move counter (as you are already planning to) would definitely provide a lot more replay value for people who find the base puzzles to be on the simpler end. Figuring out the general solution to these puzzles was generally quite straightforward, but optimizing for move count seems like it would be very nontrivial!
- I know this was totally outside the scope of the jam itself, but if you plan on improving the PC version, I think keyboard controls would handle **quite** nicely, with a single key (space or something) to "pick up" and place an active piece, and arrow keys to move it around. I'm sure I could blaze through most of these puzzles with that option.
Small feedback aside, I love the theme and look you guys have managed to deliver on. Great job!
Controls felt unresponsive due to the lack of real time feedback and because I had to click multiple times to move something further than one block.
Levels got a bit repetitive quickly and I didn't really feel challenged most of the time. I think that I "got it" pretty early on and then the game didn't add anything new.
There were some strange flickering issues on texts. I'm not sure why. I played it on a windows 10 PC.
Your idea to change the timer to a move counter sounds like a good plan! The timer did nothing for me, personally ^^ Optimizing move count would be an interesting challenge though.
Good luck with further development!
:point_right: It would have been nice if the game had another mechanic... as it is only level 13's switch at the bottom engaged my thinking as a sliding puzzle, and the conveyor layout was trivial. Sliding the pieces around was a bit difficult since they could only move one tile per click.
:star: Overall good job, and thank you for making this.
A suggestion for non-mobile play control would be to permit dragging as far as you want, or to pop up directional arrows on a click so a move is click-click that you can manage quickly. Repeated short drags are particularly challenging with a trackpad.
I was wondering whether the stars should be given based on time or based on moves. That would force the level design to be a little different to allow a few solutions.
All in all, really good work!