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• gamedeal user

  Nov 22, 2022

  “When we suffer, we survive.” ~Cassandra Clare, City of Heavenly Fire

  So... another one of those survival games, huh? Guess, it'll make harder for me to talk about it. Because the fact that I never really understood this kind of entertainment can make it look like I didn't enjoy Smoke and Sacrifice only because it isn't my kind of stuff. Personally, though, I don't think so. I try to keep my mind as open as possible and I do believe that what we have here is far from being a good game. So, I'll do my very best to explain why. Let's start with the positive stuff, though. As you can see on screenshots, Smoke and Sacrifice comes with a very interesting design, while its world is also very intriguing and charming. It's not nearly as deep and complicated as what we've seen in Hollow Knight, of course, but still... you know. It's nice. And it's really hard not to enjoy. Unfortunately, when it's about the actual gameplay... Well, like I already said, it's yet another one of those indie survival games. Akin to Don't Starve. Except, unlike Don't Starve, Smoke and Sacrifice is much more adventure-focused. In other words, you won't waste countless hours on base-building stuff here, while your main goal will be to explore the new territories. Crafting is still there, though. Moreover, you can only access the new zones through crafting certain items. In other words, imagine classic 2D Zelda game with Don't Starve crafting mechanics and somewhat similar visuals. You do a couple of quests, you craft yourself a new part of equipment, which unlocks the new territory for you (trying to move into a new territory without the right item on you will just kill you in a couple of seconds) and... That's pretty much it. Repeat until credits will start rolling. Three fat bosses and some fat-ass monsters to kill included. Doesn't sound that bad, right? Especially since I bet many of you enjoyed The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Well, that's why I actually decided to play through the entire thing. Even though I rarely enjoy survival games, this one looked promising and with the world here being pretty small and therefore less time-demanding? Like I said, it looked very promising. I mean, it didn't look like one of those games that want you to spend countless hours in them doing things like crafting new swords and looking for dem countless motherforking seeds. Unfortunately, like I already said too, I don't believe that Smoke and Sacrifice is good enough. And here's why. See, making survival games is hard. Because the line between the gameplay being either addicting or annoying is very, very thin. It's hard to explain, but without that certain feeling of reward and without the grinding / crafting mechanics giving you “five more minutes” effect, this kind of games often makes you feel bad instead of being fun. And Smoke and Sacrifice? It's one of those games that just don't feel good. For oh-so-many reasons. Take battles, for example. Those are mess. There no safe place for you anywhere, even in towns. Enemies will just randomly walk around and when they'll see you? They'll just start hitting. Everywhere. Destroying surroundings, each other and, of course, you. And you know what? They'll start doing that all together. All at the same time. Naturally, since what we have here is a survival game, you'll die pretty fast (praise the sun, y'all!). You (probably) won't die from only one hit, but with so much mess around you? You know how it is. And guess what? The only way to heal is to run around and collect / craft healing items. Even save points (surprise-surprise, you can't save anywhere in this game) won't heal you. Sounds pretty unpleasant already, but wait, wait, wait, there's more. Exactly half of the in-game day cycle is considered as a nighttime. And during the “night” the entire world would get covered by deadly smoke. Which will affect enemies and, of course, would kill you. How to avoid dying? By planting special plants, crafting lanterns and using a certain light skill. In other words, there are many ways to survive the night, but it'll also mean that about half of your in-game time you'll be forced to forget about pretty much everything else and focus on surviving the nighttime. What a horrible night to have a curse, huh? And no, bad things won't end there. Even though you'll have a very limited time window to actually do things for your advantage, your equipment will break so fast that you'll want to cry. Just a few hits? And your precious new helmet is gone. How to repair it? Wa-a-ait for i-i-it... By crafting a special item. Which can only be used once. To repair one single item. Which will be gone completely if you won't repair it in time. Like, what... the f*ck? My “favorite” thing, though, is that food and materials can expire. Think about it – you wasted the entire day collecting materials to craft the item for your main quest. You've got most of them, but since the night began, the enemies changed (elemental enemies get a dark element at night and their drop changes accordingly) and it became impossible for you to get the rest until morning. You did your very best trying to survive the night, then, at the beginning of the new day, you wasted some time repairing your equipment. Only to find that everything you collected for the main quest... have rotten and gone. Congratulations, you should start the entire process all over again! Yay! Sure, you can just skip time, but... Yeah. Requires certain items too. Finally, note that you can also drop items when attacked. As far as I can see, it's impossible to lose quest items here, but the rest of them? Including weapons, tools and materials? You can lose them without even noticing it. Perfection. Sure, you may say “Let, they don't call the genre “survival” for nothing! Making even the simplest tasks challenging is, like, the main idea!”. And sure, you'll be correct. But like I mentioned above, there's a big difference between the addicting gameplay, which makes you want more and more before all of the sudden it turns out that you've missed a day at school / work, and something that just tries to punish you in any way possible. Without even trying to make core mechanics enjoyable or reward you in any way. And no, before you ask, Smoke and Sacrifice isn't really that hard. It just isn't thought through. And also pretty noobish. Talking 'bout noobish, by the way. It's really hard not to notice. Gamepad support, for example, feels very poor. More like playing with Xpadder than the real deal. And it's not even the worst thing. Like, it'll probably take some time to master hitboxes (the visuals here are clearly made for something much more casual, like Cat Quest, and don't really fit the way the game treats you), the journal sucks butt, there's no database, which means that you'll need to actually remember which item comes from which monster and where that certain monster can be found, etc. Like I said at the very beginning, I don't think that Smoke and Sacrifice is a good game. I won't go so far and say that it's broken or completely unplayable, bu-u-ut... Let's just say it's far from being something I can recommend. Even though the world here is charming, the game just fails to keep you addicted and / or reward you with something. Even when it's about story. Aside from a very juicy and strange (all in a good way) intro and a pretty meh finale, there's just some lore and useless text (the game isn't even voiced) in between. Therefore, as long as you're not a hardcore fan of such games who's ready to waste your entire life repairing things that just never stop breaking, I really don't think you should waste your time here. Even though this game does look promising at the first glance. Dixi.
• gamedeal user

  Feb 5, 2023

  Artstyle is great. That's about all, this game has it going for. Clunky combat, constant gathering and repairing on top of rather bland story telling, makes this game annoying to play. Real shame...
• gamedeal user

  Jun 16, 2023

  I tabbed out and it softlocked my computer to where I had to reset to a previous instance. And then for whatever reason while playing this game the character refused to cooperate to my button inputs and walked miles into the black tar surrounding the island and died. Not a great start for a game.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 1, 2018

  The game's similar to Don't Starve but isn't grounded in the survival mechanics. Pros - Beautiful graphics. - Decent story. - Nice soundtrack and sound effects. - Straightforward but fun combat mechanics. - Equipment shows changes on character when item is equipped. - Tons of crafting. Might be a con for others as you'll constantly need to manage your item durability too. Some items' durabilities are time related. Cons - So much items you need to keep track of. Might give you trouble to manage items until you open a few chests to function as storage. - Everything the game teaches you there's no way to read it again in-game unless NPCs repeat their advice. - It is a rather big world but there's not much freedom to enjoy aside from doing side quests. You will constantly be moving and forced to follow the main quest, there's no safe zone at night. - Backtracking might turn off players. You'll be doing this a lot since exploring new areas need specific craftable items at least in my first 4 hours of play. You'll be going from one area to another to hunt for materials in order to progress. - No item hotkeys or item belt. To switch weapon on hand you'll "favorite" items in the bag, and while bag is closed you use mousewheel to scroll between your "favorite" weapons. Suggestions: - Needs QOL changes like a button to automatically sort items in the inventory. - Maybe add a minimap because it's annoying to keep pressing M just to look at the world map trying to remove the fog in the map. - Have a better indicator of items that will nearly break instead of just making them glow red, also for items that will spoil. - Allow players to track materials to get for items they want to craft. - Have equipment slots and put equipped items there. It's not really in the bag if your character is already wearing it. - Let players customize item hotkeys.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 2, 2018

  Very interesting game. Moderately comparable to Don't Starve, although admittedly not so strong overall. Has a nice unique looking art style and world design, a well written intriguing story with a decent amount of mystery, simple reactive combat, relatively fleshed out crafting system. Just in general, a nice well rounded experience. The primary weakness of the game is that the game progression is seemingly linear. Players have very specific goals and destinations, and the survival gameplay is more of what you do along the way. You do not ever settle down or build you own structures, you are constantly moving to new destinations and craft items as you go. Linear goals plus survival gameplay just do not mix well together, as survival gameplay is best when players are just left to explore the world completely on their own and grow from there; where as a linear story progression limits the players ability to do this and keeps them on rails while never allowing them to settle down either. At the same time however, the structure and direction does at least give the player goals and objectives which feel like meaningful progress in the world, so it does still provide a good experience. Also, the you can only save by interacting with terminals found in the world feature does not go well with survival gameplay either; since it means if you die between saving you lose all the items and map clearing that you gained. So your punishment is just being forced to do something you just did, all over again, which does not add anything onto the game it just wastes the players time and makes things feel more repetitious. Which just makes death in general frustrating. Besides the obvious problem of the exit menu and pendant activation being the same button and thus exiting the menu always triggers the pendant, the game also does not telegraph enough when equipment is at risk of wearing out. If you are in the middle of combat, noticing the subtle flashing that indicates when something is at risk is even more unlikely. Sometimes the game also puts just, way too many enemies in a single area and it just makes trying to do anything in that area a frustrating mess. It feels like the game has a lot of features and mechanics the player has no reason to make use of as well. Either because it takes too many resources to make something finite, it would take up too much inventory since the player has so little space, or there is just no point to it since the player has a linear goal so messing around with the world features is not very appealing. Still though it is a solid game, definately has its own style. Certainly much more interesting then the generic resource gathering grind games that overpopulate the survival genre. The price however is pretty steep, which is unfortunate. It is average, with some good parts and bad parts; so selling it for the price of two survival games combined is absurd.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 3, 2018

  Opinion - (positive) This is a very good game, the art style i really like reminds me of dont starve. The game does not really hold your hand through the game expect the tutorial but even then the tutorial is basicly run here run there. Even though there is no auto save (which for once I actually like for some reason) there are plenty of save points, so use them cus you could lose alot of progress The grind there is alot less grinding in this game than some others but of couse you still need to do it. The game also encourages you to not grab every reasoures in the game as some do spoil. (takes like a 1-2 days ingame to spoil) The smoke I love this idea in this game it actually makes the game much more fun as early on its hard kill stuff in it (monsters get harder to kill) also its frequent enough that you dont worry about having to grind hard for the monsters Controls for me the controls are simple yet, I do wish i could change them. W,A,S,D/arrowkeys to move or left click with mouse. right click or attack/R interact with the world left click/E WARNING THERE IS NO AUTO SAVE FEATURE SO U HAVE TO MANUALLY SAVE I LEARNED THAT THE HARD WAY
• gamedeal user

  Jun 3, 2018

  Let me say this first, Man I am really glad i took the leap of faith to buy this game! Long story short this game is a : Don't Starve (Grimmy evironment , Night horror) + Crashlands (Little rpg elements + gear progression + story driven adventure) And lastly the game top it off with a Unique and Beautiful graphic along with the BGM this game its a Rare Gem and a highly recommended game to everyone. ------------ IF ------------- You play n love don't starve, buy this You play n love crashlands, buy this You got little extra cash to spend, Buy This! Worth every penny for me and i hope it does to everyone who buy this too. ========= Bad Stuff Below ========= 1. Absolutely no configuration to key bind / volume / and many other stuff which you will normally find in a games. 2. FREAKING UNNECESSARY LOUD sound effect! i will have to turn off the sound effect to play. ( I believe many will complaint about this.) 3. Some minor bug : 3.1) Favourite Weapon Icon that float above inventory screen if you click and drag any icon attempt to move it. After closing the inventory the icon will stay visible no matter what you do until close game and restart. 3.2) will continue to add if i found more... feel free to comment the bug that you find too and hopefully the dev will read this. Cheers, thank you for reading.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 5, 2018

  I really wanted to like this game, but it's just not there. The game has terrible animations that often don't even look remotely like what you would expect to see (like swinging a weapon) with the fastest item degredation system I think I've ever experienced in a game, and it makes for a really awful exploration experience all around. There are no checkpoints, no intermittent autosaves, and save points are limited. If you die you can and will lose a ton of time. If you go exploring and get blown to bits by a trap or something you just wasted part of your day, period. It would be much better if you could return to where you died and pick up some of your items or something, but they dont have anything like that. Your stuff is always breaking down incredibly rapidly, and if they break completely they are GONE, so if you made a really nice weapon and it breaks, it's gone forever. Even a simple bug catching net will break literally in a few seconds of use. My time with the game was almost entirely negative. I really liked the art style and the story had potential, but it didn't make up for the other negatives and I would recommend passing on this one.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 7, 2018

  [quote=] A review copy was provided by the publisher but does not influence my review of the game. [/quote] Smoke and Sacrifice is a good game that reminded me a little bit of Don't Starve. At the beginning it was a little emotional for me because of the story, but I like that you get a chance to find out that one sacrifice you did saved a lot of people. It's a long journey you have ahead of you and a lot of exploring to do. You have to craft a lot, so if you like crafting in your games there is plenty here. You collect things in this game too but some things you can't wait too long before using because you will lose them. If you like exploring then this game lets you do that without it affecting the story, which I like because sometimes I just want to look around and find stuff. You will need a lot of dragonflies to be able to craft lanterns and be able to explore everywhere. Smoke and Sacrifice does have some things that are like Don't Starve but it is more about the story and less about hard survival stuff, so there's more people that maybe can enjoy it since it's a little easier to play. I don't like that you can't turn the camera when you are walking so sometimes It's hard to see what's in front of you. A big problem I have with this game is that the last update broke the controller support, you can't even use the Steam controller controls they uploaded on Steam anymore, so this has kept me from playing it as much as I used to lately. I like to use a controller with this game because there are a lot of keys you use and they far from each other. That's another problem too, I tried using the keyboard and mouse when I first played this game but I find the keys that you use a lot to be far apart and makes it a little harder to play it and is uncomfortable. There's also a glitch where you can't grab anything behind blocks of ice, this was a bug with the trees before that but it was fixed, and it can be annoying because you won't be able to pick up the item if you really need it. Other than that, I think it is a great game and I enjoy playing it. Make sure to save. You have to save yourself because there is no autosave. It does have Steam cloud at least so that's good in case you need it. I like the art style of this game since it's more like Anime, and I think that the story makes this game a lot more fun than just going around everywhere just to survive. You can also wear different stuff and lets you make your character look the way you want. This is a nice bonus because I like to customize my characters in games and make them feel more like my own. I like that it's kind of an open world because you get to explore different places and more than you think at first, I don't want to mention any spoilers. I really don't like that some of the items don't last long and doesn't make a lot of sense for this game. Something else I really like is that there's no hand holding in this game. You have to figure out how to get things done on your own. If you like the idea of Don't Starve but want more of a story, or like survival games but not all the harder challenges, then I can recommend Smoke and Sacrifice to you. I am sure the bugs will be fixed by the developers as people bring them up.
• gamedeal user

  Aug 12, 2018

  Smoke and Sacrifice looks charming, there's no doubt about it. It's smoothly delivered too, with very few annoying glitches or bugs. I occasionally got snagged on terrain or objects, but I didn’t once experience a game breaking bug or annoying glitch during my 19.1 hours of playing. So it’s well executed and polished. However, this charm soon faded for me. Before I spent my £20 I read several reviews, all enthusing about the story, the steampunk setting, the ‘survival’ experience and how it was reminiscent of true survival classics like Don’t Starve for example. So I felt pretty duped after the initial hour or so when the story started to evaporate. I found scant survival elements, very little in the way of role playing and the whole game became one great big crafting simulator delivered alongside a very, very linear story. I was asked to go here, collect this, return to me and then go somewhere else. It was pretty evident early on in the story who I needed to speak to in order to solve the main protagonists problem, however the game forced me down a series of pointless tasks collecting pointless items in order to craft even more pointless items. I couldn’t go and explore or question people ad-hoc. I had to follow the linear points of the plot to progress at all. There’s probably a grand total of 3-5 items you actually need to progress between the zones of the map, but the story prevented me from exploring some of those zones when I wanted to. I also expected that I would need to build items to help me survive, maybe a farm or two to prevent starvation, a well or something similar to satiate a thirst. After all that’s what you do in survival games. You eat, drink, heal, build. This is in no way, shape or form a survival game. You can build first aid items and cook food, but they are completely non essential and basically heal a damage meter. You can build weapons and armour, but most of them are little more than cosmetic. Some of the items seemed to help me defeat certain creatures a little easier, but the game never really made this clear either. With this in mind, once the story became as transparent as a sheet of glass, I found myself speeding through A-Z tasks just to finish the game. I wasn't doing this for fun, I was doing it just to get some sense of closure or completion. I found myself rushing through new zones and not really appreciating them, because they became an annoyance standing in the way of the current crafting goal more than something beautiful to behold, explore and tame. So to summarise, Smoke and Sacrifice looks pretty, is well executed as a simple hack and slash game, but it’s weak on story and certainly isn’t a survival or RPG experience I would recommend to anyone. If you enjoy crafting for the sake of it and button mashing to defeat creatures then go for it. If you want anything approaching a decent survival game or a clever web of stories all intertwined then this it to be avoided.