The GM48: Sacrifice was a 48 hour jam where developers needed to make a game using Game Maker. The theme of this jam was “Sacrifice”. There were many games entered in this jam, I recorded all of them in my video compilation series. Below are some of my favorites, in a random order.

Munchun is a beautiful, randomly generated platformer that has you playing a blood demon who refuses to be evil! You are a kind blood demon, so instead of wantonly slaughtering them, you want to save animals in hopes that a portal will open and progress you to a new level. This portal will not open until you have sacrificed and saved an unknown number of animals, so you will need to make a decision each time you find a small animal, without knowing how it will affect that number.

Being a blood demon, your only attack is barfing blood. This harms you, and the level is full of monsters just itching to take you down. You can kill them off, but at the expense of your health. To help you out, you can collect blood coins, and turn them in at a blood bank in order to restore more health. You can also sacrifice the animals you find to gain health. Sacrificing animals will also give you a random bonus, but it will have the side effect of making enemies stronger, so be careful about killing off the cute creatures! See if you can be a good blood demon and save tons of little animals.

Trolls’ Bowling Night is a cinematic, almost documentary-esque game about being a Troll who wants to bowl! The narrator will tell you all about Trolls and what they like to do for fun. Trolls seem to love bowling, but it is not as easy as going to a bowling alley like humans do.

Instead, Trolls must do things like collect the pins, find the stone to bowl with, and be careful and considered when bowling so as to not destroy the pins. Doing each of these tasks isn’t hard, but does take the form of mini-games in between the beautifully crafted cutscenes and narration. Finding trees is easy, getting around stone does take some more work and timing, doing the bowling is the hardest part, as Trolls sometimes are very strong. I really enjoy the combination of the narrative surrounding Trolls’ Bowling Night and the bits of gameplay in between.

Shape Escape is an adorable puzzle platformer where you can switch between five different shapes who all want to escape! However, only some of the shapes will make it across each level - others will need to be sacrificed for the greater good. Each shape is different; the square, and both the vertical and horizontal rectangles are big for their shape and move slightly slower. Smaller shapes, like the circle and triangle, move considerably faster and jump higher, but don’t make a good platform when they are sacrificed.

You will need to pick the shape you need to be wisely, after considering what you need the shapes for. Some shapes will need to become sacrificed pieces to help you avoid spikes or scale walls in order to make it to the exit goal. Shape Escape is a simple concept, but the graphics, challenge, and level of polish take it to a full experience.

Railcar Revenue is a super chaotic adventure game where you must try to earn money by running a train in the wild west! Being a train owner, you get to add train cars to your train. There are a few different types of cars; one for passengers, one for upper class passengers, and one for cargo. Each of these different train segments cost money to add to your train, but they also add length and potential revenue. Depending on the car, you must make sure bandits don’t throw off your cargo or harm your passengers. Each item or person lost will cost you money. Once the train starts moving, bandits will appear - some of them are even on fire.

You must put out the fires by throwing cargo at it, and stop the bandits from throwing passengers off by throwing various items at them (or tossing them off the back of the train). If the fire gets to be too much, you might have to remove the railroad spike between the cars and get rid of the entire train section. Keeping this train running smoothly is a very challenging task, but throwing bandits off and smoldering fires will keep you entertained while you try to make your business thrive!

Hearts is a puzzle game that has you trying to find your way out of a dungeon as you slowly lose health. Each step you take removes a heart from your health jar but leaves a small puddle of blood on the floor. You have a limited number of moves before you are out of hearts, so you must make it to the next level of the dungeon in as few moves as possible. Moving onto a new level gives you some hearts back - however there are sometimes bonus hearts in the levels that you can collect.

There are also monsters in this game and colliding with any of them will send you back to the beginning of the dungeon, where you will have to follow your blood trail back to where you last died. Hearts is skillfully made, providing challenging puzzles that don’t make you feel frustrated over. The heart jar is also a really awesome graphic and watching your new hearts fall into it is really quite nice. See if you can make it out of this dungeon with any of your hearts left.

#GM48 #Munchun #TrollsBowlingNight #ShapeEscape #RailcarRevenue #Hearts