ISAAC CALON
Project Leadership | Game Design | Narrative/Documentation
Sacrifice - A Cooperative Board Game of Survival Horror
The Plan
I had three goals when setting out to build Sacrifice.

1. To build a game for mature gamers.
2. To make my players fearful while providing the opportunity for great heroism/success.
3. To create a game rife with meaningful decisions.
With my goals set, I created a cooperative survival/horror game where resources are scarce and success is not a foregone conclusion. I chose the cooperative approach because I felt that would create the greatest opportunities for mutual fear and heroism, and I created several unique and colourful characters to increase the players' connection to the game world—a post-apocalypse filled with dangerous mutants called abominations.
Execution and Innovation
Sacrifice is played in distinct phases with the players exploring the ruins, gathering supplies that they can use to hopefully open the shelter at the center of the map, avoiding or fighting the deadly abominations, and finding shelter from a deadly sun during each day.
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My key innovations included a crafting system—balanced on a risk/reward schedule of scrounging raw materials from the game map—the ability for a player to permanently sacrifice their character to save the others—from which the game draws its name—and the Chase Track.
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If the players encounter the abominations, they are put on the Chase Track. This minigame provides a visual representation of the players being pursued by up to three kinds of ravenous monster, and the players can attempt a number of different maneuvers to outrun, evade, hide from, or kill their pursuers.
The Chase Track is a key source of tension in Sacrifice, and typically creates situations where the players narrowly escape from danger.
Game pieces include hunger tokens, wound tokens, gear tokens, eight character cards, four rules cards, three decks of Encounter Cards, two six-sided dice, one twenty-sided die, the game board, the Chase Track, and the Combat Track. Game character and enemy figurines were shamelessly stolen from my collection of Dungeons and Dragons miniatures.
The Survivors (players) start in the middle and the abominations always start on the far left. The players' goal is to reach the far right (safety) before the abominations reach them Players can drop food, set traps, hide, run, sprint, or juke at the last minute to avoid the deadly attacks of the abominations. If things look really bad, any single survivor can sacrifice him/herself to the abominations, ending the chase for all the survivors but removing him/herself from the game.
Results
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Sacrifice creates exactly the player experience I was shooting for, and playtests allowed me to better balance some of the more unique character abilities and zero in on my desired challenge level. I also created a "Hard Mode" for experienced players.
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Every decision in Sacrifice—from what gear to carry with you, whether to split up to cover more ground, and when to use those rare bullets or to eat your food packets—is enormously important. The game achieves this through required social interaction and a collection of simple systems governing inventory management, crafting, evasion, and combat.

I believe this combination of gameplay depth, immersion, cooperative play, and innovation contributed to Sacrifice being awarded the GD23 Best Board Game award by my peers and instructors.
Every roll counts, especially on the Chase Track. Extra special thanks to David Dryden, Marc St-Onge, Grey Jenkins, and Ryan Cramer for playing.
Each character has a separate special ability, a different set of starting gear, and a carrying capacity in items.
Every roll counts, especially on the Chase Track. Extra special thanks to David Dryden, Marc St-Onge, Grey Jenkins, and Ryan Cramer for playing.