Smoke and Sacrifice

It's hard not to fall in love with Smoke and Sacrifice, simply because it is a beautiful game. But you shouldn’t pick up this game for the aesthetics alone; its whole design and premise is on point, altogether making for a fascinating survival experience.

Despite the FedEx quests and some weakness in characters writing, Smoke and Sacrifice is a well crafted and filled with good ideas. With its unique arts and hardcore survival mechanics, you should give it a look.

At first I liked Smoke and Sacrifice very much. […] But the more I played the more I recognized that I'm doing only one thing: farming.

Smoke and Sacrifice is a remarkable Action-Adventure with beautiful aesthetics and cohesive crafting and itemization, blemished with backtracking and repetitive fetch quests. But, in all honesty, the most glaring flaw that becomes apparent about halfway through the story, in an otherwise enjoyable game, is the lack of really memorable, immersive moments, whether pertaining to enemy encounters, topography, or incentive to keep exploring.

Smoke and Sacrifice tells a compelling tale of a mother searching for answers after being forced to give up her son. While the game’s gorgeous art brings its grim world to life, its story is ultimately undercut by poor pacing and vague objectives. Smoke and Sacrifice shines in concept, but falters in execution.

Smoke and Sacrifice is Don’t Starve with a story.

Smoke and Sacrifice is a good survival adventure game with a great art style and interesting storyline.

Smoke and Sacrifice is a beautiful handcrafted game with a solid game loop that fails to deliver an intense story filled with very similar and poorly designed quests.

Decent ideas in need of a more coherent direction. And please, for your own sanity, play with a pad. [July 2018, p.66]

Too bad, that the weirdly beautiful creature design and bizarre gadgetry is going to waste. After an initial fascination Smoke and Sacrifice gets dragged down by redundant resource collections.

At first glance an unprecedented story-telling and visually impressive survival, at the second glance, a somehow unfinished work, where you often run, craft and die for no reason.

There’s a lot to like here, from gorgeous graphics to a robust crafting system, but frustrating combat and high difficulty early in the game may drive some players away.

It will be hard to remain interested in Smoke and Sacrifice for more than a handful of hours. By then most will realise that what started as an emotive journey, ends up being an endless series of unbalanced crafting, unexciting exploration, and controller-breaking, clunky fighting.