A Novel Multiple-Ending Take On Visual Novels
A warning for door-to-door salespeople: if you’re pushy, you might end up becoming a human sacrifice. That’s the overly literal reading of Sacrifice for Sale, a visual novel that’s having too much fun to really be doling out life lessons.
The character you play is a vacuum salesman, down on their luck and hoping that the last door in the neighbourhood will lead to better fortunes. A woman answers, but there’s something not quite right. She’s pale white and her skin seems stitched together. Plus she’s not responding to your very charming sales pitch. Things are desperate, so you jam a foot in the door and make a more aggressive play, forcing yourself into her house.
We don’t want to ruin much more, but let’s say that the woman’s door is the first domino that topples a few more on the way to your very own human sacrifice. Precious little can stop it from happening: most of the paths in Sacrifice For Sale lead to being eaten/absorbed/slain by someone. Modern problems.
Death Becomes Him
What’s more, all of this will take about fifteen minutes. Every death at the tentacles of the Lovecraftian nightmare will take about as long as it takes to read this review. So, what’s the point, you may ask?
Sacrifice for Sale is very much a ‘play again for a different ending’ visual novel; a Groundhog Day, but without a memory of the previous day’s events. Death is very much intentional, and the hope from the writers is that you will want to restart and curiously pry at a different dialogue option. By doing so, maybe – this time – death will be swifter, less tentacular, or maybe not a death at all.
There are a couple of tools on offer that make the endless restarts a little friendlier. A hint on the end-screen gives you a prompt. Perhaps you might want to try flirting with one of the two characters at the heart of Sacrifice for Sale’s story – Mia and Vinny – to see whether that brings you more luck. As with much of Sacrifice for Sale, the answer is mostly no, but sometimes yes.
The more interesting tool is the ability to press RB and commit to silence. This isn’t new to visual novels, but Sacrifice for Sale really commits to it. In almost all chat trees, it’s effectively an additional dialogue option. Being silent in the face of death and some very chatty cultists can lead to positive outcomes, and we’d wager that, on average, staying quiet is more positive than actually saying something. It adds tactical edge to the death-dodging.
The End Is Only The Beginning
And after you snag your very first ending achievement, it becomes clear what Sacrifice for Sale is doing. 1 out of 69 achievements? There are roughly 50 endings in Sacrifice for Sale, and achievements for some minor feats on the way. None of the achievements are hidden, so the true puzzle comes into focus. How can I bag the achievement where I ‘Join the Cult’? How do I ‘Make a Home-made Stew’? Suddenly, the game is on, as you follow the clues in the dialogue to get the desired outcome. Tactical-saving becomes the name of the game, as you park a save at a branching moment and return to it afterwards.
It is, of course, not going to be for everyone. There’s the obvious visual-novel wall to leapfrog over, but if you’re reading this review then presumably you’ve already done that. Beyond that, you have to be motivated by collecting endings. The bloop of an achievement helps here, and so does the writing. It’s not revolutionary, but it’s got its tongue sewn into the side of its cheek, and the two characters of Vinny and Mia are suitably colourful. There’s a propensity to go meta, as well as slip into philosophical musings.
A Few Twists In The Tale
There are a couple of hiccups here, as even by its own rules Sacrifice for Sale can veer into unsatisfying. You can achieve something that feels significant – we patched up a relationship between two characters – but the ending remains the same as all the others. No achievement pops, no ending differs. We are wary of saying that there should have been more than 69 achievements and 50 endings, but yeah, maybe there should have been.
And while we fully understand the commitment to fifteen-minute runs, we sometimes wished it would break its own rules. Some plotlines feel significant: they lead to more questions or blossom out into hundreds of possibilities. But they are all cut short to ensure that no thread lasts longer than another thread. The narrative is nipped in the bud, and – in a few cases – the endings as a result skew to the unsatisfying.
If we were being more charitable about these issues, they’re all borne from a commitment to a structure, and Sacrifice for Sale undoubtedly commits. Even when it must have been incredibly tempting for the writer to keep going, they put their foot down and say no.
A Spliced Visual Novel
The result is a visual novel as a fun experiment. Victor Frankenstein-like, developer-writer Daniel Klautsch has spliced together a visual novel with Groundhog Day-like loops, sewn in some occultery for good measure, and pulled the lever. The result can be ungainly. But, while it’s short-lived, Sacrifice for Sale fills its brief time with cheeky writing and a fun game of chase-the-ending.
Important Links
Sacrifice For Sale – Choose Your Words Carefully Or Lose Everything – https://www.thexboxhub.com/sacrifice-for-sale-choose-your-words-carefully-or-lose-everything/
Buy, Optimised for Xbox Series X|S – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/sacrifice-for-sale-xbox-series-xs/9NZWJKLLNF6Z/0010
Or grab an Xbox One version – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/sacrifice-for-sale/9NFB533PFF47/0010
