Sometimes: Success Requires Sacrifice Review

Sometimes: Success Requires Sacrifice is a small game where your objective is to make it to the end. However, there are usually sacrifices along the way…

Sometimes: Success Requires Sacrifice has 5 gameplay modes for you to choose from. The main on, Classic, has you going through a set of levels trying to reach the end. However, the catch is that the room is pitch black and you can’t see where you’re going. So how are you supposed to find your way to the end?

As one might imagine from the title, death does play a decent role in this game. You have the choice to suicide your character, and the corpse of that character will leave a light for the next one to come on through. There’s unlimited lives available thankfully, so free to die as many times as you wish. As you get through to the later levels, sawblades are added and then eventually reapers. Hitting these will also kill your character and provide some needed light.

Endless has you going around collecting medals without any fear of actual death. Well, except for suiciding to provide light so you can actually see where you’re going. Definitely the “relax” mode in this game, since some of the later levels in Classic can start to really get hectic with trying to dodge blades and the reaper!

Trust Fall has you falling down an endless pit. The goal? See how far you can get before you hit a sawblade. The positioning of these is random, so sometimes you might just get the god run and get really far down.

Chips is like Pac-Man. You need to go around collecting up the chips, trying not to hit the “ghosts”. Like I said, it’s just Pac-Man. The final mode, Hearts, I haven’t actually tried out yet. From what I’ve read on the forums however, it takes you out of the game and into a browser-based thing. There’s no in-game warning that it does this either, so you’ve been warned now!

The game’s controls are your basic WASD. Unfortunately, there’s no controller support included. As of writing this review, there’s also no delay after you die. I think a good portion of my deaths in the run I did came from still holding a button when I died and running right into a blade. Needless to say I had many well-lit starts…

Is the game worth it? If you’re looking for a short diversion then check it out. You can challenge yourself against the in-game achievements to see how well you can do, should you wish to. With the levels in Classic being set and not randomly generated, mastering them just comes down to a matter of learning them all by heart. It’d be nice to see an option that does allow for randomly generated levels to keep it fresh, outside of Trust Fall of course. If anything though, the game is likely best found on sale for now since the main thing it provides is just a short diversion with the gameplay.

Sometimes: Success Requires Sacrifice Review Score

3/5