For the 2011 indie game, see Sanctum (2011 video game).
Sanctum was a two-player computer collectible card game, played online against human opponents. Players would log into a "Game Lobby" (known as "The Gate") to find other players to challenge to a match. It ran on the Windows operating system. It was developed by Digital Addiction in 1997, and was launched to public participation on July 9, 1998. At its peak, the game had over 1200 active participants (who logged in at least twice weekly over a period of three months). Registered users reached 82,000 by 1999 [1], and by May, 2000 had over 100 thousand registered users. It was one of the first online trading card games[2], and received many favorable reviews.[3]
The virtual "collectible cards" included common, uncommon, and rare, with different powers, in-game functions and artwork. They did not exist as actual physical cards (with the exception of a few that were distributed by Digital Addiction for promotional purposes) but they were owned and traded in an online account, and were played solely within the virtual environment of Sanctum. A registered player was given a certain number of free cards to play, and additional cards could be purchased through Digital Addiction's online card store.
The game had a devoted user following, with player clubs and cabals, tournaments and prizes, secondary card markets, fan fiction, trivia contests, and dozens of fan web sites.
In 2000, Digital Addiction closed its doors. Faced with the prospect of the game vanishing, several players created the non-profit company Nioga ("Non-profit International Online Gaming Association") and acquired the game-related assets of Digital Addiction with the intent of keeping it running for its players. The Nioga members intended to donate all game profits (generated through the sale of virtual cards) to charity. Nioga maintained the game and completed the issuance of an expansion set, Revolutions.
Over time, player retention and game revenues dwindled. The non-profit status of Nioga was eventually canceled, and a long-promised additional expansion, Allies and Traitors, was never released. On June 1, 2010, the Sanctum servers were shut down at the co-location facility.
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The goal of each player was to defend his or her sanctum from encroachment by their opponent. If a player managed to get some of their units into the opponent's sanctum, the game was over with that player declared the winner.
The game was played on a diagonally-aligned grid of square tiles. The player's home base appeared in the bottom rows, taking up five squares in a plus-sign shape; the opponent's sanctum similarly was located in the top rows. Five towns were placed on the board, one in one of the two center squares, and each pair of the other four were located closer to one sanctum than the other. No two towns were closer than two spaces apart, and each player's sanctum was the same number of moves to its closest town, and so on, such that no player had a tactical advantage from town placement. The rest of the squares of the grid were randomly assigned one of the basic terrain types: plains, forest, desert, water, swampland or mountains.
Sanctums and towns produced "mana" every turn, with sanctums only able to produce the type of mana associated with the house the player utilized, while towns could be dedicated to any mana of the player's choice. Players assembled "decks" out of their virtual cards. Each card had a cost in mana, and had varying effects. Each player was dealt five cards out of their decks, and could cast as many in their turn as their mana allowed, as well as discard up to one. At the end of their turn, a player's hand was replenished to five cards.
Towns and sanctums also periodically produced novices every so many turns(every other turn for towns, and every fourth turn for sanctums). These were trained as Swordsmen or Archers to fight for their player, to attack monsters summoned by the enemy, to capture towns, or ultimately to capture the enemy Sanctum. These units could stack in groups of up to eight, and individuals or entire groups could be affected by various spells.
As with many fantasy games, spell-casting in Sanctum is constrained by a limited resource called Mana. In this game, mana comes in six types, in three pairs of opposites:
There are also twelve "houses", each holding claim to a specific pair of mana types, one major and one minor for that house, and a race of beings who serve it with a special power:
| House Name | Major Mana | Minor Mana | Nation | Special Ability |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abomination | Will | Strife | Imps | +1 Hand Damage |
| Body | World | Mystery | Cyclopes | +2 Hit Points |
| Death | Mystery | Will | Keepers | +1 Hand Damage |
| Despair | Mystery | Strife | Shadows | Mountainwalk |
| Hope | Clarity | Order | Visions | Waterwalk |
| Justice | Order | Mystery | Gargoyles | +2 hit points |
| Life | Clarity | World | Elves | +1 Missile Damage |
| Making | Order | Will | Dwarves | Mountainwalk |
| Mind | Will | Clarity | Djinni | Waterwalk |
| Nature | World | Order | Satyrs | +1 Missile Damage |
| Unmaking | Strife | World | Misfits | +2 hit points |
| War | Strife | Clarity | Humans | +1 Hand Damage |
Decks of at least 30 cards were constructed and assigned a specific house, though cards from other houses could be included.