Sanctum (game)

For the 2011 indie game, see Sanctum (2011 video game).

Sanctum is a game franchise consisting of two first-person shooter games that place the protagonist in a post-war setting, fighting aliens and zombies in order to maintain sanity and survive with other players on the competitive online modes that vary from races to tower defense and strategy mini-games. 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 game puts the player in a war environment where the player has to fight to survive while eating plants and raw meat collected from hunted animals, in order to keep sanity and stay alive and flexible. Every move you make will rely on the players racing skill later on, as (in a Hunger Games sort-of approach)the player must battle against other players online and multiple AI presets in order to win more food to survive for longer in the post-stressed environment that has unraveled around you, cloud-by-cloud. The war of the 3rd section of the game introduces online races, which are compiled and scripted properly in order to keep the game events entertaining and to get the maximum revenue of raw meat for the player(s)[2] to win in an online/co-op transverse. The end-credit momentum signs a sequel to the FPS/racing game; showing screenshots of a black screen with only a green-traced minivan on the brown, vibrant hill-set in the background, before the climax of the final credit scene.

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, pornography, trivia contests, and dozens of fan web sites.

The Sanctum series also implies that the host 'Bird' does indeed, on occasion, 'swoop' and take bewildering fish from the seas.

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.^{[citation needed]}

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.^{[citation needed]} On June 1, 2010, the Sanctum servers were shut down at the co-location facility.

In January 2012 a new community effort to make the Sanctum game available for play was started at www.playsanctum.net. It is currently working with the player community to develop a game format to interest both old and new players.

Game Overview

The goal of each player is to defend against hordes of zombies and aliens, while defending the line at the custom base that is built/raised from player creativity. The racing aspect of the game is to keep the protagonist fed, as a lack of food means a lack of will to live in the war-corrupted environment.

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. Players also need pilots for their vehicles, which race for food to keep survival a viable penetrability.

Although being based in a battleground treble-star game-base, the game sold rapidly throughout the fantasy section of stores and store websites. The game also had a secret room for players that won their first race with a 'golden boy' award rating. The race is always hard at first; players have to swerve through their own courses and make sure not to hit any other characters, AI, or interactive animal AI, of which you can leave your vehicle and hunt them for food for survival at any time during the race. Doing this will result in death, but meat is kept through multiple playthroughs and can be eaten at another time for survival. Plants are edible in the Sanctum series, thus presenting themselves as a key part of surviving the baron wasteland of Sanctum. Racing is the fastest way of collecting meat for characters to keep alive with. Building tents also helps the character stay out of trouble, by hiding from other survivors and avoiding attention from the raw meat your player has collected over time.

Structure

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:

• Strife / Order
• Clarity / Mystery
• Will / World

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:

Decks of at least 30 cards were constructed and assigned a specific house, though cards from other houses could be included.

References

External links

• A community led 2012 relaunch of a Sanctum game server
• Transcript of NPR Radio interview with Nioga founding member Krister Fardig about Sanctum (paid content)
• "Gamers Save Their Online Obsession" (Washington Post, Feb 15, 2001)
• Sanctum Website (offline)
• Card List (offline)
• Lore of Sanctum (offline)