Mrs. Santa's Gift Hunt

Good day!
Today it's time to play another Christmas game, an RPG Maker MV game by Tuomo_L titled "Mrs. Santa's Gift Hunt". This game was made in one month for a contest, and it won the first place. This 2018 version is a revised and improved one with some updates and fixes over the original.

The plot is pretty simple: Santa is resting to get ready for his usual night of work, but the 24th of December someone steals all the gifts! Mrs. Santa has to recover the stolen gift and find the thief with the help of the Tooth Fairy, Little Red Riding Hood and Frosty the snowman.

The gameplay is more or less a classic rpg adventure: Mrs. Santam supported by the best friend Frosty has to explore the village and surrounding locations to find the thief AND the missing gifts that seems to be scattered around in different locations.


The game main objective is to find the thief, but if you want to complete 100% of it you also need to find all the missing gifts!

The interesting thing is that, in order to find the gift packs it will be necessary not only to explore every corner of the map, but also solve some tasks, that includes getting items and talking to people and solving some classic lever puzzles, boulder pushing puzzles and the ever classic sliding minigame (obviously appropriate for a Christmas themed adventure).

But this game also includes combat of course! And despite the presence of only two characters they have a good array of skills to make combat pretty interesting and not very time consuming. In any case the village will provide some places where our characters can rest or buy useful items. The game can be saved only interacting with some blue crystals.

I admit that the game, despite is "pocket-sized" single scenario format, is full of details and different aspects: the caves are explored in darkness with just the use of a flashlight that makes exploration and puzzles more difficult, the village is lively and includes a orphanage (where you can make donations), a pub in which an annoying clown tells terrible jokes periodically, no matter if you interact with him or not (RUN, RUN AWAY as soon as you can!).
Visually the game is exactly what you can expect from a Christmas game: all the resources and assets are perfectly selected and well used (including the "Christmas themed" dialogue windows and menus), moreover the setting incorporates also other "mythic" characters. Mapping is pretty good and the game is stylish and fun to play.


Bandits like dressing as Santa, but make no mistake! These bearded bad guys are here not to give gifts, but to steal and attack travellers!

Final Verdict
Mrs. Santa's Gift Hunt is a game that surprised me: I mean I was used to short event Christmas games that offered combat OR items collection OR puzzles. Well this little game incorporates them all inside a single little package! This version is also polished and maybe even better than the original one released for the event, still for a short game I think it's complete and full and fun!
It's not a surprise it won the first place in the even, so what can I say? At Christmas play this game!