The Gift

Intro

"The Gift" is a short collection game developed by pianotm using RPG Maker 2003 that was created for the Jingle Jangle Jam. Though calling this game short is somewhat dependent on your skills at finding hidden items since this game can take a while if you really suck at it like I do at times.

Story

You play as a little drummer boy that wants to give Jesus, a newly born king, a gift. Unfortunately the drummer boy is poor so the only gift he can provide is the gift of music, but as people often point out. A gift from the heart is far more valuable than something that costs a lot of money.



Though how true that is seems to be age dependent.

Gameplay

On the gameplay front this game is an item collection game where the player is tasked with finding various objects. And the difficulty of finding these objects varies massively. In my opinion the hardest one to find is the stone you need for your first hunt. This is because it's mostly covered by the foliage of a tree.

After that everything else is pretty simple. Though you may have to check areas more than once since new items sometimes appear in an area after you've found other objects first. I suppose this does add some challenge if you want to speedrun this game since it means coming up with the best route possible does take a bit of knowledge of what objects you need to find before others show up.

Graphics

The game uses graphical assets found within the White Screw asset pack which includes various resources. On the plus side it means this game does look a bit unique since it isn't reliant on the RTP for RPG Maker 2003. On the other hand most of the assets used in this game for building the environment itself are white. So much so that it's kind of boring to look at since you'll constantly find yourself surrounded by it. It's like your traversing through an ocean of snow.



Admittedly this does make sense considering this is meant to be a Christmas game, but as someone that used to deliver papers before getting a part time job in high school. I'm not that fond of snow. After all, walking through a foot or two of the white stuff while saddled with over 50 newspapers for about one hour is probably enough to make just about anyone despise it.

On a final note though the game does contain one notable graphical bug near the smithy in the main character's starting village.



On this tile and the one next to it the main character's hair overrides the tree.

Audio

Probably the most dominating song within the game's library is "The Little Drummer Boy" which is both a blessing and a curse I suppose. On the plus side it's a classic Christmas song and is well known by most people. At the same time I've found as the years have gone by that I've grown rather tired of hearing the same old Christmas songs every year. So much so that I've started to dislike a lot of the classic songs associated with that time of year. Which is why I'll sometimes listen to Christmas songs from foreign countries in their original language so they'll at least feel fresh and new even if they are covers of classic songs I'm familiar with.

Conclusion

I'm not entirely sure what to feel about this game. On one hand it's fully functional and works as intended. On the other hand, it contains a lot of stuff that I don't personally care for that much now a days like images of snow and a Christmas carol I've heard so many times I'm quick to turn the dial for my car radio when it pops up. At the same time those issue fall under the umbrella of being appropriate for this game considering it's inspired by the Christmas carol "The Little Drummer Boy".