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Sacred Review: Harold's XMAS
- thesacredlobo
- 01/04/2024 05:21 AM
- 145 views
Intro
"Harold's XMAS" is a short puzzle game comprised of three unique types of puzzles that was developed by mozthetiger using RPG Maker MZ that was created for a Christmas game jam over on RPG Maker Web. For the curious the results of this game jam be found by clicking on the word here, and for the especially lazy this game came in 26th place out of 31 entries. At least if we don't include the one entry that is apparently unplayable for unspecified reasons. On the plus side that doesn't mean this game is necessarily bad after all it could have been a game with a lot of stiff competition since this jam also included Starmage's "Heroes of The Season" which was a fun little game for what it was. Though, I suppose I should move on to discussing the game's plot.
Story
Summary
We play as Harold whose forgotten the meaning of Christmas over the years due to his constant failures at becoming a true hero over the years. In fact, he's so obsessed with becoming a true hero that he tells his longtime friends and party members that they should spend Christmas Eve looking for an adventure they complete instead of enjoying some eggnog in front of a warm fire. An obsession that causes the rest of them to take off since they'd rather spend Christmas enjoying time together than looking for another epic quest to go on that will just be completed by the tried and tested heroes from earlier RPG Maker engines like Alex. Thankfully for Harold it appears buff Santa is a bit unlucky when he visits Harold's house in order to deliver Harold's presents and manages to injure his back by falling through some cracked floorboards.
Just what we all needed a Santa built like Hulk Hogan in "Santa with Muscles".
So it's up to Harold to become a true hero by saving Christmas by finishing up Santa's remaining deliveries.
Comedy
The game tries to be a bit comedic with references to other stuff like Harold telling the boss his Santa is in another castle and so on. And while I get the reference, I'm really not sure how it applies to the villain whose style of killing involves overly complicated traps. I guess he watched "Saw" way too many times and figured if your going to be a killer you might as well imitate Jigsaw.
Spelling Errors
The game contains a few notable spelling errors. Probably one of the funniest pops up during the confrontation between the villain and Harold after Harold's friends show up.
Date Confusion
Oddly enough the game starts on December 24th which is Christmas Eve but everyone is running around calling it Christmas. As for why, I really don't know. Admittedly some cultures celebrate Christmas on different dates with Russia celebrating Christmas on January 7th because the Russian Orthodox Church still uses the old Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar used by most of the developed world.
Gameplay
The game is comprised of three puzzles whose main difficulty increasers comes from the player only having three minutes to solve each puzzle or they'll suffer a gruesome fate. Though oddly enough the hardest puzzle is probably the first since it involves panels that slide the player around until they reach a grey floor tile. And some of these floor tiles also contain warps which can send the player back to the starting area. In fact, it took me three tries to accidentally discover that you need to go through one of the teleporting portals in order to reach the final switch in the room since all of the other teleport pads send you back to the starting area.
The second puzzle involves flipping switches, but in order to reach them you'll need to crack an ice sliding puzzle. And while this puzzle doesn't try to trick the player into avoiding the solution. It also comes across as a bit tedious do to how slowly the player character slides on the ice, but the slow speed means time wasted on wrong moves can really screw you on this puzzle.
The final puzzle involves flipping switches while traversing a teleport pad maze. A challenge that requires a bit of skill when it comes to memorizing stuff. Though I suppose you could get around the need to memorize the important paths in this area by simply mapping out the correct path using pencil and paper. This is because the pads always go to the same pad as far as I can tell. Or if you don't care for any of that fancy stuff you can try and brute force your way through the puzzle like a bull in a china shop.
Graphics
Graphically the game is a bit of a mess in my opinion since some the assets appear to be custom while others are clearly lifted from the RTP for RPG Maker MV. While another branch of the graphical assets in this game are most likely from asset packs. As a result the game isn't that visually appealing in my opinion even with all of Christmas related graphics floating around.
Sound
On the sound side of things the game makes use of a bunch of classic Christmas songs and even twists a few of them to make them creepy. And while the game doesn't suddenly shift between horror and classic Christmas songs. It's still a bit weird in my opinion. Though this weirdness is no match for the creepiness of "The Nightmare before Christmas" one of the last great stop motion films inmy opinion.
Conclusion
I'll admit I'm a bit mixed on what to rate this game. On one hand this game only features three levels whose overall difficulty is rather low in my opinion. So much so that I imagine most people will be able to solve the puzzles on their first try even with the game placing a three minute time limit on finding the solution. At the same time this as a game that was created as part of game jam. So I really didn't have particularly high hopes for it considering most of these jams tend to run for a week or two. As a result I suppose I'll split the difference, but my opinion of this game isn't particularly high.
"Harold's XMAS" is a short puzzle game comprised of three unique types of puzzles that was developed by mozthetiger using RPG Maker MZ that was created for a Christmas game jam over on RPG Maker Web. For the curious the results of this game jam be found by clicking on the word here, and for the especially lazy this game came in 26th place out of 31 entries. At least if we don't include the one entry that is apparently unplayable for unspecified reasons. On the plus side that doesn't mean this game is necessarily bad after all it could have been a game with a lot of stiff competition since this jam also included Starmage's "Heroes of The Season" which was a fun little game for what it was. Though, I suppose I should move on to discussing the game's plot.
Story
Summary
We play as Harold whose forgotten the meaning of Christmas over the years due to his constant failures at becoming a true hero over the years. In fact, he's so obsessed with becoming a true hero that he tells his longtime friends and party members that they should spend Christmas Eve looking for an adventure they complete instead of enjoying some eggnog in front of a warm fire. An obsession that causes the rest of them to take off since they'd rather spend Christmas enjoying time together than looking for another epic quest to go on that will just be completed by the tried and tested heroes from earlier RPG Maker engines like Alex. Thankfully for Harold it appears buff Santa is a bit unlucky when he visits Harold's house in order to deliver Harold's presents and manages to injure his back by falling through some cracked floorboards.
Just what we all needed a Santa built like Hulk Hogan in "Santa with Muscles".
So it's up to Harold to become a true hero by saving Christmas by finishing up Santa's remaining deliveries.
Comedy
The game tries to be a bit comedic with references to other stuff like Harold telling the boss his Santa is in another castle and so on. And while I get the reference, I'm really not sure how it applies to the villain whose style of killing involves overly complicated traps. I guess he watched "Saw" way too many times and figured if your going to be a killer you might as well imitate Jigsaw.
Spelling Errors
The game contains a few notable spelling errors. Probably one of the funniest pops up during the confrontation between the villain and Harold after Harold's friends show up.
Date Confusion
Oddly enough the game starts on December 24th which is Christmas Eve but everyone is running around calling it Christmas. As for why, I really don't know. Admittedly some cultures celebrate Christmas on different dates with Russia celebrating Christmas on January 7th because the Russian Orthodox Church still uses the old Julian calendar instead of the Gregorian calendar used by most of the developed world.
Gameplay
The game is comprised of three puzzles whose main difficulty increasers comes from the player only having three minutes to solve each puzzle or they'll suffer a gruesome fate. Though oddly enough the hardest puzzle is probably the first since it involves panels that slide the player around until they reach a grey floor tile. And some of these floor tiles also contain warps which can send the player back to the starting area. In fact, it took me three tries to accidentally discover that you need to go through one of the teleporting portals in order to reach the final switch in the room since all of the other teleport pads send you back to the starting area.
The second puzzle involves flipping switches, but in order to reach them you'll need to crack an ice sliding puzzle. And while this puzzle doesn't try to trick the player into avoiding the solution. It also comes across as a bit tedious do to how slowly the player character slides on the ice, but the slow speed means time wasted on wrong moves can really screw you on this puzzle.
The final puzzle involves flipping switches while traversing a teleport pad maze. A challenge that requires a bit of skill when it comes to memorizing stuff. Though I suppose you could get around the need to memorize the important paths in this area by simply mapping out the correct path using pencil and paper. This is because the pads always go to the same pad as far as I can tell. Or if you don't care for any of that fancy stuff you can try and brute force your way through the puzzle like a bull in a china shop.
Graphics
Graphically the game is a bit of a mess in my opinion since some the assets appear to be custom while others are clearly lifted from the RTP for RPG Maker MV. While another branch of the graphical assets in this game are most likely from asset packs. As a result the game isn't that visually appealing in my opinion even with all of Christmas related graphics floating around.
Sound
On the sound side of things the game makes use of a bunch of classic Christmas songs and even twists a few of them to make them creepy. And while the game doesn't suddenly shift between horror and classic Christmas songs. It's still a bit weird in my opinion. Though this weirdness is no match for the creepiness of "The Nightmare before Christmas" one of the last great stop motion films inmy opinion.
Conclusion
I'll admit I'm a bit mixed on what to rate this game. On one hand this game only features three levels whose overall difficulty is rather low in my opinion. So much so that I imagine most people will be able to solve the puzzles on their first try even with the game placing a three minute time limit on finding the solution. At the same time this as a game that was created as part of game jam. So I really didn't have particularly high hopes for it considering most of these jams tend to run for a week or two. As a result I suppose I'll split the difference, but my opinion of this game isn't particularly high.
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Woow! Thank you very much for your review and beated my game! I really appreciate the time you took to write it, for me it is very valuable and helps me to keep improving.
I developed the game game in 3 days, I signed up very late for the Game Jam and there was very little time left before the deadline so I did the best I could. Also, one of the rules was that the game had to last between 20-30 minutes, so that's why I didn't do more puzzles or more complex ones.
If I understood correctly you mentioned that the puzzles are easy! I'm glad to hear that, because I think a lot of people couldn't complete them and I think that also affected my Game Jam score.
Thanks for your feedback! :D
I developed the game game in 3 days, I signed up very late for the Game Jam and there was very little time left before the deadline so I did the best I could. Also, one of the rules was that the game had to last between 20-30 minutes, so that's why I didn't do more puzzles or more complex ones.
If I understood correctly you mentioned that the puzzles are easy! I'm glad to hear that, because I think a lot of people couldn't complete them and I think that also affected my Game Jam score.
Thanks for your feedback! :D
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1