A Krampus Christmas (Game Chill 2013)

The saga of nostalgia continues with the fourth review in the series! I guess it's a series now? Anyway, just like Rubi, I actually played this one years back, but never played any further than the intro. Going back to it... I realized that I really don't have much to say about this game, so I guess this is gonna be a short one.

This game is about three siblings who sneak into a school at night to vandalize stuff. It's generic, yeah, but the christmas setting's kinda neat. I think the biggest highlight to be found here is probably actually in the graphics. I believe the graphics were made my the developer himself, and they honestly look pretty damn sweet. The game page advertises this as a "beauty to look at," and I don't know if I would call this game gorgeous or anything, but it's pretty decent looking for sure. The mapping's kind of plain and a lot of the rooms pretty much serve no purpose, which is weird, but I suppose considering the time constraints on this, the graphics are actually impressive. Though it appears music wasn't much of a consideration, because the entire game just plays the nutcracker theme (I think that's what the song was called) and pretty much nothing else. Sadly, it appears that's where most of the developer's time went into visuals, because there isn't much else to praise here.

The game immediately begins with a very unpolished, abrupt introduction. You see the empty hall, then it suddenly cuts out instantly to black and fades back in and you see the characters, and then the screen suddenly gets tinted. This sort of abruptness kind of keeps up for the rest of the game, as you see characters sprites literally teleport out of screen after beating the first boss and the ending also just cuts in instantly. Speaking of which, the ending's not that good! Yeah, as I already mentioned, it's very abrupt, and it kinda feels very rushed. It's just a direct cut to the credits after beating big daddy Krampus himself (wow yeah I just said that), granted there's a few lines of dialogue in between. Some of the dialogue exchanges are pretty fun, and while the game is so short that anyone barely gets the chance to speak, making it hard to really connect to any character, I enjoyed the writing anyway. Krampus in particular is sassy as shit and I'm all for it.



The gameplay here is basically made up of walking around and fighting two bosses. It's extremely short and basically 10 minutes of your 15 minute playtime are probably just gonna be the fights. And that's because they reaaaaaly drag. I assume the developer knew that the game was really short and plain, so they wanted to throw in two challenging fights to at least keep things good, but both battles seriously go on forever. The snowman fight is ridiculously easy, but also goes on for way longer than it should. The Krampus fight is a lot more challenging and I died there a few times, but having to replay the thing honestly sucks because the fights go on for so long. Items themselves have some issues in that your normal attack literally does jack shit, and there's an item that's supposed to heal your MP but heals your HP instead? By default, everyone has such slow agility that waiting to attack becomes ridiculously painful. I think everyone should have had an increase in agility. You could still make Krampus way more agile than your party without having to make your party the speed of a snail.

I really don't have much to say about Krampus. The visuals are nice and the dialogue's okay. I'd have liked to see more of both things rather than two really annoying and boring fights. As it turns out, the developer's also made Beyond the Gate, which I only realized after actually writing this review. While I wasn't a huge fan of that game either, I would still suggest playing that game over this one. I guess Krampus does what it can for a 15 minute long game, but it's still not a game I really recommend. I give the game two snowmen out of five.