Grace's Christmas Preparation

This game is a Christmas game where main protagonist Grace's mother has gone back to pick up her father and baby brother from another place, and she has left a list of things for Grace to do before she gets back. The basic gameplay consists of interacting with various objects, that is, baking cookies, setting up decorations and wrapping presents. Each of them has a corresponding minigame associated with it.

Graphics
The game features hand-drawn custom tiles. I felt like these were nice because they were custom, but they needed a bit more care put into them for them to be outstanding. It is a bit hard to see the outlines of tiles in the current resolution. The style is cute (it's similar to what unity did in Last Minute Gift), but it's a little difficult to see what is what, and it seems like stuff like the fireplace and the Christmas tree are drawn at different angles, one from a higher view, and then one from the side.

Audio
"Last Christmas" plays in the background, a cute little chimes-led rendition of the traditional Christmas song. It gets you in the mood. There are very nicely chosen Christmas-related sound effects for each menu choice, also.

Gameplay
Gameplay is somewhat sameish. You've been left a list of things to do, so you do them, and mostly it involves interacting with every object in the room until you find the one you're supposed to touch. It's a bit simple, it's a collect-a-thon. The 3rd minigame - wrapping presents - is the only one that requires strategy, and to get it the first try with no errors you'd have to write it down and use deduction, but even then it's fairly simple since the game gives you unlimited tries to get it right, and no consequence for failure. It's a friendly little Christmas game, but a gameplay challenge it is not.

Story
This game was designed to be a simple Christmas story, and it fits the season spirit quite adroitly. I did find it a bit disconcerting that the mother would let their child bake cookies on their own without fear of burning down the house, or to use knives to open boxes, and I found it weird that she was wrapping the presents herself. She could be a teenager, in which case it would've made sense, but her sprite and portrait made her look 8 years old, and I was kind of fearing for her safety or wondering how the child would know how to bake cookies so skilfully without burning them or doing something wrong. The parents have a lot of faith in their little kid.

The ending is quick, and logical, but I found it kind of unsatisfying. I was hoping there was a bit more heft to this little tale, but no, it was just supposed to be a cute little Christmas card slash love letter to the community, and I guess in that sense it succeeded.

Overall
It is a quaint little Christmas game that'll take you about 5 minutes to complete, but if you are looking for any sort of heft to the gameplay or an interesting new idea, this isn't the place to look. This is just a love letter from the developer to the people saying, "Merry Christmas!", and I guess that's OK if that's what you're looking for. If you wanna get into the festive season, this is satisfactory.

I do not give this Christmas celebrator an official score because I believe it does not aim to be scored on the basis of its merit as a game, but rather just as a fun love letter to the community, and I respect that ambition.

If you're reading this at Christmas time, I wish you a Merry Christmas! But for the rest of you, you can let go of your collective sighs now, it's at least a little while away before you're going to have buy presents for all your little cousins all over again and put on a fake smile at family BBQs and try to avoid arguments, and all that lovely stuff. Luckily, there's little games like this to tide you over and give you perhaps a little bit of naive cheer.