Here's my playthrough of your game! It's at the 10:01 mark of this video.
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A Christmas Tail's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Visuals | #8 | 3.917 | 3.917 |
| Christmas Feeling | #11 | 3.778 | 3.778 |
| Audio | #27 | 2.972 | 2.972 |
| Gameplay | #29 | 2.917 | 2.917 |
| Overall | #29 | 3.052 | 3.052 |
| Enjoyment | #34 | 2.917 | 2.917 |
| Theme Implementation | #51 | 2.639 | 2.639 |
| Special Object Implementation | #62 | 2.222 | 2.222 |
Ranked from 36 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How did you implement the Theme?
Light is used as a progression-based mechanic where the player explores the area and turns on lights to brighten the environment and unlock final path. The game initially takes place at night and is supposed to be much darker.
How did you add the Special Object?
A bell is placed at the very end of the level. Ringing it marks the completion of the game. We also considered giving the player a bell, but decided to keep it as the final goal instead.
Comments
The game design is very beautiful. The 3D dog model is cute. I had a little trouble with the camera; from what I saw, others also said they had similar problems. In some parts, the dog also glitched and went into the ground. And I don't know if there was a bug, but when turning on the lights, the indicator said to press the E key, but it worked with the F key, which I accidentally pressed while moving the dog. Apart from that, the game is great.
Submitted
Santa's Night ProblemOh, good catch. Both E and F are assigned as "Interact" keys in in the Input Manager, It must've kept F as a secondary key and I never checked it. Thank you for playing it and for your feedback! There are some areas missing colliders so you fall through it that I will need to fix. And yeah, it looks like the camera issues are common for everyone. I'll tweak those values or change some settings with it.
Thanks again, I'm glad people are enjoying the game despite its issues!
Fun to play a dog, and a very cute dog at that! I agree with swifty, the controls felt a little janky (especially the camera). The level was cute, but I almost missed the lampposts! Also, I didn't quite see the object implemented. Did I miss it?
Overall nice work. I enjoyed it.
Submitted
Carol of the BellsThanks for playing! It was really fun doing the locomotion and trying to get it to feel dog-like. The controls will need tweaking, that's something I wish I spent more time on but I'm glad everyone has the same consensus that it needs work. It means everyone has had a chance to experience it haha. We're gonna move the first lamppost more in the path of the Player so hopefully that helps.
The object implementation was the final object in the game, it's the Bell to sound the end of the level. We had ideas of having a bell on the Player, but didn't have a mechanic lined up for it yet.
everything is very well modeled, especially the dog (i love dogs)! controls are a little janky i feel like, but everything else i great! good job!
Submitted
Holly Jolly HuntHad to play the game with the most ratings. Absolutely loved the doggy graphic and was impressed at the attention to detail given to the turning animation. Very nicely done, so top marks for visuals. Really liked the level design too, though perhaps a bit too linear. Wasn't grabbed by the theme or special object implementation though. Good fun though and enjoyed playing a dog!
Submitted
Toll of DawnOh wow, I didn't even know we had the most ratings or how to really check that. That's amazing haha, thanks for rating and playing. The locomotion and the animations definitely took me the longest, I had to look into animation blending and using layers so it looks natural. It is a little iffy if you turn too slowly or do a 180 degree turn, but I was really happy with out it turned out.
And I agree, we were struck between a linear level and a more open one, but with the time constraints we went with linear. It allowed up to narrow down the different sections and how we wanted to show off the different mechanics. Any future levels will be more open or maybe a mix between both. We also had plans for stealth sections utilizing the light and bell, but I just didn't have enough time to engineer it.
Thanks for the feedback!
This one was really cool! I think if the controls were tweaked just a bit (Namely the like, grapple jump), that would be nice. But overall this was really fun!
Submitted
Twinklebell TrekThis is really impressive for a game jam! The only things that I have to criticize on are the player controls are a bit janky, and that I personally would have liked to see more done with the theme other than just turning on lights.
Submitted
Where Is Santa Mouse?Thank you! I agree, the Player Controls could use a bit more tweaking. It will be something to revisit and smooth out in our next iterations. We did have a design with the lights and use it as a stealth mechanic instead, but we ended up cutting it. So rather than turning on lights, you had sections where you had to avoid them haha. Something in the backlog that we may revisit.
Absolute mad-lad making a 3D game with animations and everything for such a short jam!
The level design is amazing, and my only complaint is that the player controller is a little janky at times (which is totally to be expected for a Jam Game). Amazing job!
Submitted
Night ChimeHahaha, thank you! We were able to use pre-made assets with Synty to speed up the process. The level design was all hand-made though, thanks to our Environment Artist and Game Designer. And thank you for the feedback, the Player Controller will definitely take more tweaking. Did it feel too slow on turns or unresponsive?
I feel there was potential to place some lamps behind puzzles or platforming challenges. Nonetheless, the 3D models were pretty and the environment was well made, nicely delivering the Christmas vibe! The 2D art was also great!
Submitted
Draw LightI can tell quite a lot of effort went into this. Well done and Merry Christmas.
PS: My time was 06:35 :)
Submitted
Bell DefenseWhoa, the dog's movement is fluid and well done! The assisted jumping is helpful, especially when I had to climb back up after I accidentally ran off the ledge a couple of times. The map is also well-designed. I got sidetracked several times while exploring it to see what secrets it might be hiding--which is actually a good thing, BTW. :P
Great jam submission!
Submitted
Larry and the Christmas BellsHahaha, thank you so much! The assisted jumping was a fun mechanic to engineer. I had a few options with either having the detection on the actual points or having the player shoot out a spherecast and return any points it hits, based on where the Player faced. I'm glad people were able to pick up the mechanic quickly and not have many issues with using it.
On our next iterations we actually want to do more hidden areas that branch off and add more puzzles with exploration.
Impressive that you put together such a nice looking game in such a short amount of time.
Submitted
Krampus in the DarkGreat game, nice environment and nice overall visuals. I really liked the jump to the paw indicator mechanic, even though some jumps felt a bit strange due to excessive teleporting. Great job! :D
Submitted
Bell's LabyrinthThank you! The jump mechanic was inspired from Stray, after we saw it, we wanted something very similar. And yeah haha, the animation and jump time isn't quite perfect yet. We also didn't use any splining so it's nearly a straight line teleport, versus it having a smooth curve with a timed animation based on distance.
HOORAY! The downloadable version worked!!
A great little adventure, I loved how you implemented the jumping mechanic! It felt like the environment kind of fell apart towards the end with missing collision shapes etc, but I loved how it seemed to be made out of oversized things you'd normally find at Christmas - made me feel like I was helping guide either a tiny dog in a regular household or either a regular sized dog in a giants house :P
I loved all the lights as well, even if the art style was quite simple it was endearing and fun. And very good animations on the doggy too :D Well done!!
Submitted
Ready, Steady, Glow!I'm glad we got the downloadble version working! Thanks for letting me know the previous version wasn't working, I was able to rebuild it and test it on my own.
The jumping mechanic is inspired from Stray and it was something we fell in love with after seeing it. And thank you! Our environment artist and game designer worked on the level blockout and set dressing, and it definitely held that festive and magical feel to it.
I have been having trouble getting the WebGL optimization, I might try a different compression mode. I've had mixed results of people able to play it on Browser and not able to. Are you using Chrome by any chance?
I just uploaded the proper Downloadable build, let me know if that works if you want to try it. I'm sorry you aren't able to play it! That's one of my fears is others not being able to enjoy it after going through the trouble of finding the page.
It does sound like an optimization issue if it's running at 5fps. Again I'm really sorry and I'll let you know when I update the webgl version. Thank you for at least trying!
At first I thought there was a bug that made the dog jump ridiculously high, but then I realized it was literally a game mechanic. The game was decent.
P.S.: What was the cat doing in the menu?
Submitted
The Curse of KrampusThat's awesome! The Paw print prompt can be a bit tough to see since it can be hidden in the environment, but noticing it is a game mechanic without a tutorial is amazing.
The cat was our first iteration for a character, we were taking inspiration from Stray. We ended up using the dog model, but we wanted to keep the art. Thanks for asking and playing!
Good boy is jumping so hiiiigh xD
Pretty fun game! Christmas atmosphere is well set and I mean, doggo eating treats is always satisfaying, congrats on making this game :D
Submitted
The Last Christmas Light
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