Christmas or Wintery Games... Are You Making One?

It seems like I ask this question each year.

Just curious if anyone is working on a Christmas- or at least Winter-themed game?

I always enjoy checking out such games.

Feel free to post links here so all of us who have an interest in such things (perhaps only me lol) can check them out.

I am debating making something. Of course, at this point it would need to be something very basic or else a very nice scene with nothing much to do at all.

Kind of figured I could at least count on @Arowx to be making one but I think he is busy working on his tabletop RTS game.

 

I think it's a good idea, perhaps we could have a little compo like LD.

 

Not at the moment, unless someone suddenly decides to hire me.

Current plan is to see if I can make anything decent out of my ludum dare entry.

 

I'm not making a Christmas game. But if I did it would be a real Christmas game. Barbecues and beaches. None of this winter stuff.

 

This guy is playing 12 christmas themed games, just look up on itch.io there is over 150 of them
https://m.youtube.com/channel/UCo1_4nGlt3mWL-nBeMMDB_Q

https://itch.io/search?q=christmas

 

Well, since you mentioned winter, I can post a link to my video talking about winter effects like snow and footprints. This is an RTS game, I just thought that winter would be a good setting for it.

I don't know if it fits your "winter theme" criteria, but it is at least set in winter (or at least it is for the moment unless I change my mind for some reason). Feel free to check out other videos on my channel if you like the game.

 

Thanks. I've already checked out most Christmas games on itch.io and GameJolt. That's why I always wonder if anyone around here is making one that I have not seen yet.

I actually did find one at itch.io just now from your link that I had missed previously.
Had great hope for it and even paid 4 CAD for the bundle to help them meet their 10 CAD goal. lol

Titan 3D Xmas Edition


Unfortunately, the control scheme isn't good for me and there doesn't seem to be any configuration.
Ah well they are closer to their money goal anyway. I sometimes look for games this time of year just to donate and help out in the spirit of the season. And when I see games that look like this graphically they just really connect with me. I think "aha! they probably put a lot of focus on the gameplay and this thing is most likely fun as hell".

That is often the case but not always unfortunately. I often see a sort of inverse coorelation between the apparent amount of time spent on graphics and the amount of creativity and so forth in games. And that is a big reason why I check out games like this. I guess that is probably why lots of other people like them as well. By that I mean there are many games along these lines that have tens of thousands of plays.

Some good examples (Christmas themed and otherwise) are:

Dear Santa, I hate you

Escape from the Underworld

Cosmic Song

and plenty of more that are very popular.

Anyway thanks again for reminding me to check itch.io again.

Oh I might as well plug my latest tiny retro inspired game...

Attack of the Crows (my first game in AGK done as a learning exercise)


It's basically inspired by a combo of Space Invaders and Demon Attack.
Of course, I always enjoy playing around with the design / mechanics.
So here you play the farmer and throw pitch forks. When a pitch fork hits a crow or leaves the playfield it respawns on the ground below where it can be collected again.

Adds just a tiny micro bit of depth to the game to make it a bit fresh.

Hmm...

Well maybe I will knock out a snowy wintery / Christmas themed game this week.

 

i thought about it, but I figured if I really wanted to capture the spirit of the christmas games I played when I was younger, it'd have to be an FPS where you brutally gib some elves

 

That sounds like a lot of fun. Watching the elves run away in terror, maybe a few huddled behind a big rock and player finds them. Blow them suckers up parts flying everywhere. Might actually be a hit!

 

So I just knocked out some graphics mainly just doodling trying to get my mind into such a game.

Have no idea if I will actually use these platformish tiles or not. The ground and platform on the right are foreground. The rock, dead tree and two pine like trees are background. I'd need to add one more layer in the distant background mountain range or something to complete it I think.

True size:


And probably the game size (yeah the dots are to illustrate snow should be falling):


I don't even have an idea yet really. lol But doodling up a scene often helps me to think. Too bad I need to go sleep now.

 

Have considered it but didn't have the timing right. However, Alto's Adventure is a pretty fun snow-themed game, check it out.

 

Thanks. I did a search and all I can find is a mobile game by that name.

It did prompt me to do a quick search at GameJolt for games with "adventure" in their names. Found 1 game that I will check out tonight. So thanks for planting that suggestion.

Collapse, Collide

That is an excellent wintery setting at the start of the game. I like it. Gameplay wise no idea. The jumping looks a bit floaty for my tastes but I will check it out.

 

Looking Good Benjamin are you going to use Unity or that steam game engine?

 

Thanks. I think the images might be a bit too detailed. When I work on the characters I wil know. If i find they are taking up way too much time I'll redo the tile images accordingly to be even simpler. That's if I even do a platformer using this stuff. lol Still have no idea. Haven't had a chance to think about it yet.

No. I will use AGK for this game just because I've only done one tiny game with it so far to learn the api and so forth. But I like it a lot from the little time I've spent with it and want to explore it more.

My current priority is to create a tile map editor. I'll start on that tonight or tomorrow. It will be based on one named SED I created on the Amiga in Blitz Basic long ago except where that was limited to 3 layers (at the time early 90s I thought it was all one would ever need lol) this one will support up to 8 layers. Hoping to knock that out in a few days then can actually think about the game and get started proper on it.

 

I will add that if anyone is interested in making a 2D tile map based game in Unity I can highly recommend SpriteTile (asset store). I found it to be very well done, easy to work with and continually updated. It is definitely worth the price and helped me to keep my sanity (questionable I know lol) when I was developing in Unity.

There is a 3D editor I purchased and liked as well but cannot remember the name now. I bought 2 or 3 of them to compare and one was very easy to work with compared to the others. These things are great and it is a shame Unity doesn't pay the authors and include them in the product IMO. But I guess the same could be said for so many things.

 

Sorry I missed this until now. Looks cool. I am immediately reminded of the Diablo games due to what appear to be health and mana globes. I know you said it is actually an RTS but it is intriguing to see those globes and I wonder how they fit into the gameplay.

Do you have a link to a playable prototype?

 

[Game] Xmas Nightmares

Inspired by Tim Burton's Nightmare before Christmas.

Just fooling around with some level and character ideas in blender (1 day's work), need to change the character otherwise I'll get raped by copyright - LOL.

Tomorrow if I get time will pull into unity and prototype a game mechanic - I'm thinking an endless runner. Maybe a bit ambitious for a Game Jam but meh.

 

Wow that already looks pretty good

 

Thanks but the number of times I've got carried away with graphics though and neglected gameplay is unforgivable.

So tomorrow, I'm only going to do a very quick ONCE only, lighting build inside unity with enlighten, then straight to game mechanics, no textures complex models or frills to get in my way. Shouldn't be too difficult to rig the main character either, T-poses are easy enough to rig. Oh and of course a striped down UI, using unity UI as it is great, and if I get some time a little score in garage band!

 

Thanks! Actually, the globes are probably going to be cut. When I first started working on this game, I had intended more of an RPG with just one character. It has since evolved a bit into more of an RTS. I am uncertain how I will handle the final health bar/globes. It depends on how I set up the HUD.

My latest video shows progress towards party A.I. I got it working pretty well. I am an artist trying to learn programming, but it is coming along slowly but surely.

So yeah, I am going to be redoing the entire HUD to allow for multiple characters. Plus, there are things I need to add and take away from the HUD anyway, so a lot of the HUD is just placeholder for now. I have not decided on a final layout yet.

Unfortunately, I do not have a playable demo yet. I might do this soon, but there are some things I'd like to do first. I need the enemy A.I. to be done (or at least done enough to play), be able to build some small structures (like blacksmith station or other "small" structures), there is no sound at all yet either, so that's another thing. Once I get some of these things done, the game will be more ready, and much more enjoyable. I want to make a good first impression.

 

That looks awesome and made me laugh (Jack Skellington is just the kind of character who makes you smile... or me at least).

It definitely looks very ambitious on the graphics side. But I'd say if you can do that in one day then sure why not?! It's all about time really. As long as you can keep the time spent on graphics to a reasonable amount then knock yourself out on it. It's when folks spend months or even years just producing graphics I have to wonder what in heck they are really doing. And it really annoys me when it is clear they have spent about 50% or more of the time just on graphics and 50% on everything else. So if you spend 2 days or so on graphics and the rest of the time until Saturday night on all of the other things that is reasonable I think.

 

That makes good sense and is certainly understandable about waiting until more of the features are in there. Sounds like you are basically doing what I call Developmental Design. Where you sort of dabble building something and as you dabble and build it kind of finds its own direction and sort of takes you along for the ride.

 

So far all I have done this evening is design the GUI for the map editor I (probably) need to build.

But I just found out a bit ago something called the Placement Editor comes with AGK so I need to check that out and if it is usable then I will just use it instead of building this dev tool (although I do like the idea of doing so).

As far as I know there is no real GUI stuff in AGK which means I need to basically make everything from scratch including input boxes and so forth. lol Actually wait there are virtual buttons so I can use those for the buttons at least. I need to hit the docs and find out what is available to work with and what all I need to build.

Anyway, here is the design so it can be known that I was working.

 

Yeah, even though I have a pretty good idea of what I want to game to be (and I have a good idea of the big picture), I like testing as I go and keeping the design more free flowing. The design will evolve as I've had a chance to test ideas and see how they actually work. It's hard to judge if something is actually fun before testing it.

So, I build a little, then test and see how things are going. I then make decisions to see if things are actually working or if I think the gameplay will be dull and boring. For example, I moved to a party-based system because I felt that it would both enable more strategic options and also give the player more to do and more to play around with.

Any changes I make are carefully thought out through testing and evaluation. For example, the move from RPG to RTS was to enable more open-ended gameplay. I don't have to focus as much on game length because players can make the game as long as they want, and it will have good replayability. I can instead, then, focus on gameplay systems and features. I also won't have to compete with AAA RPGs.

 

actually, first time I was reading this thread I thought "naaaahh I don't have time to do yet another game project" but then i realized that my last ludum dare game that I made just recently IS actually winter themed and is even playing within a snowglobe (although that's not so visible yet from the inside) I might expand on that at some point though

http://ludumdare.com/compo/ludum-dare-37/?action=preview&uid=63831

 

That's an excellent winter theme. Nice stuff! I wasn't entire sure what I was doing but I figured I needed to find them a home and sure enough...




..........

And now I need to get to work on the map editor. Looks like I will need to create it. Not sure if I will get time to even work on a game in time for Christmas. All depends on how well work goes on the map editor. But I'll be happy even to complete this. Be like a nice Christmas present for myself and also the AGK community since I told them if I make it I'll post the project source so people can customize to their liking.

I like doing that kind of thing. Going around here and elsewhere, making little games or whatever and then giving out the projects so others can have a headstart. People used to do that kind of thing a lot more but sadly it seems like everyone is thinking about making money from everything they make these days.

 

You could try to pair up with someone if that's the case.

 

!!!!
There's a map editor called Tiled.
http://www.mapeditor.org/

As far as I know it was used in Axiom Verge among the other games. So, you could try that one instead of writing your own.

 

Yeah I've used Tiled before. There are many map editors out there but I liked Tiled the best of the several I tried. I used it for my work in Monkey X, GLBasic and HaxeFlixel. But I don't care much for the XML data format for things like this. Just seems bulky and wasteful to me. Although saying that... it seems like Tiled may have supported simple CSV format files. Can't remember right now. Maybe it was CSV instead of Base64 but in both cases was still packaged up inside XML. That might be it.

Maybe I will check tomorrow and see how much I can strip out the junk. I find that everything just grows more and more bulky over time. Where all I need is a simple map editor supporting multiple layers and FlipX, FlipY attributes on each cell. I mean pf course I'd add area selection from the map to be used as the brush and so forth in time and other things but they would all be focused on ease of use and to increase speed of map creation. I don't need all of this custom attributes per tile or cell, support for separate Object lists and so forth. All of that stuff I can easily do in code.

I mean really I could just make my maps in code and have considered doing so. I might do that.

But anyway thanks man. I am looking for something like the good old days where I can export the data into a very straightforward and usable format. Ideally multiple formats such as binary block data, Data statements, code statements (spits out code to dimension an array and then has a long list of lines setting each cell) or at the least just a simple csv file with nothing else in it except lines of csv. I don't care much for this modern make everything generic and include everything even the kitchen sink mentality. lol

 

Write a python script to convert xml into format of your choosing. It'll take less time than writing a map editor.

 

This is another possibility. Not in python never used it but in AGK Basic, C# or php if I decided to stick it on my website.

There actually is support for loading Tiled tmx files provided through community code over there. So I could also just go that route. But like I said it is mainly just that it seems like such a wasteful approach.

Ya know... I might give this some thought because creating maps in Tiled really is nice it is just the resulting files the way the data is packaged that I have a dislike for. I think xml is nice for certain things such as communication between interfaces, web services and so forth. But seems a bit crazy to me for it to be used for so much stuff as it is.

There might be some tmx convertors already out there as well. Thanks for the idea.

 

@neginfinity hey just did a quick search and have a look at this!

Tiled to Binary Converter

Pretty awesome. Even supports RLE on the data. That is the kind of thing I like to see. A focus on size and efficiency instead of bloat and a bunch of meta data fluff. lol

I'll check it out after work today.

 

I was trying to get a Christmas game done in time for the holidays with my brother but i don't think it's going to get done. The combination of the kids getting sick (flu season), crunch time at work, and just the overall madness of getting everything ready for Christmas left me very little time to work on it. Plus it didn't help that scope just started growing and growing on what was supposed to be a super simple throwaway game. I'll post something on it later when i have more time, it's pretty half baked. I'll keep working on it and the all the expanded scope stuff in and maybe just polish it and release it next year. Or maybe i'll just bin it, who knows..

Anyways, we did make a Christmas themed game and release it last year. It's pretty terrible and horribly broken. I'm not a programmer and that game was basically a learning challenge to see if i could actually make something from scratch from concept to actually publishing it. I learned a lot. I have zero programming experience aside from some mel in maya so i had no idea what i was doing. (still don't). We just put it up for free on android with no ads or anything since it was more of an exercise on going thru the whole process.

Here it is if you want to check it out:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.DurangoGames.ChristmasScramble

 

@adur thanks for sharing that. I don't play mobile games (used to test for devs but then Google made it so have to set up account and I am very anti-tracking minded so now I will quite likely never get any mobile app again)... but I know a lot of people seem to love mobile games so hopefully they'll check it out.

I hear you on the busy time of year. It is always fairly busy and yes even more so generally at this time. I'm not sure what I'll be able to make myself by Christmas but am going to attempt to knock out something playable.

 

I was going to joke about making a Christmas game and it being ready by Christmas 2020, since I am only 2 weeks into Unity. But I started thinking, what have I learned so far? I can make a ball roll and I can pick up objects and translate them, and I'm pretty good in Blender, maybe I can get a level or two done before Christmas.

Worth a shot at least.

 

Yes indeed. Because a game only needs certain basic things to be worth playing. You create a playground of some kind your level (or 2 or 3), add some things for the player to interact with... maybe some sliding fun or trampoline like bouncing fun or whatever, a goal maybe collect Christmas ornaments or find the elves or whatever and then add some obstacles whether terrain based, enemies and even a timer. There is a game. And these things only need to be very simplistic yet very solidly implemented and you've got a framework for fun.

 

I might cobble together something quick from some free assets. I should be working on my actual project but I suppose this is a way to prevent the quick rush to burnout I've been on.

 

Hi everyone,
I made this little Christmas themed 3D platform game:



There are six golden acorns to collect!

Download link: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B_tmckJHtIkrVW9DUlN4S25KYVk

 

You should take a look at python. IT is a duct-tape language. Basically, when something need to be automated fast, it is usually done in python.

 

I saw this yesterday and I thought i'd share it, I got a good laugh out of it:

Not really a game, it's a test of a game engine's crowd sim capabilites but Christmas related nonetheless.

 

LOL! That is definitely... different.

 

Thanks for sharing! This is an extremely well done game. It looks superb and plays very well. Lots of awesome touches too such as the train and ferris wheel.

You should finish this off and put it on Steam.

 

I spent a lot of time messing around last night trying to use that Tiled to Binary Convertor tool I found.

In the end, I just threw it out and thought "ya know I am making this way too hard!". So I opened the Tiled data file and copied out the actual CSV data for my two map layers and pasted it into a new text file.

Then wrote a super simple loader for it. This is the approach I will use going forward. All I need is the actual layer tiles data. That is all I use anyway. I mean I generally have an enemy layer and items layer and so forth but what I mean is I only need the tile layers data. Sure, binary would be my preference but at the end of the day I figured why is it so important to me. I don't have time to screw around on this stuff.

Anyway, then I started designing my tile map scrolling engine. It was so darn easy because it basically supports something very much like hardware scrolling back on the C64 and Amiga! So it became a simple matter of "hardware" scrolling then doing a coarse scroll of 1 tile as needed. Basically I just have a grid of sprites on the screen. And of course I have a border of sprites around those as well. Meaning the grid extends one tile in size all around the screen.

Today I wrote another method for my tile map engine to do the scrolling a different way without using the "hardware" scrolling. Same setup but just repositioning the sprites as needed. What is nice is of course, I only have this screen size area of sprites (and border) per stage graphics layer being used and it can handle scrolling for unlimited size of maps (well obviously limited by RAM but you know what I mean).

So... progress has been made... you can check out the demo in your web browser at GameJolt by clicking here

Now I guess I should probably actually figure out what in heck I want to make. Like I don't even know if I want to make a scrolling game I just wanted to build a tile map engine because it has been many years since I last made one. ha ha! Basically I am just having fun programming.

So... what to make... what to make? I shall think on this a bit.

 

I think it have it narrowed down to

• some kind of skiing game
• operation wolf style shooter game
• really retro like Kaboom style game
• shmup always a safe fallback

I also decided I'll make my own music. I updated the little tile map engine demo to add a Christmas tune. Haven't made music this way in a long time. Used to be pretty good at it. Basically you hum a sung... track 1. Play that and keep the same tempo while you add in a complementary track maybe a whistle or humming in a different style etc. And another. And so on. This one only has 3 tracks on it. If you do 5 to 6 tracks you can make some pretty cool stuff. Well cool considering it is all just you humming, whistling, whatever with various processing applied and then merging all of the tracks into a final tune. lol

I gotta say I am having fun in game dev again. Been a long time.

 

YES yes YES.

We have made this!






Download and play from here and let me know your feedback:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.thinktrekent.groommysanta&hl=en

This is an Unity 2D Game!

 

Looking good man, how many more days do you reckon you need to finish it off? I'm just working on the mechanics at the minute... It's a looping square (kinda) instead of dynamically generating tiles ATM.

 

I'm making a very wintery game, but it won't be ready this winter.

 

I started one last year, and its still not ready

 

That doesn't matter, it's a Xmas fun thread, post what you have, you still have a couple of days left before the deadline... Is there a deadline @GarBenjamin ?

 

There's no deadline. I just wondered if anyone was working on a Christmas or wintery (snowy, etc) game. I am surprised more people don't knock out a little game. There was a pretty cool 3D Christmas Arkanoid made by someone here last year.