This is a really beautiful game -- the graphics and music are quite wonderful and I say that as somebody who normally mutes the music within thirty seconds of starting a game. I have just one small criticism, which is that it gets a little tedious having to walk into every wall and past every bush just in case there's a hidden cave or mushroom. I've not got very far yet but I imagine that this will be very frustrating at the point when I have, say, 23 journal fragments and 90 mushrooms since the remaining ones could be literally anywhere. Anyway, I'll quit complaining because my reaction to the game is an honest, "Wow!" and that doesn't happen very often.
Hang on a second... In the intro cut scene, the guy scoops up his cat with his sword. As I understand it, this is not the recommended way to pick up a cat.
There seems to be a massive difficulty jump at level five. I found the earlier ones pretty easy but I've tried L5 six or seven times, now, and only once got the boss below half hitpoints. Please tell me I'm not supposed to just grind and grind and grind away at levels 1-4 to build up enough hitpoints to defeat him?
It turns out it's the sort of arbitrary gameplay that turns me right off. Level 8: twice now, the wheel has failed to crush one of the zombies. So it's just down to luck whether you finish some of the levels. Pfft.
Buh? Level 4: if you use the grenade to make the left barrel explode, all the zombies get blown sky-high but one of them lands still alive. Either that's a bug or it's the sort of completely arbitrary gameplay that turns me right off. Also, your "bum" should be "boom".
"Protect [the Liberation Ship] with your life and it will reward the favour." Er, say what? If I die defending the Liberation Ship, it won't be able to return any favours to me.
All the people who want music: by the very fact that you're playing this game, you're connected to the internet. The internet is full of music. Wouldn't you rather listen to the music you choose instead of the music the game designer chooses? I know I would! Thank you Conceptis for *not* including music so I don't have to wait for it to download and then press the mute button!
Knowing that the solution is unique is actually a big help, though it's hard to explain how, without drawing pictures. Executive summary: you should always draw paths that leave the least possible amount of white space between that path and the edge of the puzzle or the stuff you've already drawn, as appropriate. Why? Here's an example. Call the first two squares on the first row A and B and the first two on the second row C and D. Suppose, at the start of the puzzle, B and C are black 3's, A and D are blank and there aren't any other black 3's nearby to confuse things. At first sight, there are two possible paths: B-A-C or B-D-C. But, if the real solution were B-D-C then B-A-C would still be possible (no other path can reach the corner) so the solution wouldn't be unique. But the solution *is* unique, it must be B-A-C and, further, square D must be a part of some other path. I've tried to explain that as well as I can: I hope it makes sense to you as it's a really useful technique!
Nicely done game but the scoring makes no sense. You seem to get 2000 per level plus time bonus, regardless of how many wrong guesses you make. The score should be a better reflection of how wel you did.
Meh. The bullets travel slower than the things they're supposed to be shooting, which makes aiming impossible. The screen gets so crowded you can't see where you are. Poor collision detection means you pass right by a child without rescuing it. Gameplay is repetitive, going through the same levels again and again until you have enough upgrades to beat them. As always with Nerdook, the graphics are excellent and the music is good. But, for me, the part of Christmas that best sums up this game is: turkey.
And how on earth was I supposed to work out what the bridge command does, without watching the walkthrough for Level 13? Almost everything you might think of fails: it turns out that bridge builds a bridge across a one-square gap to terrain of the same height. And in Level 13, there's no way that you can do that without building some stuff yourself and no way you'd think to build that stuff if you didn't know how the bridge command works. Poor level design, there.
I found this got tedious very quickly. The Dibbles come out of the hutch just slightly too quickly (or things are built slightly too slowly) so it's only just possible to build two things sequentially on the same spot and you waste a dibble if you click a fraction too late -- you should just be able to stack commands. And you start to discover that there are all sorts of arbitrary rules like you can't fall one square onto a spiky plant that you're trying to cover; you can only cover a plant that you walk to. Why?
Poor user interface. Because the direction arrow only appears when the mouse is close to the ball, the slightest movement of the mouse necessarily produces a big change in angle.
This is a nice little game but something's wrong with the physics. My helicopter keeps ending up rocking backwards and forwards like a pendulum but it's not possible for a helicopter to do that: if it rocks forwards, it will fly forwards so there's no force that will make it rock back again.
The elevator thing is annoying. I have elevator capacity for 30 people (three "capacious" elevators) and they were complaining even when I had under a hundred rooms. A third of my guests at a time can be in the elevator and they're still complaining abount undercapacity? What are they doing in there?
 "William and Sly 2"){kind=icon}
 "Adventure Story"){kind=icon}
 "ZomBlast"){kind=icon}
 "Creeper World 2: Academy"){kind=icon}
 "Color Link-a-Pix Light Vol 1"){kind=icon}
 "I Love Traffic"){kind=icon}
 "Santa in Trouble"){kind=icon}
 "Ultimate Santa Battle"){kind=icon}
 "Dibbles 2: Winter Woes"){kind=icon}
 "Bucketball"){kind=icon}
 "Hanna in a Choppa"){kind=icon}
 "Santa Rockstar 4"){kind=icon}
 "Theme Hotel"){kind=icon}
phisics is always a bit random