Welcome to the first review for Christmas Week 2022. This is an interesting little game. It’s a side-scrolling Christmas-themed game, which is not my usual style of game.
However, it’s sometimes good to go outside your comfort zone and experiment with different genres. Christmas Fever is also a low-cost game that’s also targeting kids, so it would be good to see if it can be good for some family-friendly fun.
Gameplay
Christmas Fever is a particularly simple game. The game is a side-scroller where you must capture as many coins as you can to help Santa buy gifts while avoiding all the different obstacles.
You have a variety of different moves you can do, including jumping, sprinting, moving your camera around as well as a few special powers.
There’s not really a whole lot more to it, other than that as you progress through the different levels, they get harder. This adds a level of problem solving to the game as well, and you also get a sense of achievement each time you complete a level.
The game is obviously targeting younger kids. A lot of work has gone into making this game work for that age demographic. The levels aren’t particularly long, so really great for short attention spans. The challenges do get harder as you go along, but they’re definitely not impossible, and with each level being short you get that sense of achievement as you complete it. The problem-solving may appeal to some parents who want more of an educational aspect to their kids’ entertainment. The rules are also fairly straight-forward, there’s no complicated game mechanics for young kids to try and understand.
One really good thing is that they’ve really targeted potato computers with this. I can’t think of many machines that would be in use right now that couldn’t run this. The minimum requirements are really quite low. I don’t really have any equipment around that is that old, so I can’t really test how well it runs on that older hardware, but this is one of those games that seems simple enough that I think just about any PC would run it without too much difficulty. Christmas Fever scores points for being a game that is relatively budget friendly without needing an expensive gaming rig to play. It gives people who have older equipment and not-so-deep pockets options for entry-level gaming.
I don’t see many adults getting into this game, however for parents of younger children, I can see this as a fun little Christmas-themed games to keep the young kids entertained while the parents do the preparations for Christmas day.
Graphics
The graphics here are actually fairly well done. It’s very simple and very cartoony. They really are quite simple, but in this case it’s not a bad thing. Obviously, Christmas Fever is a game targeting younger kids, and the aesthetic matches this perfectly and allows kids to follow the action without too many distractions.
Christmas Fever is not going to win any competitions for super-realism, but that’s not the point. It has a particular aesthetic it’s trying to target, and it does this extremely well without overdoing it. It fits that bill pretty much perfectly.
Verdict
As a game for young kids, this tick a lot of boxes. It’s family friendly, reasonably priced, has a problem-solving aspect to it, and doesn’t require an investment in a nuclear-powered gaming rig to play. On that note, it does well.
It appears this is the only game this developer has released. I do hope they have a few more in the pipeline as I’d like to see what else they are able to come up with. It would be a shame if they don’t produce anything else, as this game is a little seasonal, and I think they deserve a bit of attention
