Last week I reviewed a game called Hovertanks. I was impressed by the fully rotating 3d play field (wich is a good accomplishment for a flash game) but mentioned the game was pretty choppy due to low framerates.

Holiday Snow Wars uses a similar 3d engine and has fixed the framerate problems in hovertanks, wich is a step in the right direction, but then takes 10 steps back in the actual gameplay.

The art in this game isn’t too bad, but like hovertanks lacks any detail on the ground. Edmund McMillen lends some last minute art to the game due to the original artist bailing out just 2 days before x-mas. But given the crunch time, you’ll notice the art isn’t what it WOULD have been had the award winning designer had a bit more time.

The sound effects are pretty minimal but mostly fitting, and the music is nice and wintery. Normally I would complain about there being only one music track, but you will get bored of the game before you get annoyed by the music.

As I mentioned earlier, the gameplay is sorely lacking. It seems without a game designer directing the development, Florian Himsl (aka Komix, programmer on Triachnid and Blockhead) has a hard time taking an engine and making it into a real game. The 3d play field and the camera rotation works perfectly, but the movement of the characters is extremely slow. The battle mode had 2 characters (Santa and Jesus) racing to snowball each other’s snowman. Basically it’s like a race… whoever gets to the snowman first and shoots a snowball wins.

And then there is the race mode. If they replaced the Santa and Jesus sprites with 2 snails, it might not be so bad, but somehow the cpu player can actually go a bit faster then you can. I don’t know if this is just buginess or if there are some controls to speed up that aren’t mentioned in the instructions.

The speed isn’t the only failure in this game. When you shoot a snowball, you can’t see it. I’m not even sure that I’m even shooting ANYTHING half the time.

Once again I just can’t believe that this is the same kid that programmed Triachnid. Between this game and Blockhead I am seriously starting to question Komix’s programming ability, and wondering if the parts of his games that do work well may not be borrowed source code from open-source flash demos.

Before any of you indy-game fanboys try starting shit with Komix, I want to say on the record that I don’t see anything wrong with using open source code at all. When I got started, I learned a ton from some of the old flash samples on flashkit. I even made some open-source engines myself back in the day that a ton of people used. I’m just disapointed by these latest games from Komix after all the great things I had heard about him.

Maybe next time….

[ Play Holiday Snow Wars ]

Santa’s Sweat Shop by Orange Fox Games is a great RTS parody for the seasons with easy but challenging game play. Definitely read through the instructions for this one.

While not one of the best RTS out there it’s very much worthy of a play through. Myself, I would’ve liked more actions from the workers, as in when their “attitude” would worsen they’d visible show it, instead of having to cycle through the workers to see how they’re doing. Also, seeing them turning ill/mad/ect would’ve been a nice artsy touch.

Overall good graphics and sound with progressively harder levels makes this a must play if you’re into RTS’s like this. There’s some great games on the site, too, so make sure and check ‘em out.
[ Play Santa’s Sweat Shop ]

Snow Line by Miniclip is a great edition to all the line riding games cropping up now a days.

You play as santa having to retrieve presents through all of Europe. With 12 levels that progressively get harder with more and more obstacles to grind up santa, this’ll keep you going for awhile.

For those who have never played a game like this before, it’s fairly simple. Draw a line and hit the play button. Just remember, you angle up to much and not have enough speed, you’re not gonna make it to the flag.

All in all, this is the most stable line riding type game I’ve seen so far, with great graphics and sound you’d expect to see from miniclip. Just needs a free play mode so I can do loops haha.

[ Play Snow Line ]

Go., drawn/animated by Buzzwerd , coded by TrueDarkeness and sponsored by Armor Games is a purdy side scrolling snowboarding game with great game play and way to many high scores tables to try and get on.

The controls are fairly easy, with the right and left arrows to adjust speed, space to power up to jump and A S D to do tricks in the air. Takes a sec to get the jump timing down but besides that controls are well done.

The levels are well thought out and very much increase in difficulty. The added bonus of jumping off the snowmen is a nice touch too. I would’ve liked to see them exploding but you can’t have everything I guess.

Overall you SHOULD end up trying the harder difficulties, which with the above mentioned high scores makes this very re playable. Music and effects were non annoying and went well with it. STOP READING ME BABBLE AND PLAY!

[ Play Go. ]

Tis the season to be jolly fa la la la laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa……..

At least that was the case before an army of shadey characters showed up at the north pole and stole all the holiday cheer. Now Santa has to take them all out with his trusty water pistol and get X-mas back on track.

Fans of games like the original Mario Bros. and Bubble Bobble will appreciate this game as a kickback to classic arcade gameplay.

The art in the game is very well rendered (as is the case for most MiniClip games) all the way from the characters to the backgrounds. The music is festive without being TOO x-massy, and the sounds, just like the art, are very fitting for the whole classic arcade presentation of this game.

The gameplay isn’t very complicated and you can pick it up pretty quick: Use the arrows to walk, jump and drop through floors. You need to get within range of the baddies, without getting hit yourself, and soak them with water (using SPACE). This freezes them bit by bit until they are fully encased in ice. Once you have an enemy trapped you can kick the ice-ball like a padded man at a women’s self defense class to take out other baddies. Each enemy you take out drops a present, decoration, or holiday treat that you can grab to boost your score.

After a few levels I started thinking the game was bound to get pretty repetitive, but I was pleased to see that wasn’t the case. Every few levels you run into a boss who you have to beat in some special way. If you are like _altr_ and have to take frequent piss breaks because you just finished your second six pack at breakfast, there is a pause feature, which is finally become much more standard in flash games.

So yeah, this game doesn’t have a ton of depth to it, and there’s not a lot to see, but older gamers like myself who grew up playing these type of arcade style games will get some enjoyable play time out of Deep Freeze. And even if you don’t care about that style of play, it’s still an x-mas game. Go play it and get with the holiday spirit and all that rot.

[ Play Deep Freeze ]

EPIC ZEBRA WEB STAR FLINGING ACTION, by the Super Flash Bros, is about a web/star/webstar flinging zebra, in search of stuff, cause what else is a zebra to do on the holidays?

Don’t skip the intro. Not only does it tell you how to play but it’s also very comical, as only they can hook it up.

While very short, the high scores and wanting to see the eggs makes this insanely replayable, pending on your slinging skills. By the way, bout gosh darn time there’s an x-mass zebra. WHAT HAVE WE BEEN WITHOUT YOU =’( !!!

Great X-massy action fun, cause it’s a zebra, doing what we can only dream of doing. Nuff said.

[ Play James The Christmas Zebra ]