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[Johan Peitz]

I've been working to and fro on a christmas game I wrote last year, Holiday hills. As it is now, it is nearing completion and I thought I'd try to get some feedback on it before it's too late.

First a screenshot.


The goal of the game is to ride down a hill trying to pickup presents and deliver them to the houses also available on the hill, while not crashing into trees and stones. The more presents you carry, the faster it goes, but you also score more points.

Download zip (900kb).

I'd be very grateful for any kind of feedback. Thank you in advance!

[Alex May]

I don't like dying! It's awesome, and reminds me of skifree which nets it extra points, but I die too easily and that is kinda frustrating. Also I didn't see any abominable snowmen...

I'm tempted to recommend the skifree game format where you play until you get eaten and crashing just makes you slow down / lose presents. But... then it would more or less be skifree. I dunno. I just suck at video games I guess  :D

[Prospero]

Very fun game, well executed Didn't stumble across any bugs at all. I'm absolutely rubbish at playing it though...

Some moving obstacles (Yetis? Living snowmen?) as you get further down the hill, to liven things up, might be a good addition.

[Akhel]

Very fun!
Some secrets or extras would be nice.

[Blaster]

Very nice It felt pretty much complete to me!

Perhaps some variation in the obstacles would be nice, but then again, on second thoughts it would probably be best just to keep it nice and simple. Once you're moving so fast, my brain probably couldn't take any more to look out for than 'TREEROCKROCKTREEOMG'.

One thing: I would like it to remember my name for the highscores. It's a little thing, but yeah, it seemed like I was having to type in my name too often.

Maybe even a profiles page that records your progress? *shrug*

Some secrets or extras would be nice.

Hmm, yeah, even maybe some unlockable features? (different modes of gameplay? races? or maybe different looking sleds/players etc..)


Really liked the range of highscore tables

[Johan Peitz]

Thanks! Glad to hear thet you like the overall experience. As for secrets, there are a bunch including elephants but they all appear rather late in the game (ie you have to be better... ).

I'm kind of aiming for a rather free experience where you can do more or less what you want within the same game mode. Go for jumps, go for presensts, just cruise etc etc.

I'll post an update when there is one.

[Abadox]

I thought this was a pretty fun little game. You got the steering just right I think. The only thing that really bothered me was the elf's giggle when he picks up the presents. Seriously, it made me cringe. The menus and stuff looked good, the pixel art was good in general. The sprite rotation looked a bit weak though, you know, if I were being critical, or whatever. Nice game.

[Rostiger]

Aw, too bad the file has already expired. I just oversaw the thread and now I can't test it anymore. 

[Johan Peitz]

A new beta should be out this weekend. With several fixes and tweaks.
Watch this space! :D

[Rostiger]

So yeah, what about it now? 

[Johan Peitz]

Oops! Sorry about that!
New beta available here:
http://www.freelunchdesign.com/files/holidayhills_b3.zip

Should work for the rest of april IIRC.

[Rostiger]

Yeah, this is great. I really like the handling of the sled. Also it's really not that easy (or maybe I just suck at it) and I had the ambition to get better at it, which speaks for the addiction factor.

Also I really like the different categories that you can score in and all the stats. I tink that makes the game really quite interesting because you can always compete agains yourself in different categories.

However I find the controls partially a bit annoying. Especially when dying and havog to differetia if a highscore was beaten or not. It would really be nice if the name was remembered and the player basically hits a series of space or enter to be able to play another round as soon as possible. It's just really important to me that casual games like this are really quick to navigate through too.

Other than that I can't really add anything. Looks pretty much polished and complete to me. Really nice job on this - on the other hand, I wouldn't expect anything less from you.

[Johan Peitz]

Thank you! Glad to hear that you like it.
As for the name thing, it can be turned on in the options to make the game remember the last typed name.

There's a few glitches still needing to be ironed out, especially concerning the pause function which some ppl abuse to longer time to think resulting in unfair higher scores. My idea to solve it is to start hiding the game screen the more you pause. Hopefully this will not disturb those who just pause once or twice, but abusers will suffer.

[kronholm]

Very nice! I liked it a lot. Love your pixelgraphics. All in all it's very smooth and nice to play, somehow reminds me of Ski or Die :p

[Johan Peitz]

Thank you again! I like getting good feedback. 

The game is mostly inspired from Ski Free and started out pretty similar. But in order to make something different I added the presents and the general score stuff and the game took a direction on it's own from there.

Just waiting for the music and sound fx, which should have been done in february, then it'll be done.

So what do you think the chances are for releaseing an xmas game in the summer?  :D

[kronholm]

Haha, well some people (like me) like to play snowy games when it's hot But personally I need a little more depth in my games, no offense! Have you thought about adding some online highscores and such to give it a bit of a competitive edge? I know that's one of the ways to wheel me in

[Rostiger]

Well, I guess the idea of an online high score always sounds nice, but technically it brings quite a lot of troubles, up front that people tend to try to cheat much harder to be 1st place.

But yeah, I agree: for a PC game it really does have a little to little depth. But I guess Johan is currently drifting strongly into the cellular phone games lane and for that type of platform it would be ideal.

Concerning the season issue: I don't realy think that the season makes a difference if it "succeeds" or not, but of course it would fit better I guess. 

[Johan Peitz]

Yeah, cheating is a huuuuuge problem for a highscore beater. Also, people don't even bother to cheat at the game, they go fix the variables in memory right away before submitting. 

Parts of this is solved in Icy Tower with the replays, but it's still for from perfect.

As for where I'm heading... I wish I knew.  Mobile development is a horror for a small team with no porting possibilities but if I can just keep licensing stuff like Icy Tower, that'd be nice.

Probably going to try making some casual games (PC) and sell them later this year, we'll see. I'm still in planning mode.