[deep sigh]
- Hey! - Auughh!
Do you have to do this every year?
Uh, ya know what time o' year it is?
- Know what time o' year it is?! - Lemme guess. It's December.
- Yeah! - Mmm, yes.
- Say it! - No, no, no...
- Fine it's time for Christmas Lazy Game Reviews! - Mmm, Christmas...
Hope you're happy.
[electronic version of "Silent Night" plays]
[fizz, sip]
Aahhh!
[typing]
Quite often with Christmas games,
the goal of making them is money, plain and simple.
As such, it's easy to write them off as cynical cash-ins
and long for something more befitting the spirit of the season.
Prezzie Hunt is one such game,
released by Skyline Software for Christmas of 2005
for Windows PCs completely for free.
The game is a one-man creation by Robert Hindle,
and was originally created for his two young children to play at Christmas.
That was only one level, though,
and what's interesting is that Prezzie Hunt
wasn't actually completed until 2012.
Due to the unexpected popularity and demand for more levels,
Bob Hindle continued making a new level every Christmas
for seven years in a row.
Like other games he'd made,
it uses the final version of the Pie in the Sky Engine,
also known as the 3D Game Creation System Engine.
And as a sucker for anything created with this set of tools,
I had to check it out.
Prezzie Hunt greets you with a "Deck the Halls" MIDI
and a window typical for games using this engine
letting you customize the audio, graphics and control options.
Though it makes no changes to what the engine allows,
so most of these controls do nothing.
Which is a shame, because who doesn't love to shoot stuff,
explode bombs and snipe things in a Christmas game?
[gunshot]
MAN: Not so tough now, are you?
LGR: Oh, yeah. Never mind.
Anyway, begin the game and you're dropped into a world
of perpetual midnight
surrounded by falling snow,
cheery music and brown buildings.
Up ahead is a Christmas tree,
a light, a fairy, penguins,
and a snowman having a small seizure.
No matter, you've got presents to find,
so just ignore any potential medical emergencies and get going.
So, yeah, that's the goal of the game:
finding hidden presents.
Who knows why. It doesn't say anywhere that I could find.
At first, I thought maybe it was some weird English tradition I didn't know about,
like hiding Easter eggs, but instead you hide prezzies.
I don't know, but they're hidden everywhere because
whoever runs this place is some kind of evil overlord.
I mean, seriously, they've blotted out the sun.
There are no people anywhere,
vehicles are broken down and abandoned,
and it's constantly snowing,
so for all we know, this is a nuclear winter
brought about by a horrible apocalypse.
Hmm,, yeah, I'm gonna go with that
and just say you're the last person alive
after World War III.
Your goal is to scrounge around for presents
left over from humanity's final Christmas
in a frantic search for any food or supplies.
Searching for these potentially life-saving gift boxes is easy enough.
Just look in and around every corner
and when you find one, step on it.
To progress to the next area,
you'll have to have enough gifts,
and there are exactly enough in each area,
so you've gotta be thorough.
Mostly, they're just sitting on slightly out-of-reach rooftops
you'll have to find a way up to.
Sometimes they aren't hidden at all
and you'll have to kill a pink fairy in order to get it.
Seriously, you touch them and they fade out of existence.
I can't imagine that's healthy for them.
The fairies may instead drop a key,
or sometimes the key will just be lying on the ground,
which will allow you to open more gates
and find more presents.
Frequently, you have ladders to climb and platforms to jump across,
and you'll even get the occasional maze or underwater section,
but it's really just finding the same old presents
over... and over... and over...
and over...
until they turn blue,
which is exciting for all of 12 seconds
and then the routine sets right back in.
And... that's it.
For the entire game.
Things don't really change at all,
except for the music, some objects, and the layout of the levels themselves.
It's the same repeating textures, the same lighting,
the same snowmen, the same penguins,
the same fairies that I swear I don't WANT to murder,
but I need presents, so I hope they could forgive me.
Eventually, you reach the end,
where Santa is pointing at a hole he wants you to enter,
promising a return home if you do.
Slightly creepy, I had no idea Santa was behind all this,
but I guess that makes sense.
When you think about evil overlords, you think about Santa.
You then wake up in your room as if it was a dream,
and once you crawl back into bed,
you get a simple "game over" and that's that.
If you like monotony, then this is your game,
because that's exactly what you get.
And I have to say, after a few levels, it got more than a bit old to me,
much less after EIGHT?
After trying for 20 minutes to find the last present in one area,
I just decided to end it
by drowning myself in an icy pond.
But maybe I'm thinking about this all wrong.
I mean, I was playing these one after the other in a single sitting,
whereas this was never meant to be anything more than a single level to begin with.
I imagine that if I were a kid,
getting a new one of these year after year
for so long would become a fun yearly tradition,
instead of a slog of content to gorge yourself on.
And Bob Hindle didn't HAVE to make more at all.
The only reason to make these was out of the goodness of his own heart
and perhaps because he enjoyed it.
And that is freakin' awesome, if you ask me,
so how can I hate that?
And if you think about it, Prezzie Hunt embodies the Christmas spirit
more so than 90% of the Christmas games made purely for profit.
In fact, in 2007 a publisher contacted Bob
wanting to, quote, "market the game properly,"
add a bunch more levels and start charging for it.
But he refused,
saying that the game was meant to be free and would always be free,
and he was just going to keep making levels for those that wanted more.
So even though I may not be a fan of the gameplay as a whole,
I am a huge fan of what this guy did with the game for so many years.
I find that pretty intriguing,
and if you are intrigued at all, why not give it a go?
It's still available to download on the Skyline Software website,
as well as any number of download sites left over from a decade ago.
Maybe it's not the most exciting thing to play for hours on end,
but it's honest in what it is,
and I can appreciate that.
[MIDI harp music]
And, hey, did you enjoy this video?
Well, I've got a lot more Christmas stuff already made
and in a playlist on my channel,
as well as several more coming this season.
And they will be on this channel,
so subscribing is an option
if you want to be notified whenever they are released.
New videos every Monday and Friday,
so, yeah, that is that.
You can also follow and interact with me on Twitter and Facebook
for other things throughout the week,
as well as support the show on Patreon
to get some extra stuff,
like being able to see videos earlier than anywhere else
and signed floppy disks and other whatnots.
And also help support the show in general,
which is cool, if you like this.
If not, you know, whatever. That's cool too.
I'm glad you watched.
And as always, thank you for watching,
which is pretty much what I just said.