A Visit from St. Nicholas

This game is created in one week for Let's Create Game Jam #2. The title of this game is inspired by a famous poem. You can learn more about the poem in the game :)

Help Santa collect all the stars to complete the poem.

Use WASD/arrow keys or gamepad to move. 

Press P to pause the game and check your progress (or click on the Pause icon on the upper left) . 

Touch controls: Tap and hold anywhere to move the sled.

Development:

Design, code and art by Siepiau.

Game created using Unity game engine. I started off with the idea of creating an endless runner but ended up with a 3D flier with a Christmas theme.

Graphically, no lighting or fog is used, just two custom shaders. One shader, used for the stars and environment, fades into the background color based on camera distance. The other, used for the main characters, has a rim shading effect and vertex shader that bends the mesh (thanks to this helpful post http://blog.onebyonedesign.com/games/unity3d-endless-runner-part-i-curved-worlds...). The PC version has better anti-aliasing and some post-processing effects, but not too overtly different. 

3D modeling and animation using Modo and Houdini. The sleigh and reindeer setup is a 3D scene I built and animated some years ago for sale on Turbo Squid. I re-purposed and optimized it for real-time. The environment is a grid plane pulled by hand into a simple looping terrain. I used Houdini to randomly scatter the low-poly trees on the terrain.

Audio effects edited using Audacity. All music and sound effects are from open source as far as I know.

Because the gameplay is overtly simple, I worked on polishing the play experience to squeeze as much mileage as I can out of the simple concept. I experimented with changing audio pitch and background scrolling speed to make the game feel less monotonous and repetitious. A single perfect playthrough lasts around 6-7 minutes.

This is also the first time I created an Android build.

Overall it has been a great learning experience on my road as a budding indie game developer. Do feel free to comment and critique my game as your input can help me improve as a creator. 

I look forward to creating new and better games soon!