Snowmen are stealing the Christmas presents! Santa Claus must protect the gifts! Tell him where to move while he shoot snowballs against the Snowmen!
Pickup blinking Presents to acquire new Snowball-Launchers or activate an effect.
Santa Protects the Christmas Tree is a simple and casual top-down shooter where You control Santa Claus to defeat stealing Snowmen. The game can be played with only one hand, because Santa aims and shoots automatically. You must guide him around the Christmas Tree, pick up the stolen presents to take them back to the Tree or collect Power-Ups. Power-Ups can contain snowball shooting weapons like Shotgun, Machine Gun, Sniper Gun, Flare and Bubble blower or effects like Sprint, Slow-Motion or slowing down the movement of Snowmen.
Sounds simple right? At first, it is. Each level's first 5 minutes is calm and relaxing, but after every minute the Snowmen offensive gets stronger and eventually, they will overrun You and steal all Your presents. The game is perfectly suitable for a quick round of fun when You've got only a few minutes. When You commit Yourself to a longer session, the game can provide reasonable challenge, chance to try different strategies, simple inventory management, test of reflexes and endurance. The difficulty is continuously increasing until the point where the Snowmen penetrate Your defenses.
What can You do against it? Manage Your presence on the level, adapt to the Snowmen's behavior. Stay around the Tree when the Snowmen are rushing in large groups and use close range weapons to hold them off. In calm moments use long range weapons and gather Power-Ups around the level to be able to hold off the next offensive. Manage the ammunition of Your weapons so You can always use the best weapon for every situation. Improvise based on the behavior of Snowmen and the gathered Power-Ups to beat the high-scores.
Power-Ups
The several Power-Ups in the game helps You to survive and protect the gifts longer. Each Weapon and Effect is suitable for a different role. You must decide when to use which Weapon to achieve the highest effectiveness.
- Shotgun: Close range gun dealing a lot of damage to a single Snowman or smaller damage to multiple Snowmen.
- Machine Gun: Close range gun dealing damage rapidly. Ideal for cleaning a lot of Snowmen in short time.
- Sniper Gun: Long range gun destroying a Snowman with a single shot but reloads slowly.
- Flare: Rare and powerful gun with few ammunitions. Fires burning flares which melts nearby Snowmen. Good for holding off large groups even while Santa is not around the Tree.
- Bubble blower: Create a line of Bubbles by running around with it. Bubbles melts Snowmen as they try to pass through. The Tree can be protected with Bubbles for a limited time while Santa is gathering Power-Ups.
- Sprint: Santa sprints for a short amount of time and reloads his guns faster. Good for protecting the Tree against large groups or to run for Power-Ups.
- Slow-Motion: Slows the time for a short duration. Gives you a moment to think and plan, also Santa reloads with its original speed so You can shoot a lot of Snowballs in a short amount of time.
- Slowing Snowmen: Slows down the movement of Snowmen making them an easier target and giving more time to be away from the Tree.
Pistol: Even if You do not have any Power-Ups or special weapons Santa always have it's Snowball-shooting Pistol. It's slow, it's close range and not dealing much damage, but it's always there and has infinite ammunition.
Upgrades
After each level You get Cookies based on Your score, also You can collect randomly appearing Cookies on each level. From these Cookies You can upgrade Santa, his weapons, and a few other aspects. This way Santa will be more powerful, and You will have more ways of dealing with the Snowmen, reaching better high-scores and times on each level. You can upgrade the following aspects:
- Running speed of Santa.
- Santa's Lantern, how fast it can melt Snowmen during the night.
- Frequency of Power-Up Presents.
- Range, Reload and Effectiveness of all Weapons.
- Melting strength of torches and campfires around the levels.
- Helpfulness of animal friends on levels.
Levels
There are 4 levels in the game. Each level has its own characteristics, own feeling, and gameplay aspects.
- Powdering Peninsula
Smaller, simpler level. Good for beginners and for chill sessions, due to it's easy layout and its smoothly increasing difficulty.
- Wonder Village
Beautiful little village with a lot of lights and many places where Snowmen could attack. There are many obstacles for Snowmen to get around to and the lovely dogs of the village help Your job by scaring Snowmen.
- Peaky Point
You're alone on the top of a mountain with the Christmas Tree… and with a helpful bear. This one is a hard place; Snowmen can arrive from everywhere without any obstacles to slow them down. However, in the most intense moments the bear of the mountain can scare of the Snowmen around it.
- Fancy Forest
Thanks to the three bridges across the small river, you can easily hold off large groups of Snowmen in this forest while You gather Power-Ups between the trees. The patrolling Wolf of the forest may help You by scaring of some Snowmen before they reach the Christmas Tree
Achievements and Leaderboards
The game features 20 achievements to fight for and Leaderboards for each level where You can compete with Your friends or with the world. Try to reach the highest scores and longest times on all the four levels.
Visuals
Thanks to the Low-Poly design style, the game can easily present gorgeous and fantasy elements with the huge number of visual effects in the game. The simplified models provide a well recognizable look to each gameplay element and leaves more performance to calculate intense visual effects. During each session real-time dynamic lightning will make each moment unique during gameplay. The lighting conditions, colors and shadows are shifting continuously as You defend the Christmas Tree. The wind and fog are dynamically adapting the time of day and the difficulty of the Snowmen offensive to make the events even more intense.
The graphics settings are greatly scalable. Low performance devices can run the game on the lowest settings, while the highest settings can really shine on a high-end device with a large screen.
Audio
The cheerful sound effects and happy music ensures that not just the looks, but the audio is in place for an immersive experience. The well implemented sound effects of the game will keep You in the loop while playing. Thanks to the unique sounds and their tuned mix You can relate onto Your ears, not just to Your eyes.
Each level has its own adorable music to make each of them more unique and capable of delivering different feelings. These holiday themed tracks will grab Your attention in calm sessions, and they will intensify the feel of challenging situations.
Overall
Santa Protects the Christmas Tree can provide a quick, calm, and relaxing session. However, if You want to get the best scores and longest times on a level You can get into intense fun and have a great challenge to do so. A session on a level can last for 5-10 minutes, but if You're really trying You can survive up to 20-25 minutes or even more where the speed and intensity of the game is like an adrenaline rush. Unlocking all the Upgrades and Achievements can be done in around 6-8 hours. These hours can quickly go by thanks to the cute and cheering presentation of the visuals and audio. The differences between the four levels and the little, but fair randomness in the behavior of the Snowmen ensures that each session will be different from the previous game.
