Christmas Stories: The Gift of the Magi Collector’s Edition
Elephant Games proudly presents the newest addition to the Christmas Stories Series!
Everybody knows that Santa gives presents to nice children, but who visits the naughty ones? After your sister does something bad, Berta the evil Christmas spirit and her mean elves take her away. The only way to save her is by performing good deeds and helping make the holiday season more cheerful for others. With the help of Jack Frost, can you save the holidays before it’s too late?
This is a special Collector’s Edition release full of exclusive extras you won’t find in the standard version. The Collector’s Edition includes:
• Perform three good deeds to save Christmas for three families!
• While the mice are away, the cats play at the Cat Ball in the bonus chapter!
• Replay mini-games, HOPs, and check out the collectibles!
• Never get stuck with the included strategy guide.
This is a Hidden Object Puzzle Adventure game, meaning a specific genre of story-driven, point & click adventures. Throughout the game, players are tasked to find a list of objects hidden within a particular scene, and to occasionally complete various mini-games/puzzles.
Game Discussion
Steam User 0
The Good
A solid find em Christmas game with a decent and heartwarming story. Like many other games by this publisher, based off an old Christmas story. Solid guides in game for those that struggle, although for the life of me can't find the last gnome.
The Bad
A couple flaws are there are no Steam achievements... but there are in game achievements. Not a big deal, but unless you're OCD like me (CURSE AND DAMN YOU FINAL GNOOOOME!) lessens the value of playing through the game in its entirety, again not a big deal just less drive.
2nd and much bigger flaw, is there is no cloud save, in tandem with the lack of achievements it then has no motive to go out of your way to play the game outside of the story. If the story then isn't someone's cup of tea, well it has the makings of being a bad game. Then it comes down to personal preference, I was fine with it, but it is a pretty basic game, so I don't see it being for everyone.
Both those going hand in hand, why would I wish to complete a game, that the achievements don't get factored into my steam profile, and due to no cloud save, something happens to your device, it was all for not. There is no value in the extra stuff, so it comes down to does the story pull its weight enough to be good.
Also while there is a guide for everything... it'd be nice if there was at least a roadmap of the collectibles you've already gotten. the aforementioned gnome, along with puzzle pieces, you scour the entire game, the 1st roughly 1/2 of the game you can hit all the points and backtrack with ease. But then there are 2 parts in the story where you can't backtrack, so if you missed a gnome or puzzle and don't know where it is, you need to replay the game from the beginning. Either a roadmap showing where the gnomes/puzzles you've already gotten, bare minimum could help, I wouldn't want a guide might be too easy (but at same time, lack of achievements... why not? why provide guide for all the other puzzles but not this?), or a new game + or something allowing you to free roam between each segment so getting collectibles is easier.
The Ugly
There's also a difficulty setting, and for the same prior reasons... what is the point? Anyone can play on easy, I played on normal, got stuck a few times... but then why should I do hard mode with both a guide present in game, and no motive to do so? For this and the above reasons if you also don't like the story, it lacks replay value. I liked the story, fun lil Christmas romp, but... at same time it is a bit generic.
There's also a weird theme with cats and mice, no idea why. You start off seeing an average white cat that wants to tell you something ok... then magically there's anthropomorphic cats... then fairy cats and witch cats and ok what? I like cats, it's just... weird lol, about 1/2 way through, so you're wondering is our protagonist loosing his mind or what the heck is going on? Not bad, there is magic involved, just... weird.
So I'd say a 5 out of 10, with it swaying to a 4 (bad) or 6 (good) based on dealer's choice. It's good in my opinion, so it gets a thumbs up, just... nothing to really right home about. It'd go a long way if at the very least it had cloud saving. Not everyone's cup of tea, but it was for me... Now I'm off to find the final Gnome.