it's alright, I guess. it was never meant to be anything more than a little side game, and expecting anything more than a little side game is kind of ridiculous here.

the puzzles were fine, the music is just fine, the game (outside of the needless CRT filter that can be disabled) looked fine, the whole game is just... fine. it exists, it brings a cute little gift for christmas, and then leaves after showing off all its tricks.

this sadly is still one of the better christmas games out there

let me preface this by saying that I don't like any game in the "survivor" subgenre of roguelites. nearly all of those games have the exact same loop where the first couple of runs you die because of a lack of metaprogress, then after you get even a little bit of progress in you can beat everything in the game by rolling your face on the keyboard for five minutes then leaving it idle for the rest of the run. so why do I like this one so much?

simple, because this actually bothered to add in gameplay instead of being a digital kaleidoscope. while in the first couple of runs of understanding and with the "easier" characters you could maybe beat the game with less effort, most characters on the highest difficulty require enough planning that makes it very difficult to idle without luck and a good build. it also helps that instead of sitting around for 15-30 minutes rolling your face on the keyboard, the game goes for bite sized waves that last about a minute at most, then sends you to the shop to purchase weapons and items.

outside of that, the game does a very good job at telling you at what is okay to touch and what isn't with its simple yet charming flash game art style. purple blobs and red circles are bad, while green is good, for example. the only sore spot aesthetically is that i find the soundtrack forgettable. it's not bad, though.

it just sucks that this is the exception to the rule rather than the standard for survivorlikes