[i]This is the [b]19th[/b] review of the Steam Redlight series, a series where I purposely seek out negatively or controversially rated games on Steam to see if they're as bad as the Internet says they are. It's accompanied by a video review that can be found [b][url=https://youtu.be/38NB-qTXVyE]here[/url][/b].[/i]
[b]In summary, I cannot recommend Holiday Escape[/b], the game is just a little too primitive to really be enjoyed. With strange collisions, bad hitboxes, no score tracking, and overall strange decisions, the game is hard to enjoy even while being free. Also, I really dislike that when you die, the in-game song restarts, so you just end up listening to the same ten-ish seconds of the song since your runs are going to be short-lived.
[h2]Introduction[/h2]
Holiday Escape is an endless runner that was developed by a small student(?) team where you play as a snowman fleeing from a snowball that intends to [i]assimilate you into the fold[/i]. While running away, you accumulate points by picking up ornaments (worth 100 points) and presents (worth 500 points), but those are the only way to garner points.While desperately begging for mother nature’s forgiveness, you’ll need to dodge obstacles which are almost entirely composed of rocks and trees, but if you encounter them it won’t end your run, the snowball will just start gaining on you and the distance will never be increased.
The controls are incredibly basic, but unlike other endless runners you actually have to push either S or the Down arrow key to begin your escape. You use the left/right arrow keys or A/D if you’re more comfortable with WASD. For some reason, if you want to slow down -- you can with W or the Up arrow key, just know that slowing down just speeds up your imminent doom.
Since there is no end, there is only eternal punishment waiting for this snowman, as you’ll just hit the “Retry” button to restart your run and enjoy the same segment of [i]The Nutcracker’s Russian Dance[/i] song. It also might be worth mentioning that this game is [i]pretty hard[/i] to do well in, the credits sequence is probably twice as long as your average runtime.
I think we’ve covered enough of the foundation, so let’s move into what I did enjoy about Holiday Escape.
[h2]The Good[/h2]
One of the oldest mysteries of my life was solved by this game -- I never knew the song title of the song that plays during gameplay, which is Tchaikovsky's Russian Dance from The Nutcracker. Given… I haven’t really looked that hard, I could’ve looked at the credits of any Christmas comedy and I would have found it, but I only care to listen to it around this time each year and it shows up when the mood strikes without fail.
Anyway, that was a bit of a ramble, but that was it. Let’s move onto the things I liked a [i]little less[/i].
[h2]The Ungood[/h2]
To start off with smaller dislikes before, believe it or not the hitboxes in the endless runner were one of the lowest of what bothered me. The round trees in specific have a deceivingly wide hitbox, which you’ll find yourself clipping without actually being in contact with the obstacle time after time. The rocks are a little special since they seem to have a little ‘pocket’, where in order to get past them you’ll have to stop pressing down to go to the right or left. The latter isn’t necessarily bad, but it just makes the games a little harder.
Next up, progression isn’t really rewarded in any capacity. This isn’t [i]always[/i] bad, but I have to point at the scoring system - points are only gathered when you pick up ornaments or presents. Because of this, it’s possible to have an incredibly long run, but do poorly on scoring since the ornaments and presents are easy to slide in between or evade entirely. It would have been nice to see idle point accumulation for travel time.
Earlier I had mentioned that I enjoyed the song in this game - but while this game has opened my ears, it has begun to close my heart. The song restarts [b]every time you die[/b], and because of the game’s difficulty I found myself listening to the same opening sequence time after time. Some people will complain about hearing only one song in a game, and while that’s definitely a preferential thing -- it’s almost punishing that you have to listen to the same opening segment. When I think about it, I feel like most of my complications are symptoms of a problem that the game is incredibly difficult, which leads me to my next point.
The camera angle in this game is a little questionable to me. In my pretty limited experience with endless runners, obstacles are typically coming [b]towards[/b] both you (the player) and the character. In Holiday Escape, the obstacles are going [b]away[/b] from you (the player) and [b]towards[/b] the character. This means that you don’t really have much foresight into what’s coming on aside from the sudden appearance of it on the screen at relatively high speed, since slowing down allows the snowball to catch up. My most effective method of dodging wasn’t based on reactions, but was instead just a random bob to left and right which went [i]alright[/i]. However, even though this would seem like the worst offense, I actually have one more that I considered to be a greater oversight.
Endless runners are typically known for high-scoring; and score-tracking in the form of leaderboard or just single-slotted “personal bests” allows for a reasonable goal to work towards. High-scoring encourages repeat play, drives competition, and can make single-player games exciting for multiple people. However, this game doesn’t feature any type of score-tracking in any capacity, which means you’ll have to pop open a worksheet, a notepad, or a whiteboard if you’re trying to drive-home some holiday-themed competition. Even then, I’d warn against making Holiday Escape your pick as while it is simple to start up it’s overly difficult to do well and enjoy casually.
[h2]The End[/h2]
...and here we are, the end. Ultimately, this is a free game and everyone has different bars of what makes a free game good, but in this case, I didn’t really enjoy my time in this game. Since it’s free, feel free to try it yourself - the only thing you’ll spend is your time, and I hope you’ll consider it spent well.
[i]If you’re into curator groups, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/38757311/]we have one of those[/url]. [i]Did you like this written review? Watch the video review which does have some different coverage not talked about here:[/i] https://youtu.be/38NB-qTXVyE
