Watch Over Christmas

Was really surprised that this game was so enjoyable, for being so reasonably priced. I did get stuck a few times but was able to find some subtle hints without reading outright spoilers. I kind of hate blatant spoliers. I still haven't finished. I bought it and held onto it until Christmas week thinking it would be a fast play through. Should have started two weeks before because I'm still chugging along. LOL I like that the game is playable with a mouse. Reminds me of the classic point and click games I started out with playing years ago. And I think the artwork is fantastic for such a reasonably priced game. A lot of thought went into this game. Looking forward to finishing so I can see the ending.

I wish I could forget everything about this game and play it again every christmas!

There's a huge pile of great things in this game. The graphics are wonderful, animations are great, voices are clear and crisp, puzzles are fine, if a little bit on the easy side, interface is truly excellent and there are enough things to keep you hooked on playing. With the help of these things, I can give it a valid recommendation. Then comes the time for few critics. This should be a Christmas story. While it certainly takes place in a Christmas time, and there's some decorations visible, it just doesn't give me the right vibes. First problem is that there's no snow anywhere! Few lonely flakes swinging down from the sky and landing on the plain ground isn't nearly enough. The Story line is fine for the first part, but the second one begins in some random forest with some occult / witch stuff going on that drained any last bit of Christmas feeling down the sink that there was left. And even if you manage to keep your mood in the Christmas channel after these things, the music comes and makes devastatingly sure that every last bit of Christmas mood is gone completely. There's no jingle bells, no tambourines, nothing that would set the mood right. TL,DR: Is it a great point & click game? Yes. Is it a great Christmas story? Well... not necessarily. I loved it for the point & click part, but didn't find the theme and setting appropriate.

The Santa has been captured, and there’s a danger that kids all over the world will be left without presents under their trees. But one young boy, Cisco, holds the key to saving Christmas. His dad once bought a strange box and forgot about it in the attic. It turns out the box contains the Christmas Spirit, which takes possession of your favorite doll to communicate with you and help you on your adventure. As always in point-and-click adventure games, your main tool is the mouse and its buttons. Although you can technically play with a gamepad, it’s not an enjoyable experience because you waste time moving around instead of simply, well, pointing and clicking. Your task is to search for hotspots, interact with them, and use them to solve puzzles. When you move the cursor over a hotspot, you’ll see its name along with the default action, which you trigger with the left mouse button. This action is usually “examine,” but the rest follow logical conventions: you’ll see “open” for doors or windows and “use” for switches or other functional items. Of course, as is standard in modern adventure games, there’s a magical button that reveals all hotspots so you don’t miss anything in the more detailed scenes. However, the game takes inspiration from the golden age of classics by including multiple actions per hotspot. This is indicated by a small plus sign next to the cursor, right beside the hotspot’s name and default action. You can open the list of available actions with the right mouse button. Only relevant actions appear, and not every possible one for every object. You’ll have to experiment with different actions on each hotspot to gather all available information and pick up necessary items. The voice acting is decent, and you can skip dialogue if you’re a fast reader. Conversations often contain several topics to choose from, but once a topic is discussed, it disappears from the list. The only ones that remain are those tied to active puzzles or upcoming solutions. It’s wise to question characters often because new topics sometimes appear as you progress. Fresh topics are highlighted in white, while previously discussed ones are grayed out. Items are stored in the inventory at the bottom of the screen. It’s visible by default, but you can close it by clicking on the backpack icon and reopen it by moving the cursor to the bottom of the screen. Clicking on an item makes it “active,” allowing you to try it on hotspots or combine it with other inventory items. Items don’t disappear when you try incorrect combinations, so you can quickly test them with everything available. There are quite a lot of hotspots in each scene, many of which don’t matter to the main solution, so you may spend quite some time experimenting. If you get stuck and the objectives list doesn’t help, you can talk to your doll for a few hints. For collectible hunters, some screens contain hidden presents. These are not revealed by the in-game hotspot highlight and have no visible labels, so you’ll need to keep a sharp eye and click on anything that might resemble a gift. When opened, each collectible is displayed on a separate “present screen,” showing a reference to a well-known franchise or a classic adventure game. There are 36 presents in total, but due to the game’s linear structure, you only have a limited time window to find them. The good news is that the collectible screen lists them in chronological order, so if you miss one, you can easily identify which chapter it belongs to. The option to save in multiple slots helps a lot, too. There’s also an auto-save feature, but it’s not entirely reliable. At one point, I ran into a bug that prevented progress, though I managed to bypass it by frantically left-clicking (a double-click on an exit teleports you instantly). Unfortunately, that broke the game, forcing me to load a manual save from earlier. Overall, this is a fun adventure that takes quite a few hours and contains a bunch of secret achievements.

A Christmas story with great puzzles and nice artwork. A solid point 'n' click game. You should play this, not only in Christmas!

Such a cute game! It is obvious that a lot of love has been put into by the devs, hopefully more people will try it out, recommended!

This game deserves more players! It's a wonderful Christmas-related P'n'C with great design, music and voice acting. The puzzles are well balanced. There's not too much moon logic going on and yet it's still not too easy. Took me some good 11 hours to finish on stream :)

Muy buena aventura gráfica que podría llegar a engañar a alguien por su estética y temática como "infantil" o "simple" pero sin embargo tiene un diseño de puzzles excelente y no trivial para nada. Por lejos esto es el punto más fuerte. La historia es sencilla pero acompaña. En los puntos flojos solo remarco 2: la voz de Cisco no me convenció del todo, se me hizo un tanto exagerada y poco sutil. El otro punto es la última escena jugable que es algo medio azaroso (o al menos no detecte nada que me indicara cual era la jugada correcta) y puede cortar un poco el flow si tenemos que rejugarla. Más allá de eso el juego es muy recomendado. Puntaje: 8.5/10