CHRIS:
I should get this bit straight out of the way first. This game is unplayably slow unless you change the colour settings in the source from 16 million - and then gameplay improves dramatically. And now we can begin. Santa Satnas is a role-playing game of sorts, with turn based battles and extremely so-horrible-it's-quite-funny voice acting. In fact, the dialogue between the characters is in itself amusingly camp - with a stiff, snobbish British accent. Graphically, this RPG is not bad at all. The style is quite unique - however, in the overworld it can be hard to spot the characters, all of whom you interact with by pressing the ENTER button. The battles are very reminiscent of Final Fantasy but they're simplified. For example, MP (Magic) slowly recharges throughout battle, but otherwise if you've ever played FF then you'll feel right at home here. It must be said though that your first battle is a horrible, horrible chore because the initial weapons your characters have are so weak. However, when you defeat enemies you gain money - as well as experience points. The money buys you weapons, armour, spells and potions while the EXP simply levels your characters up - with the additional bonus of giving you three attribute points to spend on enhancing your abilities. If you prefer Santa to use magic, then you'd spend these three points on black or white magic rather than physical abilities. The entire system is actually pretty complex and very well programmed. It must be said then, that despite the slow start, I've fallen in love with Santa Satna.

FLAVA:
This game also made a nice change and it was a sort of adventure game featuring Santa in which you also have battles with creatures and the like. The graphics suited the game well, and the backdrops and backgrounds went well together for the type of game it is. My only gripe about it is probably the gameplay. While the gameplay is not particularly bad, I just didn't find it fun. And I'm normally somebody who likes these types of games. Other little things let it down for me also. In these kinds of games, I think the first battle should be the easiest and the difficulty should increase as the game goes on. However I actually found the first battle quite frustrating, especially as I had two characters at my disposal and the enemy was a little thing. The reason I found it frustrating was mainly because I couldn't actually see how I was progressing in the battle - I had no idea whether my enemy was low on health, and sometimes he would come out with an attack which wiped almost half the health of one of my characters. Despite my negativity, the game was a good one - it just could have been so much better if the little things were improved upon. The voice acting was a good addition (although I couldn't understand it at some points, subtitles would have been nice). The effort has certainly gone into this game, but it's probably been effected somewhat by the deadline of the competition.

ASSAULT ANDY:
This game is waaaaaayyy too SLOW. Everything about this game moves too slowly. It took about a minute to walk from santa's house down into the town to meet the 2nd elf. Once you start battle, the charge moves up really slow. Why? For what purpose? The graphics were alright but the snow/grass background tiles are really hard on the eyes in the world map. The effects on the water reflection was quite cool, I admire that. Audio was pretty good with some recorded sound effects. They added to the storyline and gameplay. The fighting engine was pretty neat looking, the parallax scrolling looked good and so did the whole screen. The battles were very slow though, it took a while for those player timers to reach full capacity.