Unity Thanksgiving and Christmas Games FREE CHRISTMAS IMAGES HERE

Please get to work and knock out some small games for Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Here are a couple quick ideas off the top of my head just to get you thinking:

Santa's Rocketing Christmas Drop
Snowy winter scene with houses near bottom of screen. Santa and his new rocket powered sled are under player control in the sky above. You move left and right dropping presents down the chimneys. Miss too many times and you lose. For added challenge the reindeer are ticked off they've been replaced so occasionally throw a snowball up at you. You gotta dodge those.

The Quest For Christmas Light
Alas poor Rudolph's nose is not so bright. He won't be able to guide the sled on Christmas Eve... er... night. Yep tis true. Rudolph's nose is barely glowing. Play as one of the elves in this action platformer. Reach the lair of the evil witch who cast a spell on Rudolph. Steal her spellbpook and return it to Rudolph to reverse the spell before time runs out.

Surely someone needs a break and wants to knock out some holiday games that I can enjoy while drinking eggnog.

Web Player version not that mobile nonsense. I need to be able to relax and play while drinking the eggnog. Not messing around with damn cell phone.

Thanks!

 

Maybe you could set off a Christmas Games Challenge, two weeks to make a christmas themed game?!

And a prize of a bottle of said eggnog to the best game?!

Just re-edit your demands to a request to take part in a game development challenge!

 

Or you could modernize a Christmas game and make an MMORPGFPS where Santa loses it and unexpectedly turns into a barbaric sociopath on a rampage.

Just sayin

 

Ha ha! Where is the holiday cheer in that. Although admittedly it would be kind of fun. Lol And sadly I would not be surprised to find people have more interest in making a game like the one you described or one where the elves are zombies rather than a more traditional themed game. Lol

 

Hey I've got a great idea - but I'm not going to share it - have your own ideas they are probably better than mine anyway.

 

What if Unity had a Christmas game competition with Unity 5 licenses as a prize???

 

Ha ha. I suppose it does come across as "demands" yet I never meant it that way. I usually just post off the top of my head. Lol

That is an awesome idea to have a challenge. I wonder how much money I would need to offer to get responses?

Maybe I could just offer $30 by Paypal or Amazon gift card to the winner. Might be enough motivation for people to consider it at least.

 

I like that even better than me having to pay. Then I can just drink my eggnog and play the games.

 

Come on put your eggnog where your mouth is! Sounds wrong, but you could at least still put up an eggnog prize to entrants old enough to enjoy it! Can you get non alcoholic eggnog for younger entrants?!

 

I think best way for me to do it is offer payment via Paypal or Amazon email gift card. Both should be available nearly everywhere. Then person could get whatever they want including eggnog.

 

After thinking about this a bit more. I figure most everyone here is wrapped up in their own projects. If I get enough time from my projects (or make the time) I'll knock out some SIMPLE holiday games. Then post to share. Shouldn't take long anyway.

 

Count me in, I'd started something last year but hadn't finished it. I plan on working on that as soon as I get my current project done.

 

Esteban.

 

I'm working on that!!

 

Hi,

I'm finished where i can pick up my eggnog.
A little joke.
Have released last year. Kill the Grinch. Is a Christmas Game from Tomajan Games which we update every year with 24 new Levels.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.Tomajan.killthegrinch&hl=de

Check it out. And wait for the big Update on 1.December 2014.

 

Hey @Jami_2, Do you have a web player version of the game?

 

Since it seemed like nobody wanted to make a game I decided to just knock out some simple holiday games myself.

Programming is always easy and I have ideas already in my head. So, as usual, graphics are the issue. Spending my lunch break locating sources for the graphics. At least cut down what I need to draw.

Found some good stuff here: https://openclipart.org and their license even covers unlimited commercial use.

So, if anyone wants to make a game for the holidays for your Unityers (or Unityites or whatever we are) and their families maybe you can use that site to save some time.

 

Yes, but is from very first State of Release. Check it out on Tomajan.com in the Products Tab.

Here is the direct Link
http://tomajan.com/index.php/de/produkte/kill-the-grinch

 

Cool! I will check it out later today!

 

I just spent 90 minutes going through Christmas clipart at OpenArt.org

Grabbed many images that I thought would be useful for a Christmas game. Brought them each into Paint Shop Pro and removed the background. Then made sort of collages (basically sprite sheets) saved with transparent backgrounds.

Anyway, I figured I might as well let you all take advantage of my time and effort.

So, feel free to download and use for your Christmas games. Preferably in web player shared here with Unity community!

I grabbed this because I like the scene overall and the shadow style. So, basically just a design reference:


I grabbed this scene just because it looks cool and I want to try to keep it in mind when I actually get around to starting on a simple Christmas game or two:


From here on are various images that I feel will be useful for a Christmas game:










Okay, there you have it. This is by no means all of the great Christmas images they have available (free even for commercial use). But Lordy, I only have so much free time and this is enough to get me started.

Ah... just noticed I missed one line in my clean-up of the santa in a sled image. Ah well. It happens. Hopefully, some of you will find an image or two useful and feel inspired to make a Christmas game.

 

Forgot I made a Snowballs Chance for Ludum Dare #28 - http://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19148487/LD28/SnowballsChance/SnowballsChance.html

It's a turn based survival game with Gnomes and Zombie Gnomes in a winter garden.

 

Another hour spent on collecting and processing graphics, creating a simple background scene and throwing together a quick image mockup of the game Santa's Rocketing Christmas Drop.

Obviously, the presents will need to magically shrink down a bit for the chimneys. Actually, I think maybe I will make them magically get pulled into the chimneys as they scale down.

That's all the time I have for this today. Now, I am gonna check out the Christmas games in the posts above! =)

 

Cool game. Strangely addicting! I never made it past this level in the screenshot. Tried many times but I always ended up killing the Grinch and a Gingerbread (?) man along with him thus failing the level.

Very interesting choice to tackle for such a limited amount of time. I got my butt kicked but it was fun moving around and throwing snowballs at them. I am guessing a person needs to focus more on building up a snow fort. I sent my two little dudes out on a scouting mission and ended up engaging a horde that kept running out from the right side. Pressing onward I saw a little doorway in the wall. I also noticed there are igloos and other structures scattered around the map.

 

Not sure what you are NOOOOOO-ing about. So YEEESSS! I am glad most of the graphics are ready. Hate that part. Such a waste of time but is needed of course. lol Anyway, next time I can start on the real work of bringing it to life through programming.

 

$1500 worth of egnogg? You're mad! D:

 

Is possible to pass every Level. Can prove it here, keep caution Spoiler.
Stay tuned for the Update on 1 Dec. 2014 for Android and Webplayer Version.

 

Managed to put another 5.5 hours in on the Christmas game Santa's Rocketing Christmas Drop. Including the time spent collecting and processing graphics and making a mock-up screen that means...

I have sunk 8 hours into this thing so far:



9.5 hours ... updated the behind-the-sled thrust FX, implemented the gift dropping and redid the background. Don't expect much in the way of graphics. I am no artist and that is why I am using free clip art for most of the graphics:



14 hours... Yep last night I spent 3 and 1/2 hours implementing collisions for the house roofs and chimneys and the associated interactions. Of course, needed to implement a little magic for the presents entering the chimneys. Then I spent 1 more hour this morning fine-tuning the chimney collision zone, the roof collision interaction and the presents entering chimney process. The game is starting to shape up.



Total time now at 17 hours... Hard to imagine I spent 3 hours bringing the "cardboard cutout clipart" reindeer to life but that is what it took. Of course, I had to draw the snowball too, forgot to do that previously. And then tweaking his movement. And then tweaking his throw rate. And then tweaking his projections of where the player will be based on current velocity. Then tweaking the actual snowballs animation during flight. Yeah... it all adds up. No collisions in yet.



Total time now 21 hours. Was too busy yesterday with the holiday festivities (had a great feast and excellent time hanging out with family btw) but I managed 4 hours on the game today! =) Tonight I implemented the collisions between the snowballs and the Sled and the snowballs and the Presents along with the interactions of course. Also tweaked the sled snowfall and thrust graphics slightly, added the new snow effect for the snowball impact and tweaked things in general a bit here & there across the project. I'll need to adjust some things at some point because it will be quite challenging to deliver all of the presents if the reindeer throws snowballs this often and this accurately:



Total time now 24 hours. Tweaked some of the object graphics and redid the background. Graphics take such a long for me to do and end up mediocre in the end but I try. Updated the collision detection & interaction (aka physics but of course I am not using the built-in physics system) for the snowballs and the sled, snowballs and presents, the presents and the house roof, and the presents and the chimneys. Updated the Santa & Sled impact and recovery states to more clearly communicate what is happening. Basically, just a lot of tweaking this time around. It feels pretty solid now so next session I will be pushing forward. Getting close to being able to wrap this thing up:



Total time now 25 hours. Tweaked some stuff a bit more, worked on the house images (bugged me that the original clip art had the lights on, everyone is supposed to be sleeping) and the background a bit more. No more graphics work on this stuff. Except maybe when the game is done. I am not sure if my updates are making it look better or worse. But I have many options created at this point that I can swap in at the end:



Total time now 27 hours. I wasn't sure how title screens and such were done in Unity. I almost went ahead and did it all one scene. Then I realized hey I bet I can make a separate scene for the other screens. Did some quick searching around and yep I found you sure can. So, that made it easy. Anyway, spent 2 hours reading about scenes, Application.LoadLevel and such (I never realized scenes could -- and are supposed to be -- dragged into the Build Settings oddly in my other Unity projects I never did that and all worked fine probably because I only had one scene), creating a SceneManager and then implementing this title screen. So far, only the Start button actually does anything which is obviously... takes you the to actual game.



Total time now at 30 hours: Yes, I actually spent another 3 hours on the title screen. Of course, that included the About and Credits screens too. Added a decent little parallax snowfall. Those are easy but add a nice touch I think. Anyway, here is the 5-hour title screen. Woo hoo! lol It actually looks much better when everything is in motion. I also got the domain and a new web hosting account for my new GarsGames.com website. Nothing there yet but that will be my future home for games stuff.



Total time now at 36 hours: I invested 1 more hour into the background. This is definitely much closer to how I wanted it to be. I won't spend any more time on it unless I decide to add some more distant trees. I spent 2 hours designing the text images for the status display at the top of the screen and the Level Introduction text.

Then I spent 3 more hours implementing the level data for the number of gifts to deliver (actually broken down per house but that is not implemented yet), the Game Manager to know if the Level Intro is active (fading in the text, displaying it or fading it out), the game is being played, etc. So, now you can clear a level and advance to the next. The Status Manager to handle the display at the top. That is now live tracking presents delivered, how many remain to be delivered and how many have been missed.

Basically, this was a major push forward toward the finish line. There are now two reindeer but the first level is easy with only 6 gifts to deliver. That will help players get some quick success:


Keep clearing levels and ultimately you will reach:



38 hours. Last night I spent two hours on the game. Increased the size of the stats at the top. Also made the Missed counter blink red when a gift misses a chimney and is lost. When the player can only miss 1 more gift the counter stays red. Also created the image for the black smoke pouring out of the sled when it crashes to the ground. And then sits there a few seconds with smoke pouring up from it before looping back to the Title Screen:



40 hours. Tonight I spent another 2 hours on the game. Created the graphics for the You Won game state. Coded up the effects of them sliding on the screen. The GarsGames.com text fading in & out a few times and then the game cycling back to the Title Screen:



You can check out the current W.I.P. here.

Controls are implemented but the gifts do not collide with anything yet.

Santa (you) flies across the screen in his new Rocket-powered sleigh. One of the reindeer looks on from below.


Title Screen Controls:
Move focus up to next button with Up Arrow or W
Move focus down to next button with Down Arrow or Z
Press the currently selected button with X, Space or Enter (or Return as Unity calls it old school style)

Game-Play Controls:
A and D or Left and Right arrow keys move left and right.
Left Shift, Space or Right Shift drops a Christmas present.

No need to worry about vertical movement. The high-tech sleigh automatically handles vertical thrust as needed to keep you in the air.

Perhaps the best thing about this game is now all who play will know, once and for all, just exactly where snow fall comes from!

 

Loving the work! I'm working on a Christmas game myself, I was wondering if you had any extra time to help out? Maybe we could set a team up and get a good idea going!

 

Glad you are enjoying the progress on my Christmas game. It's just a lighthearted project. Very glad to hear you are also working on a Christmas game. I am surprised more people aren't into making some holiday games!

I think it is very cool that someone here actually wants to team up. For the next several weeks though I really don't have much free time. I have a 2 to 3 hours per night and have a platform game (my main project), this Christmas game and am collaborating with another person on another game. Although he is doing most of the implementation work on that one at least so far.

I doubt I'd really work all that well with most other Unity developers to be honest. I don't really do things the Unity way. I find it a lot simpler to just code things up myself like the physics, animations and so forth the way I have been used to for a long time now instead of learning yet another engine / api's way of doing these things. So... where most people probably just drop an object into the scene and let Unity systems handle physics, collisions and so forth I write a lot more code to those things. Just what I am used to and prefer.

 

No problem, I'm looking forward to seeing your progress though!

 

I'm working on an Xmas game as well, it's gonna be like Frogger, but in 3d, but it's gonna be more to it than just getting to the other side...

But you're a reindeer not a frog lol.

 

I wish I would have thought of that idea ^ x_x

So i'm thinking, how about we start up a Big Holiday Game Contest with a nice prize?

 

Which one? Mine?

Yeah I would like the contest idea ...

 

@robbyunitas and @N1warhead let's see some screenshots or even better a web player! Help to encourage some holiday game dev spirit around here!

@N1warhead that is a cool twist on Frogger!

Looking forward to the end of this workday. Tomorrow my holiday break begins! Tonight is collisions and interaction for gift hitting house roof, ground and going in chimney.

 

It's an Android game, but I'll post a quick photo .... I'm trying to keep the classic Frogger feel with graphics quality.
Right now the game is just called Deery, I'm to busy to come up with a proper name LOL. Just tried to make it sound like Frogger LOL.

(But sense it is an Android game) the joy sticks just don't show properly on GameView in Inspector, but they show properly on device LOL.

I'm making this a bit different than Frogger though, yeah you'll have to go to the end of the level, but guess what, on some levels, you'll have to go all the way back to the middle of the map or something to get the last present santa lost... Which is the Pink thing in the image, I'm making it where people have to think to get the objective, not just run jump and get it lol.

 

Hehe, I'm trying. I don't think I've slept very much as of late Game designing is just so fun!

@N1warhead , Yeah I love the idea, and I love that you're changing it up a little bit. Makes it more original and adds a nice twist to it. I can't wait to play really, since it's been like ten years since I've even played frogger haha. If you need any help let me know!

 

I'm keeping it simple with my game.
You have to dodge massive snowballs all the while dropping presents into the chimneys of little deserving children. A missed chimney or being hit by a snowball takes a life.

No pressure

 

Awesome idea and excellent presentation. Mine will look junky in comparison but it will play well I think. I can control that part. Graphics nope. Looking forward to playing it. Hopefully a web player version!

Everyone making all of these games for cell phones I don't get it. Web player makes it easy to share with everyone instantly.

 

I agree. For instance, the new Candy Soda Crush game was a webplayer game first, then once it got enough feedback, they then put it on phones.
More people should do that to gain feedback, popularity and free marketing.

 

Because I'm making this to give to the world LOL. Not just the elites like us LOL.
Besides it should be fairly simple to port over to Web Player lol

 

Awesome! Port to the web player. Some of us (well me anyway) don't play cell phone games. I do play web games though! It just seems easier and simpler.

 

Just a quick update on Santa's Rocketing Christmas Drop.

Total time now at 14 hours... Yep last night I spent 3 and 1/2 hours implementing collisions for the house roofs and chimneys along with associated interactions. Of course, needed to implement a little magic for the presents entering the chimneys. Then I spent 1 more hour this morning fine-tuning the chimney collision zone, the roof collision interaction and the presents entering chimney FX. The game is starting to shape up.



You can check out the current W.I.P. here.

Santa (you) flies across the screen in his new Rocket-powered sleigh. One of the reindeer looks on from below.

A and D or Left and Right arrow keys move left and right.
Left Shift, Space or Right Shift drops a Christmas present.

No need to worry about vertical movement. The high-tech sleigh automatically handles vertical thrust as needed to keep you in the air.

 

I know we've had our discussions about doing games free, but I don't want to do free games LOL.
How does one make money with a Webplayer game?

Because yeah, I definitely think PC Development is WAYYYYYYYYY easier, I can't stand mobile, it's so much more stuff involved, it starts to get aggravating.

 

Awesome, I'm gonna check it out!

 

Sweet, I love it!

 

Someone needs to make a website that can accept micro transactions for web player games.
Like you go there and maybe spend $10 to get "dimes" then play a game a dime at a time. I would say quarters like the arcades but I think everyone is getting spoiled now with the ridiculously low cost mobile games. But a dime per play I think that could attract some players. If only because it is kind of a cool concept I think anyway.

Since that may never happen you can always try http://itch.io/ with the free Name Your Own Price option. Or just set a price to begin with but Name Your Own Price might actually work better. Have to test. Of course, Desura and Steam.
There are probably many more out there that I do not know about.

 

Flappy Santa anyone? No? I'll just hide in the corner and cry then...

 

I want to see flappy santa! ~Make it so~

Christmas twist - you can drop presents in the chimneys as you pass over them for... bonus points? Santa Bucks? Power Ups?

 

Go for it! That could be quite popular especially with the added mechanic of delivering presents along the way.