The Night Christmas Ended

The Night Christmas Ended is a sincerely, if badly made 2D retro pixel arcade shooter with a Christmas theme. Control a goblin who can only shoot at 45 degree angles on a single screen side view arena as various enemies fall from the sky and bounce from the sides to try kill you. Thankfully your bullets bounce off the walls and ceiling, this helps to counter the limited firing angles you get. It's a very simple, shallow experience.

The only shining light in the gloom of mediocrity in this game is the mediocre amateur voice acting liberally seeded through the game, which, while averagely delivered, is at least kind of funny. But if I wanted funny, I'd watch a Bill Hicks standup or something. Most people don't get their yuks from 2D retro pixel arcade shooters.

From a technical perspective, the game doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard.

A choice was made to use obsolete, decades old retro pixel "art" as a substitute for contemporary PC graphics. It's unclear if this is due to lack of budget or talent, regardless, the overall visual quality of the game is extremely low as a result.

There's no options to change the resolution for the game or customise the graphics settings. There's no way for gamers to ensure this is running at the native resolution of their displays... there's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. There's no way for gamers to try improve the low quality graphics.

PC gamers will be insulted by the presence of console peasant children's toy controller prompts, despite this being on PC. Developers should try to be aware which platform they're developing for.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 3 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 50,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.

The Night Christmas Ended is relatively cheap at $3 USD, but it's not worth it. Given the defects and quality issues with the game, coupled with the unrealistic price, this is impossible to recommend.

In this unforgettable 2D adventure you'll team up with the Giant Goblin to save Christmas.
Shoot all the evil candy because the only good candy, is a dead candy! Even when they are shaped like a bat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irXXshk3xr4

This game was my way of getting into the Christmas spirit and let me tell you, it was awesome. The game kinda reminds me of Buster Bros but with a twisted story and sometimes, weird game mechanics and politically incorrect humor.

I've beaten it on Bronze and Silver modes, just beaten Level 2-2 on Gold mode.

As per the game dev's request in the opening cut-scene to be shown a Let's Play of this game, here ya go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zlKiBvELWVU

I have completed the game on silver. After they did the first patch I have enjoy my time with the Goblin.

Here is my pros and cons:

The pros

-Epic Christmas music!
-When you get a cool power-up that make your enemies explode in so many little pieces around you so that you can not see yourself. Feels awesome.
-That the game varies as much as it does.
-Death battle against a perverse elf. So weird and fun.
-Being able to choose your own ending.

The cons

-There are some small errors in the game, most have no great influence. However, on the third level on the third world, there was an error in which the game continued for 15 seconds after the level was supposed to be over. Worth noting that I was suddenly invisible in those 15 seconds, and could be hit.
-The world where you fly on Rudolf's okay, but not my cup of tea. It is not as fun as the rest of the game.

My conclusion:

The Night Christmas Ended is a nice little Christmas game. I plan to play it a little on gold also. I will play it again next year, just to hear the cool music it is worth playing again. I hope that the developer has corrected some of the errors at that time.