Stop Santa - Tower Defense

This is a short Halloween/Christmas tower defense game that is inexpensive. The achievements for this game are very buggy and require some basic technical skills to fix. It is an okay tower defense game that was acceptable for the price paid.

Likes:

- Inexpensive tower defense game.
- Good tower defense game for Halloween/Christmas.

Dislikes:

- Broken and buggy achievements.

3/5

Missing basic Quality of LIfe features most TD games have. No radius shown for towers, no speed settings. The towers appear to have some elemental effects on the more powerful enemies but I can't be sure because the game explains NOTHING.

The gameplay is fairly enjoyable, even in the harder levels and if I could just figure out what things did, I might have stuck with it to finish it. I gave it an extra star because it is only a dollar.

The game is okay, but it's not challenging at all. It has a lot of potential and is decent to play, but extremely short.

I finished it the first time I played it, which was in .6 hrs. I earned all achievements, but one and I'm not interested in getting it.

I'll probably never play it again. I would only recommend it if you're purchasing for your child, who is age 6 or so.

Solid game, 9/10. Very basic but simple to learn and grasp. I love how the information of the towers attack damage and attack speed is listed. You can very quickly see that upgrading is tremendous value. I fault a lot of games for not being clear with what things do.

The game could be a little longer, I felt like I wanted more game, but for the $1 price tag - hard to really complain.

Also a great add for any achievement hunters out there.

Less than an euro for two hours of game.
It's fun, it's well balanced, i don't ask for more

Simple but mediocre tower defense game

Cheap tower defense with a Christmas theme, Stop Santa is "just fine". Here, I'll try to provide some feedback to the solo developer.

With 9 levels and enemies only varying in levels of tankyness (and maybe armor or dodging; not sure if those are a thing in this game), it's very simplistic.

There's 3 different towers, with varying levels of attack speed and damage. All target single mobs. Enemies have visible health-bars and usually take damage on hit but for some reason not always - can the towers miss or some enemies dodge? It's unclear.

There's no tutorial, but with only 3 towers and obvious spots to click it was easy to experiment on my own. The towers can only be built at certain spots.

Towers can be upgraded twice by clicking them and the appropriate icon (i.e. the usual way for the genre, is good) but when you click the tower, the sell button is immediately under the cursor. In the couple of the first levels, I accidentally sold my towers instead of upgrading them because of this. It would be prudent to have it at a different spot.

The enemies move very slowly. Particularly it feels so in the first levels, where there's not so many of them. A speed-up button (e.g. 2x, or even 3x) would have been a welcome addition.

Finally, in the last level, some of the lanes were initially left outside the screen. As a design choice, I thought it was rather odd. Only in my second playthrough of the level, did I realize you can scroll the screen. Nevertheless, this seems like a bad decision to have: Either have scrolling as a core part of the levels, or don't have it at all. Though, it might be useful for different resolution windows/monitors.

Options

As usual for a Unity game, you can choose windowed or fullscreen and resolution options from the launcher.

Sounds and music can be muted separately within the game. No sliders though.

If it's not obvious, game is entirely controlled with mouse. Not that I'd expect controller support for such a game.

Conclusions

Playing through the game was about 30 minutes for me, total about 50 minutes after Steam achievements.

Achievements are only based on killed enemies, gathered gold (from said enemies), and building a set number of towers. There's not enough levels for the last one to unlock organically through playing, sadly. It would be nice to have progress achievements, like the very least one for completing the game.

The price is alright though. My recommendation is negative because, while it is not a bad game, there are many better and more interesting tower defenses in the same price category. However, an achievement hunter would get easy cheevos from this.

~Twistorian Curator~

There's 9 levels, all of which are easy and can be Snowman towered to 5-stars easily aside from the last level. The last level is a bit harder in killing the one boss in the game, Santa. I couldn't beat it without using the two other tower types [grinding out the last achievement is how I've noticed]. There are only 3 tower types and what they do is hard to really tell. You can see their damage and rate of fire, but that's all you know. They don't seem to have additional effects like slowing or anything.

You'll beat the game before even putting down 50 towers (at least I did) and there's a pointless achievement for placing 250 towers. Fun... each level is really short as well, so you can generally beat it with 3 towers upgraded.

The sound effects are really annoying, the game is painfully slow without a speed up ability like most tower defense games have. And some levels the next set of enemies don't really come quickly there's an awkwardly long pause making you think the game froze. For some reason some of the levels have maps you can scroll up and down on. It's just such an odd design choice given that you don't really need the extra space they could've just fit it to the screen properly instead.

The game doesn't show the range of each tower. And the towers aren't smart in their targeting priorities. It's not a huge deal as it's an easy and short game, but still. The menu for upgrading a tower can cover up the HUD of your money which is annoying at times.

There's better tower defense games out there. It's not completely awful, it's just nothing special and unless you're really desperate for a new/cheap TD game to play there's no reason to play this. Short of wanting a loosely Christmas themed one. Given the enemies are zombies, it's not even really good for the holiday cheer either.

ONLY FOR 5 YEAR OLDS! Way to easy, beat the game in under 30 minutes, NO speed up, very few levels, not enough towers to choose from, no endless mode, NO REPLAY VALUE, DO NOT BUY!!!

Fun little tower defense game and easy achievements except for the last (best level to use is the one right before the boss (Santa) level). Christmas music is a welcome change from some of the other games I play. My kind of TD!

Cute little tower defense game! The Christmas theme is fun. For $1 this game is a good time killer to just relax.

This is a cheap under $5 game that is a generic game without any tutorials . It has zombies for the enemies and that is unrelated to Christmas and that is more like halloween. The levels are hard and it is even more hard to get all the stars. I played even the first three levels and they were still hard even though I am 15 yrs I still found it hard . If you are under 10 years and reading this, don't buy thiis. I repeat DON'T BUY THIS!!! I rate this game as 1/10. Tell the creators they need to put their game up when making other games because I don't think this game can be improved. (Sorry for the shouting).

A very simple yet cute Christmas themed tower defense game. Great for beginners in this genre and easy enough for children to enjoy. No flaws in gameplay that I can see and even though it's short for .99 cents it's worth it at that price. You'll need to do more than one play thru to get all the achievements it took 1.4 hours total to unlock them all for me.

I know the game was cheap but....c'mon....very easy and quick to beat,i've seen more levels in demo's than this piece of crap,wish i did'nt buy it

Wow, how completely disappointing was this game? Extremely! Very few levels, and no upgrades, no option to set the level of challenge even. I will avoid games from this maker.

Game is poor and short. Three towers with no difference. No splashing, no slowing, nothing. And you have no idea, how far can they shoot. I spent 30 minutes to made it through in one session.
But art is very nice. Gameplay is easy, relaxing and funny (and you don't get bored, because it's short). What else do you need for Christmas mood?

Cute, inexpensive game, but know that it is very short. 51 minutes of playtime for me, and I replayed two levels to collect all possible "stars". No regrets for $0.99, but I still wish there was more.

Really good little game, thanks to French Stream Zerator, who make discover this game at his community :)
pew pew pew

FF Game for the FF holidays! Good graphics, music and sound effects! It’s a simple inexpensive Christmas game with surprisingly deeper mechanics such as; where to place the attack towers (3 Types), when to upgrade and what order of towers to upgrade in to get that flawless score. This is perfect for the casual gamer but not for expert fans of the genre, unless you’re really really into Christmas stuff and want to be seen playing Christmas games during the holiday. This is a PG game so it’s kid friendly with 9 levels, no gore, and simple controls you can play with just 1 hand! Also for those accolade seekers this game has achievements which are reasonable in difficulty and fun. For less than a Buck! ($0.99) you can’t go wrong with this Christmas-themed games don’t’ delay pull the trigger Noob and Stop Santa NOW! BLAHahahahahahahahahahaha!

I've long been a fan of putting an end to the mythos of Santa. At last, there's a game that aligns with my unpopular narrative. The game is set in a dystopian future, that shines a light on what will likely happen if we continue down this dangerous path of indulging in fake news like Santa. God bless you, Taco Truck Games, for being a beacon of hope in this dim world. Beacon sure sounds a lot like bacon. Great, now I'm thinking about bacon. And tacos. But...not bacon tacos.

Cute little tower defense game. Short. I beat it within 2 hours. Decent graphics, music could have been better. Good game for the holidays. 9/10.

VERY short, cute TD game!!

Cute holiday themed beginner TD game, definitely NOT for expert fans of the genre, unless you want a festive, easy version! Great for kids since there are only 9 levels, no gore, and it's simple. Only 3 tower choices, and they are upgradable. You will need to play through the game several times to get all the achievements, as my first play through I got 5 stars on all 9 levels and I have 2 achievements yet to get. I might also mention that some levels it appears that the tower locations are out of your screen, but you can hold down the left mouse button and move the screen to see all the locations for upgrading, etc. Probably too expensive for most unless on sale, but if you have kids or like cute, short, easy, Christmas-themed games, this is for you!!