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Submission to the 2024 Pico-8 Advent Calendar.

Cart #dredds_lasthouse-10 | 2024-12-05 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
9

A cosy Christmas-themed interactive fiction.

Help Santa deliver the last presents of the night before Christmas. Make sure all the children in the house have their wishes fulfilled. Follow Christmas tradition for extra satisfaction.

There are four endings: two story endings, depending on whether you fulfilled the childrens' wishes, with two variations depending on whether you followed the Christmas tradition.

Controls

  • Up/Down: Scroll text, or move the pointer between options
  • 🅾️ button:
    • In non-interactive screens, press 🅾️ to continue. If the text is longer than one screen, you'll have to scroll to the end before being able to continue.
    • In reading mode, press 🅾️ to start exploring.
    • Otherwise press 🅾️ to select an item or action.
  • ❎ button: Abandon current menu and return to previous.

Via pause menu:

  • Restart game

Credits

Game by @dredds.

Music by @Gruber.

Modding

The source code is uncompressed so that the game is easy to mod. You can make your own adventures by changing the game world database (tab 6), action and event rules (tab 7), and the pointer, borders and title image in the sprite sheet. You can make more extensive changes to the user interface by changing the functions in tab 1 and the game mode objects defined in tab 3.

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If you’re stuck on any puzzles, this is the place to ask for hints.
2

Nice game.

I didn't get a great ending. I knew the

puppy wanted the sausage, but I never could figure out how to simply unwrap it to give it to him
. Went all over the house and tried everything I could think of, but I eventually gave up.

It also appears that we're supposed to unbolt the front door. I'd discovered that you could in the game, and picked up on the fact that mother was missing someone, but figured Santa wouldn't just unbolt someone's door and then leave, so maybe I missed some cues that I was supposed to unbolt it.

Also never figured out what to do with the fish or the mince pie. Delivered gifts to the mice and the two kids, which I think I got right, but I'm not sure (see below).

Some suggestions for improvement:

  • It would be nice if pressing up to select words doesn't stop when it hits the top of the visible screen, but continues up further into the text. Having to manually scroll up and then enter selection mode felt kinda cumbersome, especially when the word you wanted was only mentioned at the very top of the text.

  • Alternatively, end each paragraph with a prompt that includes the word "look" that you can select to have it reset the room with the starting description.

  • Alternatively, maybe you're ALWAYS in selection mode and can just go up and down, and the second button resets the page to your current location. I think it would be okay for the selectable words to be visible as you read through the response the first time.

  • Some indication of whether you got the gifts delivered correctly would be nice, either with a magical glimmer or something when you get the right gift delivered, or at the end with an accounting of who got which gift and whether it was correct.

  • Using white, blue, and purple for the selection colors instead of a green and red theme seems like a missed opportunity for a Christmas game (but the colors chosen work fine).

Anyway, great little IF game! Loved the setup and mechanism for playing. Felt very cozy and engaging despite the minor frustrations mentioned above. Great job!
1

Thank you for playing, and for your thoughtful feedback.

I will work on improving the navigation between items in the text. I wasn't sure whether scrolling to previous items would be uncomfortable or not, so decided to keep the text static when the player wanted to interact with things. I think I know how to make the game scroll the text and move the pointer to the correct word that is scrolling into view, so I'll experiment and publish a new version when I have a solution.

I'll hide my answers to your feedback about the story itself because they contain spoilers...

"I didn't get a great ending. ... It also appears that we're supposed to unbolt the front door. I'd discovered that you could in the game, and picked up on the fact that mother was missing someone, but figured Santa wouldn't just unbolt someone's door and then leave, so maybe I missed some cues that I was supposed to unbolt it."

There are two endings, depending on whether you unbolt the door or not.

I'll improve the description of the door to make it clear that the door is locked, and the bolts prevent someone with a key being able to open the door outside.

The game gives clues that someone is approaching the house when you look out the windows.

"I knew the puppy wanted the sausage, but I never could figure out how to simply unwrap it to give it to him. Went all over the house and tried everything I could think of, but I eventually gave up."

You are only meant give the items in your sack as presents. I will add interactions that make it clear you cannot actually give the sausage to the puppy. If you gave the cheese to the mice, then you used the sausage to solve the puzzle about how to find the mice, and there's nothing else you need to do with it.

"Also never figured out what to do with the fish or the mince pie."

If you examine the fish. You'll see that it is a tin of herring, and they are drawn in red on the label. (Maybe this is unfair for non-English speakers. You need to know the English idiom "red herring").

W.r.t. the mince pie ... the family have left out traditional gifts for Santa and his reindeer in the dining room. You have to follow the tradition to get the most successful ending.

"Delivered gifts to the mice and the two kids, which I think I got right, but I'm not sure ...
Some indication of whether you got the gifts delivered correctly would be nice, either with a magical glimmer or something when you get the right gift delivered, or at the end with an accounting of who got which gift and whether it was correct."

You cannot end the game until all gifts are delivered to the right children. So there's no way to "lose" the game (I've followed the modern int-fiction style in which players cannot "die" and have to restart the game). Once the right children have the right gifts, you can fly home in your sleigh, and then you get one of two endings depending on whether you helped the father come home (e.g. unbolt the front door), with extra satisfaction if you completed the Christmas tradition. I'll have a think about how to add a subtle indication that you have put a present in the right place.

I have uploaded version 2, which clarifies some details of the story. Thanks to @nephilim for the feedback.
1

Spoilers since discussing the puzzles. (Also went back and spoiler'd by original message above.)

I think you could also add some kind of indication that the mom would actually want the dad to be able to enter, because it feels kinda sketchy to unlock a door that a woman locked, to let in someone who arrives in the middle of the night. I get what you're going for, a heartwarming family reunification, but the "unbolt the door without the mom knowing" solution just felt weird – I knew I could unbolt the door but just, viscerally, didn't feel that I should.

Maybe all it needs is a mention of some "Santa magic" that lets the player know that SANTA knows that this is the mom's heart's desire or something. Not sure offhand how to achieve that without totally giving away the solution, though.

Regarding the "only presents in the sack are given out" thing, I didn't get that.

In particular, it seems odd that you're supposed to give cheese to mice, but not give gifts to the dog and the cat – do animals get gifts or not? (I mean, I could see a cat being on the "naughty list" but a puppy?!) And given that a puppy is adorably following you around and clearly interested in the sausage, it seems kinda off-brand to then take off with the puppy still wanting something to eat after you gave the mice something to eat. Santa would find little ways to make the dog and cat happy, even if he didn't have something in his sack.

So I guess what I'd suggest is to add a way to give the sausage to the puppy, and change the "red herring" to just a regular tin of sardines you can give to the cat as a treat. I get that it's fun to have a "red herring" (I didn't pick up on that, but yeah, it's a clever little nod to mystery gaming), but I think it's more fun to give out a bunch of Christmas gifts, and that way, everyone in the house gets something, rather than the puppy and the cat being left out. You feel kinda bad that you give gifts even to the mice, but you leave nothing for this cute, adorable puppy who obviously wants something! (The puppy was by far my favorite part of the game, by the way. Loved how it would follow you around and show interest in your bag.)

Lastly, regarding the stuff the family leaves out for Santa, at least where I'm from, I've never heard of leaving out a mince pie and sherry for Santa. I've heard of leaving out milk and cookies, but not the pie and the sherry, but I figured it was an analogue. So I thought I could probably eat/drink them, but in true adventure game fashion, as a player, I didn't know whether I would need to cleverly use them later in the story to do something else, so I avoided eating and drinking them. (I do remember the note about doing the traditional Christmas thing, but that could just apply to, you know, the act of spreading holiday cheer by going down the chimney and leaving presents.) Maybe this could be addressed by simply having a "are you sure you're ready to leave and end the game?" prompt before you take off so you can eat and drink them and be reasonably confident you're not gonna need them later in the story, because the story will end after that.

Or, maybe you kill two birds with one stone, and have Santa think, "My Christmas Spirit is running low. I need to recharge." When you look at the mince pie and the sherry, they seem to twinkle with Christmas Spirit. And when you eat them, you get a "Christmas vision" of the dad getting turned away because he can't open the door in time and the mom opening the door as he's driven away and looking despondent.

Anyway, hope all this doesn't come off as critical, because we're not discussing all the fun and charming parts of the game, like the music (which had my son humming that same tune later that afternoon), the visual presentation that makes "just text" attractive, the cozy and happy feeling of it all, the fresh new PICO-8 gameplay innovation to bring IF to the platform, how accessible and immediately playable it was, etc. I really liked this game – easily my favorite so far in the PICO-8 advent calendar offerings by a wide margin. Just a treat to play. Thanks for making it.
1

Thank you so much for your kind words. I must admit I was a little apprehensive of releasing an IF title on Pico-8, especially one that was an experiment in how to present IF on a platform with only gamepad controls. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I didn't take your feedback as critical at all: it really helped me improve the text and make the story more clear.


Good suggestions with how to hint about the christmas traditions. Mince pie and sherry is definitely a UK tradition.

Played through again and got the good ending. Well done.

Well done!

More responses/hints to your earlier feedback


You only give presents to children. The dog is a puppy but the cat is adult, so doesn’t get a present. Same with the humans: you give presents to the children but not the mother. I’ve added more hints to that effect when you examine the contents of Santa’s sack.

You have to give the correct present to the puppy to complete the game, unless there’s a bug in the game rules. I’ll check.

I have improved the description of the door to let the reader know that it is safe to unbolt it.

I only have 2% compressed space left. I’ll try to squeeze in a couple of improvements. More hints to why you should unbolt the door. And to let you give the puppy’s present directly to the puppy.



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