Santa's Big Dilemma - Story-driven Christmas game
I did a Christmas themed and story-driven game/quiz for a Content Creation in Web-course's final assignment (Sisällön tuotanto verkossa). As soon as I heard that we're going to create our own game, I started to think about it. What would be quite easy and simple to do? At first I thought to do something for Christmas, my first idea was to do a Christmas calendar. I even drew it to my notebook. But in the end it would been too much work for what I had imagined. And it was difficult because I would have to do it with Visual Studio or that's what I thought. I might do it next year. This final assignment, although I'm not so keen on games, was fun and interesting to do. I liked that we didn't have too much requirements and we had free-hands to do anything and with any platform/language.
I still wanted to do something festive and Christmas related, so I began to plan a Christmas quiz, that would be understood in any country the user might be. I wanted to do the background image myself, but then decided to do just the final result pages background myself. For the "success" page I drew a Santa Claus in Gimp and added frame for it in Photoshop, also for the "fail" page I searched for a funny picture of Santa and added frames for it in Photoshop. (More about the last pages later on the text.)
Hardest thing about this was the content, what I want to add to it, what kind of questions would be great. The base of the story of a forgetful Santa actually came from a discussion with my fiance. So, the game consist of a number of questions where the player chooses the correct answer(s). Two of the questions have 2 outcomes, depending on what the player chooses. Otherwise the questions have correct and wrong answers (popups). This game is coded with HTML5, CSS, Bootstrap and JavaScript, all these are very familiar to me, as I have done lots of projects with these methods.
The background image, which appears in almost every page, is from CC search (flickr). It's picture from Riisitunturi, image's name is Snowy winter landscape panorama - Riisitunturi and is by Tero Laakso. I wanted to add a picture that would be from Lapland, and would have a snowy view. This picture is perfect for it and it's really magnificent.
This screenshot is from a third question, where the player needs to choose the correct verses for the classic Christmas song "Let It Snow by Frank Sinatra", I chose this song because it's well known and not too easy for Finns. For validation this page has two popups, one for correct answer and one for wrong or null answer.
Second-to-last question is, how many reindeers Santa needs for the sleigh. This question has two outcomes and additional validation. If the player chooses 1-8 or 10-20, the player gets a popup where is a question "Are you really sure about the number of reindeers, if so continue to the last question". The correct answer, which is 9, gives a popup which lists the reindeers names, congratulates the player and the player continues to the last question which is different from the other final question. The number fields max value is 20.
The number field has a tooltip, which informs the player to choose at least 2, but it will accept also number 1.
If the player doesn't give a number or the number is 0 or above 20, this alert window appears to the page.
If the player chooses to answer 1-8 or 10-20, the player gets to answer who's Krampus.
If the player have answered the question right, the player gets to answer if Santa has any nemeses.
Both of these final questions have validation to choose one option. If the answer is null, the player gets a alert window. Once again this final question has popups for wrong and correct answer, although there really isn't a wrong one.
Depending on the players answer, you find yourself in either fail page or success page. This page is a fail page, which suggests that the player needs to remind himself/herself what Christmas is all about. Therefore in the bottom of the page, there's a YouTube playlist, which has all kinds of videos of Christmas. (Mostly about Santa.)
This background image is from Google. I wanted to do something fun and thought that Santa might end up in jail, because the player answered so poorly. In Photoshop I added "frames" for the picture and there's the final look. I flipped the image horizontally and the badge in front of Santa is backwards.
This page is the success page, which has a congrats text and a links for a great Christmas movie snacks. For this page I drew a Santa Claus with Gimp and added the Santa Claus to a christmassy background. I need to say that it took me few days to draw this Santa, because I wanted it to be good. Still his eyebrows are quite angry-looking. Oh well, at least I tried.
This page also has a YouTube playlist, which consists of the classic cartoons and movies, e.g. Santa Claus and the Magic Drum, Charlie Brown's Christmas and The Muppet's Show Christmas special.
P.S. If your interested to try it or get the prize, here's the link to Santa's Big Dilemma.
