Originally posted November 29th 2015 on the Seafoam Gaming forums

Thanks to Petite Games for the review code.

Title: Christmas Adventure of Rocket Penguin

System: Wii U (eShop)

Price: $ 1.99

Release date: 11/05/2015

The main game/story

In this game, you guide a penguin in the middle of winter, avoiding obstacles and going as far as you can. It’s very, very self explanatory, and honestly incredibly simple. Not much to say about this game at all.

Graphics

Unlike the previous titles developed by this company, Christmas Adventure is much, much more simplistic when it comes to its visual style, with pretty much everything looking like it was made in a very simplistic flash animation. It looks fine, but it honestly feels very cheap overall.

Music and Sound:

The music is also quite irritating. While it does keep the festive theme of the holidays intact, the lack of variety really hurts this game in the long run. Besides what you hear in the middle of gameplay and when you get a game over, there’s nothing of importance, to the point where you really don’t even need sound turned up at all.

Gameplay

Christmas Adventure plays pretty similarly to what you would see on mobile platforms, among other things. You guide the Penguin using the stylus, creating a trail for him to slide on while avoiding obstacles and getting items to increase your energy meter. If you happen to make too sharp of a hill for Rocket Penguin to climb, then he’ll stop dead in his tracks and you’ll get a game over. You’ll also get a game over if he lands on the ground, which can usually happen if your energy meter runs out. (Which, in turn will cause you to be unable to draw the path the penguin needs to move forward unless you guide him to items that will help raise the meter.) There’s a harder difficulty option (which adds more obstacles) and a multiplayer mode, but the main point of the entire game is to get a new record, which while not a terrible concept for a game, is rather lackluster considering the wide variety of other titles available on the eShop for the same price with a better value, and considering how this game really isn’t anything new, with the general idea being seen many, many times before.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Christmas Adventure is a lackluster game that seems to only exist for the sole purpose of giving folks with a Wii U a holiday themed game. While a better idea than a fireplace simulator or some of the other holiday themed video games, I couldn’t really find myself enjoying this game for long, despite being a big fan of high-score games. It just feels like a simple game you could play in your web browser, and the lack of anything to make it stand out just makes Christmas Adventure feel incredibly shallow, and very, very boring. This is a shame considering how solid the previous titles from the publisher were. I give Christmas Adventure of Rocket Penguin a 2 out of 10, and I can’t really recommend it to anyone except really, really diehard fans of high-score games