Hello John! Well done on your high placement.

As the top two prizes were already gone, but you finished in the top 5, you have the option of the following:

1) A Pico 8 License Key

Or

2) Enter the "participation" prize draw (prizes allocated randomly). 

If you choose the 2nd option, the worst (or best) that can happen is that you win a different prize. Choosing the second option will put the Pico 8 license into the participation draw.

Let me know your choice. I'll be asking this same question to the entrants that finished 3rd, 4th and 5th.

Chris

Unfortunately, I couldn’t finish the game: I’m missing one gift and that’s too bad since there seems to be a second extensive part to the game.

I had a bit of trouble navigating the locations, because there were several locations that were too similar (the snowy plains), and the diagonal directions (which I think could’ve been replace by cardinal ones easily) make it more difficult to have a mental map.

The graphics were amongst the best, and the setting was great (at last somewhere other that the “true” North Pole!)

It’s a bit difficult to find the exact subject to discuss with the NPCs.

Last, the help would’ve been more useful if it didn’t show the full list of common commands when no hint is available in the location. It would have been better to have a HELP command that showed how to play, and a HINT command that showed a relevant hint (or told “No hints available in this location”).

Overall, the game was charming and the NPCs colourful, so I’ll try to finish it one day.

Good length game that took me a couple of evenings to finish!  I like that there's two parts to it and a whole new bit of game opens up after you've completed (what first seems to be) the main mission.  I loved the graphics as well - stunning.

A couple of minor bugs:

- For the object 'Santa's sack', you can't interact with 'Santa's sack', only with 'sack'

- You can get the present found in the village more than once - if you've already deposited it in the treasure room, it disappears from the treasure room and respawns in the original location

The game seems to get stuck if you give Santa the important document before doing the mission he gives you - I gave the document, did the mission, and then couldn't make any headway with Santa because I'd already given him the document.  I dealt with this by reloading a save file, but it's possible I'd just missed that the document doesn't actually disappear if you 'give' it to Santa, he just talks about it (which is a bit confusing).

I also spotted quite a few typos - I can note them on the community forum or send you a list if you want.

I think that this is the most expansive game in this jam! As with "Treasures of HollowHill", every time that I thought I was nearing the end, a new area or puzzle chain opened up. This was also the last game that I finished, by a long stretch; I played through the rest of the entries over a couple of days, but I was stumped more than once here, and I was about to give up on finishing Northpole before submitting my reviews. But one last thought while re-reading the hints you gave me let me find that last present.

Some of the hints misled me, such as hearing so often about the frozen ground that I failed to try digging somewhere necessary later on until I saw another player do so. And the description of Lori's face being in shadow, paired with Rudolph's glowing nose and expectant look, led to me spending far longer than I would like to admit trying to talk to a reindeer. But those were my fault. There were some puzzles that felt a bit unfair, too, such as being unable to open a barrel with either an axe or a screwdriver, but instead needing to use a weaker item, and one also devilishly hard for me to find. Having examined the first bit of scenery, I would have expected to have noticed anything useful without having to explicitly examine the second bit of sub-scenery to find that item.

Overall, though, Northpole kept me engaged the whole time, and certainly delivered an interesting experience. And I would say that the graphics are the best in the entire jam, despite some of the very stiff competition that they're up against in that regard.

Graphics are gorgeous in this, I love your style and the mood you set with the palette. This is also quite an involved game, which is great to see as well. amazing job!