Game Review: Games Advent Calendar 2024 (Xbox Series X)

Doing an immense job of making you feel ‘ever so festive’ by asking you to pay far too much for trash in the name of Christmas, Games Advent Calendar 2024 comes from developer Mindscape.

It’s all about the whimsy, or at least it first seems to be, until the sinking realisation hits that the game is nothing more than mobile phone mini-games with poor controls, frustrating designs, and a total lack of fun.

Taking on the form of an advent calendar, aside from a tutorial, the game couldn’t actually be started until December 1st and every subsequent day, a new game is available to play, up until December 25th. Players use a train to travel to each winter wonderland stop, where a new game and even more disappointment awaits.

In the online marketplace spiel for this game, the word ‘magical’ is used a lot, and for around two minutes, it’s accurate. The train, the hub world, the character selection, and the music has a festive feel. Then you start to play it, and it’s all downhill from there. Of course, if you really want to be the most unpopular person at Christmas, you can force your friends and family to play. See who can set the highest scores on the leaderboard by simply passing the controller around. How fun.

So, what festive treats does Games Advent Calendar 2024 have to offer with its mini games? Let’s run through them for you, but be warned, it’s not 25 unique ones either.

Starting with the platformer of the series, Holiday Adventures, where the goal is to make it to the end of the level while picking up candy along the way and avoiding ‘death’ by icicles. It would be passable enough, if the controls weren’t so floaty. Next up, it’s Holly Jolly Slices, which is just a Fruit Ninja rip-off, but using Christmas treats, and then it’s Gift Rush, a side-scrolling endless runner where the player must jump and slide over and under obstacles.

See? Mobile games and bad ones at that.

One of the easiest is Snowball Blast, which has you assassinating all kinds of cute creatures and nice people out for a walk with snowballs. Whereas Bobsleigh Relay’s controls are so awkward, you’ll spend more time bouncing off the walls of the track than actually controlling it. Then there is the awful Polar Cross, an incredibly awkward ‘Frogger’ style game, the unbalanced TetriX-mas, a game that gets really difficult and fast, and the outrageously broken Arctic Circle Skater, a game that demands way too much of the player and will isolate those with hand coordination issues. This makes this the worst game of all, and effectively breaks the overall product on day 9 for some.

What was behind the door of day 7? The first repeat game, Holiday Adventures 2. Get used to that, as apparently coming up with 25 unique games was a task too great, and the platformer is repeated several times, albeit with more challenging gameplay each time.

Alongside that, there’s this game’s version of Breakout, Frostbreaker, which plays like every bad Breakout clone ever. There’s a version of the classic Donkey Kong game called Arctic Climb, with controls so poor, it will make you angry. There’s a kart-style game called Snowdrift Racers where you race against yourself to set a fast lap time and have to contend with terrible car physics. Then, just to put the emphatic stamp on the ‘mobile mini-games’ accusation, there is Frost Runner. An endless runner where you collect coins until you get bored, which will be about 30-seconds in.

Each subsequent day unveils even more disappointment and by the time the third week is reached, most will have checked out and want nothing more to do with this game. It’s the equivalent of opening the doors of a real advent calendar and finding nothing inside. Not a chocolate, not a happy message, not even a festive picture, there’s literally nothing.

Which would be fine, except you paid a lot of money for this advent calendar. Not just bad, but an absolute rip off at its current price. Merry freaking Christmas.