Pretty cool game. i like the art style and the Santa boss looks awesome. Movement was very buggy, especially around corners, but thats basic game maker for you.

Quite good. I did get stuck in the wall at one point

nice colour palette. controls are responsive but stiff and you get stopped a lot (walls, changing direction sometimes, attacking, and sometimes just for no reason?). can't attack up or down, but it seems fine. I wasn't sure if the game closed because I defeated shirtless buff santa or because he defeated me. probably he defeated me but there was no indication. nice game.

Not the best. Couldn't figure out the controls, goal, or if it was top-down or side-scrolling. But it looks pretty...

Controls are kinda glitchy.
I can't see any connection with theme.
I like the graphics. Congratulations for making your first game for Ludum Dare!

Definitely not bad for a first game! Well done!

Here are some things to take note of, however:
- The game window is very large; unless you're supporting full screen try to keep it less than 800x600 pixels to ensure it can fit on everyone's screen.

- In general, with collision it's better to make the actual collidable parts of the sprite ("hitbox") smaller than the sprite itself.

- It's best for feedback (the cane swinging animation, in this case) to be instantaneous; it doesn't have to actually *do anything* mechanically right away, but you should show the player that the keypress has done something in order to establish an association between the keypress and the action to follow.

Thanks for your feedback, I've updated the collision in the game so it should be much cleaner, and I've also sorted the resolution out.

I enjoyed the game, but I felt a bit away from the theme. Got scared and didn't know how to beat the boss. But congrats on completion!

Very nice artstyle

not bad for a first game. a bit more of everything for the next ludum dare and it will be fine :)

Pretty simple, but a good start. Personally I felt there wasn't enough contrast between the background and the player character. Good work!

The graphics are very good, so I think this your best skill at the moment. The gameplay and execution is otherwise very lacking. This is not only about the immediate close on 0 health and the lack of menu you mentioned, but also the fact that Santa apparently does not attack you. It is not clear that you have to attract the spiky things to kill Santa, and the player may have killed all of them. Since you need to, the cane is useless, you should just run for it while attracting the enemies.
I realize that the limitations of your game may be in part due to Game Maker bullcrap (I think your version is not the complete version, perhaps a trial version). You should definitely find something else to do games with then. If you want to go into programming without GM, I recommend you Love 2d with Lua (I don't personally use that, but it is very good and very beginner friendly).

The art style and color palette are really nice. It's too bad health isn't shown, since it's really vital information. Also, it's hard to tell when you've hit an enemy, especially the boss -- that could use some more visual feedback. Nice work on this!

I like the artstyle
good job overall except for some bugs ^^

Fun