The Days of Christmas by Sam Twidale

[raw]
made by Sam Twidale for LD34 (COMPO)
In The Days of Christmas you click or tap lyrics close to the current line or verse as quickly as possible to maximize your score.

The theme is in the song, the main verse grows as it loops over and over. Also, there are currently 12 days until Christmas :)

I had 18 hours this time, so this was rather rushed. A lot of time was wasted writing a signed distance field shader for the text I couldn't get working, so ended up with nasty geometry text instead. I also wanted to build a Christmas tree silhouette out of text, but no time.

The game is written in Haxe, targeting JavaScript/WebGL. It requires a recent graphics card and modern browser to run at all, and probably needs a fast computer to run at full speed.

CONTROLS
========
The game works with the mouse, no touch or keyboard input. Unfortunately, there's not much to do except click the colored text for points.

IMPORTANT NOTES
===============
* The sky shader code is a derivative of the three.js sky shader example: http://threejs.org/examples/#webgl_shaders_sky - which I built on in my previous compo entry. I did not write the shader from scratch during the compo.
* The lack of audio isn't a bug - there are others, though!
* I removed the particles in the screenshots due to bugs on IE, they're not in the uploaded games.
* Sometimes the score doesn't go up, oops.
* I should've used a monospace font, oops.

CREATED WITH
========
* The Haxe Programming language.
* three.js for rendering with Haxe externs by George Corney (Haxiomic).
* Lycan, a work-in-progress library of Haxe game development utilities.
* Joshua Granick's actuate tweening library.
* Luke Moody's ShaderParticleEngine for three.js.
* Massive Interactive's msignal signals library.

Ratings

Coolness 51% 3
Overall 2.48 930
Graphics 2.56 749
Innovation 3.26 407
Mood 2.92 511
Theme 2.29 944

Feedback

peterthehe
14. Dec 2015 · 07:02 UTC
Interesting concept. Well executed for the time it was made in.
graceavery
14. Dec 2015 · 07:12 UTC
Super interesting execution, I'm interested to see what you could make with this basic concept with more time. Great visuals, the color shifting background adds a lot of atmosphere.
Elenesski
14. Dec 2015 · 08:07 UTC
Interesting idea. But it didn't work for me, clicking the colored words didn't add to my score. Neat idea with the text.
ProjectX593
14. Dec 2015 · 08:31 UTC
Clicking the colored words doesn't do anything for me.
mukult
14. Dec 2015 · 08:44 UTC
Nice idea!!
🎤 Sam Twidale
14. Dec 2015 · 09:20 UTC
Thanks all. I'll try to get the text shader working and clean this up sometime to get the intention across.

What browsers and input/mouse/touch are people who can't get input using? And ah, touch input isn't in actually, noted that.
hexagore
14. Dec 2015 · 17:34 UTC
I love how experimental and it looks lovely. I found it very difficult to understand what I was supposed to be clicking, though. I just started clicking things randomly and numbers went up? Feels like it could maybe do with more feedback in some way!

It is nice to play something completely different tho
Jakob37
14. Dec 2015 · 19:18 UTC
It has a beautiful look. It would be nice to play it with music :)
francoisvn
14. Dec 2015 · 23:56 UTC
Cool concept, I'd like to see it taken a bit further :)
TomenLuca
16. Dec 2015 · 12:44 UTC
It's an interesting concept, but I feel it would be better if the actual song would play over it. Then I wouldn't have to look at the lyrics in the bottom all the time (I don't know this song very well).
EternalCastleStudio
16. Dec 2015 · 13:01 UTC
I love the mood and the concept of the game, it is very original. A little creative game always is welcome :-)
loxo
19. Dec 2015 · 20:14 UTC
Interesting idea, but it's to fast for me. I couldn't follow the text at the bottom and click the words at the same time. It could be easier with some audio.
Gamepopper
19. Dec 2015 · 21:35 UTC
Interesting, and very Christmassy!
Skywilly
28. Dec 2015 · 01:32 UTC
Interesting idea !
cilerba
29. Dec 2015 · 16:03 UTC
i liked this one a lot. such an interesting idea!
Acuity
01. Jan 2016 · 05:24 UTC
I expected music to go with the song with the description, but this seems kinda cool.
SamH
03. Jan 2016 · 14:08 UTC
It was a bit confusing at first, then became a bit repetitive. It’s nice aesthetically, though, but not very challenging. The experience might be better on a touch device, maybe?
Haokarlos
04. Jan 2016 · 21:14 UTC
I think its a good idea but I missed some music