Developed by the same team that brought us Samurai: Way of the Warrior, BloodyXmas is a refreshing take on tired Christmas themed games. Instead of packaging the presents and sending them off to children, you’ll be defending them from horrid kids and other creeps with any and all means necessary. Whether it be simply dispatching them with your trusty butcher’s knife, bruising them with a giant wooden mallet or whipping out your trusty chainsaw for some decapitation, you’ll find the weapons given to you are handy indeed for some present protection. There’s even more besides but we don’t want to spoil the fun!

Other than the meat cleaver which is your primary weapon, the listed arsenal can be found in weapon crates that are dropped from time to time. Small green icons denote these goodies if they are out of sight, and if while you’re scurrying to pick these up you leave your presents unguarded and out of view, red icons will represent present thieves. Combined with the game’s intuitive touch control—tap to run, tap an enemy to attack it—the whole experience feels fun and above all, bloody.

Your unabated killing takes its toll on your surroundings, which get splattered as you do your thing. Interestingly, it is cleaned up round after round, we’re guessing to save performance but it would have been cool to have had an arena that got more drenched the more you played the game. Speaking of the graphics, the game looks as good if not better than Samurai. It uses a much darker palette than you’d expect from a Christmas themed game but still retains the basic elements that you would expect from something seasonal. It has Santa, children and presents, what more could you ask for?

Innocent it may not be, but as an alternative to all the festive cheer around this Christmas you can't really go wrong with BloodyXmas. It won’t last you as long as the developer’s previous effort, nor should it have much appeal after the holidays are over. But for a seasonal score based action game you can't go wrong with this gory delight.

Media gallery

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

More by this developer

Samurai: Way of the Warrior, B

Review by Tom Grimes, September 04, 2009

Why not try...

---

• 

  iSlash

• 

  Knight's Rush

• 

  Fruit Ninja

• 

  Robot Rampage