Santa's Present Panic

Santa's Present Panic

When presents shoot out at dizzying speed, can Santa keep it together?

A puzzle arcade game of quick reactions and keeping calm under pressure.

Presents in various shapes will descend from the chutes. You must move the belt left and right so that the holes in the belt match the falling shapes above. 

Line up as many as possible, then press C to release the matching shapes and they will fall through the holes. Be careful not to move the belt until they're all through! If a shape hits the belt where it can't go through, it explodes into dust and the chutes will descend quickly!

The chutes will slowly descend and the only way to get them back up is to drop several shapes together. The more shapes you get the higher they'll go. If the chute reaches the bottom the machine will stop!

Keep the machine running as long as possible. Can you make enough presents to save Christmas?

Controls

• Left and Right: move the belt
• Down: pull shapes downwards without releasing them
• C (or Z): release shapes that match the belt.
• Return: open the pause menu, where you can quit the game in progress, toggle music etc.  

Note: if the game doesn't respond to key presses you might need to click on the game window first.

Encouragement

The full game is available right here in the browser for free.

However, if you enjoy Santa's Present Panic and want to show your support, I would greatly appreciate you sending a few pounds (or your local currency). As a thank you, you'll get access to downloadable versions for Windows, Mac, and Linux that you can enjoy offline. Please note that the downloadable versions do not include the CRT effect found in the browser version.

Stay in touch

For updates and news, follow me on Mastodon

Credits

All PICO-8 code, graphics and music conversion, by @shadowphiar

Inspired by Dizzy Panic, 1990 by The Oliver Twins

PICO-8 is a fantasy console and development environment by Lexaloffle games. CRT effect template by carlc27843 using a filter by Mathias_G