Christmas Adventure: Candy Storm is an extremely basic Hidden Objects Game (HOG). No story, no puzzles and no aspiration make up a game that's better skipped, even if you're looking for some Christmas atmosphere.



Your car is turned into candy near a house that's inhabited by three sisters. The sisters help you gather the necessary items to make a potion to turn your car back to normal. That's it. That's all the story there is to Christmas Adventure: Candy Storm.

The setting is extremely limited, too: the house consists of three scenes and the outside scene where your car is stranded makes four. That's it. Four scenes is all you get.



Gameplay consists of ten or so very easy Hidden Objects Puzzles (HOP). The rest of the game is spent gathering items to use on certain objects in the house. This is classic HOG gameplay but Christmas Adventure: Candy Storm doesn't even try to be creative with that basic premise. One example: you need sugar but the sugar bowl is locked. To open it, you need two strawberries. Not strawberry-shaped keys but actual strawberries. Put two strawberries on the sugar bowl and it opens and allows you to take the sugar inside.

A good HOG contains a fair chunk of classic but interesting or challenging puzzles to solve. Christmas Adventure: Candy Storm does not. The whole game contains only three puzzles. The first is a puzzle of chance: just click around a bit until the puzzle is solved. The second puzzle is bugged and has been for at least a year according to the forum where the developer promises to "fix it in a next few days" in January 2017. Fortunately, you can skip all of the puzzles anyway without penalty. The third and final puzzle is ridiculously easy.

The whole time playing Christmas Adventure: Candy Storm, you'll have to put up with very bad English. I'm not talking about some language errors only purists can spot but I'm talking about near-gibberish. One striking example: "I need inserting all the stars to open the jar". I chose this example because it also illustrates my earlier point: you see a glass jar and need its contents but instead of just throwing it on the floor or hit it with an item from your inventory (like a hammer!), you actually need to stick 4 star-shaped items to the side of the jar to be able to open it.

On two occasions, Christmas Adventure: Candy Storm managed to do to me what I hate the most in point & click games: I used item X on object Y and nothing happens. Later on, after doing some other stuff and being stuck, I find out I have to use the very same item X on the very same object Y. It didn't work before so I struck it from my list of options, only to find out the very same action is actually required a bit later on.

I got the feeling even the developer couldn't be bothered with this game near the end as in the last of the four scenes, several tooltips are missing. The mouse pointer changes to gears, which means a mouse-click should tell you something about the object and what to do with it, but absolutely nothing happens instead.



The graphics are standard HOG quality, meaning static but not too bad-looking. It's just that the amateurism shines through in this aspect, too. For example, at one point one of the sisters tells you to go find 12 apples in the garden. When you get outside it's hard not to laugh when you see 12 identical 'sprites' of an apple placed in the scene, with no regard to perspective. So an apple on the foreground of the scene is the same size as an apple on the background, which looks absolutely massive in comparison.

The music sounds cheap. For quite a while you'll hear a basic classical piece that screams royalty-free and gets very bombastic at one point. It has nothing to do with the Christmas atmosphere you'd expect this game to try and spread. The rest of the musical score isn't christmassy at all, either.

You'll hear some standard sound effects but nothing special. There is no voice acting at all.



Christmas Adventure: Candy Storm has 5 Steam Trading Cards. You'll get 3 while running the game.

There are 23 Steam Achievements but all of them are completely unmissable.

You're driving with gifts in your car and suddenly, candy, gifts and other Christmas stuff are being dropped on you and you can't ride anymore! However, you arrive in front of an house, belonging to three old sisters. They apparently messed up and want to help you. However, first, you'll have to help them...

This is a short adventure game. The story is just "help the sisters for tasks like finding what to make clothes for birds and you'll be on the road again". There is no evil plot, no hidden secret, nothing. In other words, Christmas Adventure's story is just inexistent.

The gameplay isn't innovative as all, as it's find items, use them, clear hidden objects scenes and solve some puzzles. But there is a little problem with the gameplay. Actions to make aren't always making sense, some new areas are appearing out of the blue and I often existed the hidden objects scenes because while trying to click on an object, I was in reality in the exit area. Besides, you have just 4 locations: the three rooms where the sisters are and outside. You don't visit anything else.

The graphics are acceptable, they're fitting to the Christmas ambiance. The soundtrack is also reflecting this.

I should have known that for the price, I wasn't getting a great hidden object game. True, it's well polished. But when you're used to play longer games, you're kinda deceived. However, I would have probably given a thumb up if actions were making sense and if I was seeing more than four locations. However, I was disappointed in the end. I didn't really enjoy the game - and trust me, it's pretty rare when I'm thumbing down a casual game.

EDIT: Since the review, achievements have been added, which is a nice feature, however, I was victim of some bugs: one with the puzzle for the kitchen door and one with a missing window (though by going back to the main menu, it was solved). So, apparently, bugs that weren't there before are now present... I'm still not recommending the game. Didn't change my mind from May 2016.

Game Grumps vids are way better
I got soft locked with probably no way around.
The hidden objects ask for things that aren't shown: It asks for a Bottle Opener, it clears when you click the sharp Can Opener. It asks for a Horse, it clears when you click the Rook Chess Piece, Ladle but really means a Spoon, Wine Glass means a Golden Chalice, Christmas Tree means a Snow White Tree Ornament.

Meh HOG

All I can think of while playing this game is that Chinese forks and spoons joke from the Game Grumps play-through.

Actually, just watch that instead of playing this! This is basically just a video with interactive elements anyway.

don`t buy. Found a bug and cannot move on. too many people with the same problem and the Devs don`t seem to repair it.

Very short game. The story isn't that great. It's fun for a casual game but i got bored quickly. 5/10

Game is not worth the pennies... a really naf silly game... the spelling was not on this planet ... completed in less then 1 hour...better games to spend your pennies on. Not happy. :(

I purchased this game because it was inexpensive and because it had a Christmas theme. While some of the objects were holiday-related, there wasn't really a holidy feel to this game at all.

It's a very short game at about 2 hours at most to complete. There are only 4 locations. Each one is fairly loaded with puzzles though. Some of the logic on where to put what items you find seemed off at times.

The story seemed very arbitrary, help a few women do some random stuff in exchange for a magical cure to fix your car.

There is either no music, or a single track from the Nutcracker on loop (that I can recall hearing). I don't remember much in audio in general.

I found a single typo. Once asked to find a "dool" when it meant "doll."

It wasn't always easy to discern what all the objects were in each puzzle, but as a test, I started selecting items from the screen that somehow stood out from the base image and was able to find most of them without even reading the item list. So it's pretty obvious what the target items are. When you revisit a hidden object location, it's extra easy to find objects, because they are all new objects that weren't there the last time.

The hint tips are useful and there wasn't any limit on using them. However, it didn't always direct me to move to a different location when needed. If it didn't point to anything, I knew to visit the other three areas.

It's okay for $1.39 (the sale price I paid). I finished it. There are better games of this genre out there though.

My brain thought it would be fun to play through this after Game Grumps had done so for Jingle Grumps at some point. I strongly regret doing so.

100% in about 80 minutes.