Gift Run

Take part in Ferndale's Gift Run Project by volunteering to play as Santa. Your goal is to deliver gifts to all of the houses marked as “Nice”, before the sun rises on Christmas day, while dodging a variety of obstacles along the way.  Gift run is a reimagining of the classic arcade game 'Paper Boy' but set on a Christmas morning.

Gameplay Features

• Play as Santa, riding a horse, to deliver gifts.
• Santa's purpose is to convert 'Naughty' houses to 'Nice' by completing perfect Gift Runs.
• Santa can take part in gift runs for Five consecutive years.
• Santa can only carry ten gifts in his bag, and needs to pick-up new gift bags along the way.
• Santa needs to deliver all of the gifts before sunrise by landing thrown gifts on the door steps of houses with their interior lights off and Christmas lights on.
• Thrown gifts can be used as a weapon against some enemies.
• To maintain Santa's Rein-horse's stamina, the player must collect carrots along the way to avoid slowing down., and risk being caught by the sunrise.
• If a house marked as 'Nice' does not receive a gift on a run, or if a window is broken by Santa, that house will become a  'Naughty' house the following year.
• If Santa delivers to every 'Nice' house on a run, additional houses will be added for the following year.

Controls

Move sideways: 

• ‘a’ and ‘d’ on the keyboard
• Left Thumbstick

Gait/Speed Up

• Keyboard 'w' / ‘e’
• Gamepad ‘Y’

Gait/Speed Down

• Keyboard 's' / ‘q’ 
• Gamepad ‘B’

Jump

• Keyboard ‘Space’
• Gamepad ‘A’

Throw Gift

• Keyboard ‘Left Shift’
• Gamepad ‘X’

Pause Game

• Keyboard ‘Esc’
• Gamepad ‘Right Special’

Currently the menus only work with the mouse. (accept for the news paper segments, where any key press will continue)

Expected Performance

I have tested 'Gift Run' on two different PCs: A ten year old PC with a Nvidia GTX 970 to represent an entry level setup; And a four year old PC with an AMD RX 6800xt to represent more of a medium to high end setup.

Performance on the GTX 970 at 1080p

• 'Low' settings: 45fps
• 'Med' settings: 28fps
• 'High' Settings: 19fps
• 'Ultra Settings: 2fps

Performance on the RX 6800xt at 1080p

• 'Low' settings: 290fps
• 'Med' settings: 160fps
• 'High' Settings: 115fps
• 'Ultra' Settings: 42fps

Known Issues

1. The  ragdoll character physics may get a bit over enthusiastic at times.
2. In one reported case there was a problem detecting the gamepad input at first, but this did solve itself out with play.
3. The game runs in a 16x9 constrained aspect ratio: 
   1. On Ultra-Wide monitors the game adds black bars on either side.
   2. On 16x10 monitors, black bars are added on the top and bottom. but unfortunately currently the UI is not constrained to the 16x9 area in this aspect ratio, and does overlap the black bars. A fix for this is currently being worked on.

Planned Updates

• To update the UI to be more clear with specific gameplay events.
• Remove some of the enthusiasm from the ragdoll system.