Santa Presents perfect for keeping five year olds quiet over the holiday?

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It's important, when assessing a 'casual game' to work out who it's aimed at. Sometimes it's adults - a good example is Micropool - soemthing which can while away a few minutes while waiting in line in a challenging fashion. Or sometimes, as here, it's more for children. Leaving aside whether children believe that Santa exists [oops, spoiler for under-8s reading this!], this is a typical 'catch things' casual game - I'd normally leave this alone, but a) it's very slickly done, b) it's Christmassy, and c) it's perfect for keeping your 5 year old quiet on Christmas Eve while you try and watch the Lord of the Rings repeat on TV...

Here's Santa Presents in action:

Screenshot, Santa Presents

A neat animated splash screen/menu, good production values all round...

Screenshot, Santa Presents

Now here's where it gets interesting. Normally, in a game for adults, 'Easy' to 'Hard' are ranged according to the speed and complexity of the gameplay, i.e. things happen faster and you have to react faster, etc. Possibly because this is aimed at kids, the difficulty levels refer instead to the three different ways of controlling the game.

Screenshot, Santa Presents

The aim of the game, as you might expect is to move your presents sack around beneath Santa as he scampers around the sky, collecting as many of the falling presents as possible. One complication is that Santa also drops bombs (naughty Santa) - catch one of these by accident and it's game over.

Screenshot, Santa Presents

On 'Easy', you control the sack directly with your finger...

Screenshot, Santa Presents

On 'Normal', it's a standard left/right control system...

Screenshot, Santa Presents

And on 'Hard', you have to use the accelerometer - this turns out not to respond very well in the game - making it 'hard' indeed!

Screenshot, Santa Presents

Essentially you keep going as long as you can, trying not to miss too many presents (of various sizes)  and making sure you miss all the bombs. Then you compare scores with your previous best (or brother's or sister's!) Rather cutely, the game also includes Christmas and New Year countdown timers. Only 8 days to go!

Worth getting for your small ones in the build-up to Christmas, as long as you trust them with your phone?

You can buy Santa Presents for £1 here in the Nokia Store.

Source / Credit: Nokia Store