Oh god... I can hardly believe that it has been almost 4 years (as of writing this) since I made this game...

The idea for this game came from an old idea for a book I had years earlier: "Anon Ruins Christmas". The story was about my self-insert character going on an epic quest to kill Santa Clause, just for the lulz, accompanied by my fictional childhood friend and the real-life Romanian singer INNA. I never made anything with that idea until this game.

So, I took that and changed my self-insert into a no-personality incel (so still a self-insert) and the best friend into a cat, also removed INNA from the story (though I added her in the sequel as the Unga Goddess) and I started from there. I came up with the story for this game using my absolute favourite storytelling technique: "just make it up as you go lol" and my absolute favourite thought process: "wouldn't it be funny if..." This is how I came up with most enemies (the Mafioso, Prostitute and Ice Shogun were literally the first thing I designed for the game btw), the DefenseBot and having to get the password to move past him, the police officer blocking entry into the town, and the old lady that gives you the special item, turns into a butterfly and flies away (well, there was also a bit of "fuck! I got this far and still don't know what I want to do with the story!" with this as well).

Naturally, there was a bunch of content that I ended up having to cut. Here's a few examples:

• A shooting star mechanic. The idea was that, when in a fight, there is a random chance for a shooting star to appear at the beginning of a turn and you could input a wish that would then be granted. Some of the wishes included "money" to gain some extra money, "level" to increase your level by 1, "win" to defeat all enemies in the fight, and "death" to kill yourself. I gave up on it because I didn't have much experience with RPG Maker at that time, so I didn't really know what I was doing and was running out of time to make a satisfying text parser for it.
• In the witch's tower, I wanted to have a mini-game where you had four little girls and had to guide them to a certain spot in the maze without letting any of them fall through the holes in the ground. Something like Sokoban but the boxes are moving by themselves, I think there's a genre name for that but I don't know it.
• I wanted to add an additional character that would join your party after defeating the Yeti boss. I couldn't figure out how to implement her in the party gameplay-wise though so it was scrapped. I considered adding her as a secret when wishing for a "girlfriend" upon the shooting star, but obviously that idea got canned.
• In the Ice Cave, I wanted to add a super cool puzzle for when you backtrack back to the starting zone... but forgot to do it, causing the game to be literally unbeatable and I had to update it to fix the error, though I didn't add the puzzle still.
• I obviously wanted to make the last portion of the map more Christmas-y and with some more cool puzzles to progress. I was running out of time though and frankly didn't feel like searching the web for some Christmas tile sets, so I just made a simple labyrinth with barely anything in it.

There's probably some more stuff I'm forgetting about though.

This game holds a special place in my heart. Not only is it my second (well, technically third but the first one I never posted online) ever project I actually finished (even though not in a perfect state), it is also the first RPG Maker project I spent more than a few hours working on and the beginning of a series I grew to love (and wish to make more of sometime in the future). This is why I hesitated for so many years to actually sit down and play it as intended, because I was afraid I was gonna hate it for how shit it was if I did. And while it has a bunch of problems like:

• There is no music: no excuse from my part here tbh
• Bad use of the enemy appearing randomly in the middle of battle gimmick (I did it better in the sequel)
• Skill progression makes no sense (Multi-Strike learned before Slash? WTF?)
• Useless skills (there's like 3 skills you actually need to use in the whole game)
• Some DefenseBot 2.0 passwords are impossible to input
• Backtracking is annoying
• Power of Friendship doesn't even appear as a skill
• The writing is quite cringe (most of it is just random 4chan memes after all)
• Boring personality (it was originally intentional but I think I made Emsey more interesting in the follow-up games)
• And worst of all, I totally missed the opportunity to make the cheating clock say "it's cheat-o-clock" (I especially deserve to be crucified for this one)

But despite these flaws, it is still surprinsingly fun and beatable (I totally believed it's impossible to beat unless you cheat, I was surprised to learn I was wrong) and it still had a bunch of cool things in it. Like:

• The sliding + lever puzzle in the Ice Cave. Too bad I can't design puzzles to save my life...
• The snowstorm area. I think it is pretty cool how, because of the snowstorm, you are constantly blinded during fights. (And no, I'm not being sarcastic here.)
• The final boss rush. Though it's obviously nothing unique.
• Fighting DefenseBot 2.0 when you are stronger after he bullied you when you were weaker.

So yeah, Emsey Ruins Christmas, this guy is my baby! It's a flawed baby, but it is MY baby! And nobody can ever take it away from me! One day, I should definitely get up my lazy ass and go back to fix the worst of its issues, it does deserve better than that, after all.