Ever wanted to give a kid the worst kind of Christmas present for being such a big naughty child all year? What would you give them? A big lump of cole in their Christmas stocking or they might get the unfortunate terrible waste of space game like Santa's Workshop which is an indie game released on the PlayStation 4 & 5 consoles. I would honestly prefer to have a coal over this trash any day.
Now the game itself is a simulator where you (not surprisingly as noted by the game's title) work at a Santa's Workshop to make presents which are then given to the good little children (yourself not included). You grow start out by growing trees which is done by planting seeds and then they grow up to be massive trees, they are then cut down and taken to the toy factory and then made into a toy which is then immediately sold for cash. You switch back and forth between the trees with R1 or L1 and the toy factory where you first make trees grow and then switch to the Toy Factory to put the tree wood towards making toys for cash which you then spend to buy an Autogrower as well as upgrading the toy factory to be able to produce a new toy. Toys range from Trucks, Trains, Horses and lastly a Truck that has its carrier lifted up for whatever reason.
So, you might think “Oh this doesn't seem so bad”, but then you realize just how quickly how boring it becomes. Everything from growing trees to then making toys is all done by pressing the cross buttton and you will be giving that cross button a massive workout because you will be mashing it a ton throughout the game. The Autogrower does allow you to make the wood needed for making toys automatically but however the Autogrower produces wood very slowly and as a result actually mashing that cross button to get the wood needed for the toys is much faster than letting the game do the wood making for you. You only get to upgrade the workshop at least three times which with the amount of wood you have from growing the trees you are bound to get the money needed to get everything upgraded and then make as much money you want till you unlock a Platinum Trophy which takes all about six minutes to do so. You don't even get to create anything else let alone make somethings that children like soft toy teddies, robots, puppets and other toys meaning that you have only a small number of things to make, not even a lump of coal to give to the naughty ones.
Seeing that the game costs £1.19 you can't expect too much from the visuals but even there are other games that costs so little that have more effort put into the presentation than this. The backgrounds are very dull and also the colours are very unappealing, it's rare to see a Christmas game where you are meant to be celebrating the festive season but this game manages to make the spirit of the winter holiday season absolutely boring. The music on the hand is atrocious, you would think that it would give you some kind of remix Christmas songs for the game but instead you get some generic tune that doesn't seem fitting for the Christmas Holiday and it just mind numbingly bad to listen to.
This is the kind of game that would give to a naughty child but even that naughty child would rather have a massive bag of coal for Christmas instead as a reminder that he/she should learn to behave. It's very dull and unappealing and when you fully upgrade the toy factory and get that easy to unlock Platinum Trophy which all takes six minutes there is nothing else to do. For a game costing £1.19 I expected there to be some value to it especially with games I played recently that costed less than £1 that are more fun than this. There is seriously nothing of value to be had this holiday season and you are more or less prepared to have your Christmas ruined as a result.
Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year everyone staying away from cheap trash like this.
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Game Score: 2.0/10
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Game Title: Santa's Workshop
Platform: PlayStation 4
Developer: Webnetic s.r.o.
Genre: Simulator
Age Rating: PEGI: 3+
Release Date: 20th December 2021
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Reviewed by: Anthony Hayball (AQWBlaZer91)
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