Reviews

Plum Duff has the makings of a classicly British, irreverent Speccy platformer but despite some clever and original ideas the overall implementation somehow manages to fall short.

You play as Santa, and start in your sleigh in the night sky flying over houses and avoiding flying baubles and trifles. The aim is to drop down chimneys and deliver presents to the sleeping children in their homes. As you enter each home you'll see a message from the children to Santa with their request, and your task seems to be to correctly match the presents in the homes with the right request, therefore shifting them around until everyone has the present they want.

At least I think that is the aim but after playing it through multiple homes I've yet to find a present that's actually been requested by a child, creating a hopeless and quite tedious merry-go-round until eventually you lose all your lives from the various obstacles in your path, from Venus flytraps to waking children.

This is a shame, as the basis of a good game is buried here. The multi-stage structure of the game, as you fly over the houses before dropping down the chimney, allows for a decent variety to the gameplay, while the presentation has bags of character, from the children's letters to Santa to the messages from the game itself, which offers advice and general nonsense prose.

Sadly because of the obtuse way the game plays, with an unclear method of properly uniting the children with their presents, it presents an unclear objective, which is off putting enough to the gamer that no amount of charm can make up for it. A shame, as on the surface Plum Duff has plenty of potential to be a Christmas cracker, but frustratingly lacks a proper prize within.

Taken from my website: www.zombiesatemyxbox.com

1985 Bug Byte (UK)
by Jas and Lyndon Brooke

This looks like two different games put together. The first scene is how 'Special Delivery' should look like, the rest of the game shows the 'dont's' of any game.
Althought moving too fast the sleigh scene is actually quite good, with colourful averagely detailed graphics. The second part (inside the houses) seems the opposite, has if been written by another programmer. It's slow, with badly drawn graphics and the movements, specially the jumping routine is hideously frustrating. Even so, I've tried to play the game, but I can't find any of the presents the kids are asking!

3 points for the first part
2 points for the rest of the game

Xmas games got something so charming and homely about them that I simply cannot resist them . this undefined thing is called magic .

This is the case for Plum Duff , another xmas game with a very warm feeling about it .

My main complain is about the movements , they are painful and unnatural .

a charming little game with orthopedic movements that still will leave you a merry-warm feeling in your soul .

ps - I´m still waiting for the definitive Christmas game . :-(

This Christmassy game presents itself with a cute seasonal loading screen, greets you with a nice two-channels tune, wishes you "merry Christmas" with a surprisingly decent Santa Clausy voice sample, and then welcomes you with a "prepare to die!" sign in the options screen. And you won't be let down. You're really going to die. In fact, it's the classical side view thing in which you're Santa flying in his reindeer-led sleigh over the rooftops, only you're not dropping gifts and presents, but you're shooting snowballs or Christmas balls against lethal things in your way, and it's all very fast - and, I'd say, easy in a very Crosswize/Sidewize kind of way. Moreover, the balls you fling, once ended their race, remain still in the air, not very distant from you, and you're going to crash lethally if you don't move up or down immediately. Suddenly I struck a chimney, but it didn't kill me. I found myself in the living room of a house. I realized that Santa Claus is a dwarf. I started climbing up the grandfather clock and jump down again and again, like a complete cretin. This woke up the entire family. I managed to sneak up the stairs, and I so I started to examine the new room. Then a venus flytrap ate me.

Christmas games are meant to be fun and enjoyable, but many of them aren't and this one in particular is far from it. This is among the worst of them.