A Simple Platformer for Young Elves
At the risk of inviting three ghosts to visit, I feel a bit ‘bah hambug’ towards The Elf on the Shelf. There’s something disconcerting about its unblinking, dead-eye stare. There’s a touch of AI to its face, like I can’t imagine a human putting it together. Then there’s the whole ‘Santaverse’ thing, which I can’t get behind. I don’t like people wandering around and slapping registered trademarks on Christmas characters and customs. And then there’s the whole intensity of actually doing the Elf on the Shelf at Christmas. HUMBUG INDEED.
Whew, good, that’s out of my system. I can get to the business of The Elf on the Shelf: Christmas Heroes which, it must be said, I am probably not the best person to review. But I’ll take off the Scrooge mask, don the creepy Elf on the Shelf mask, and get to it.
All I want for Christmas is a Commodified Elf
While I have a wee place in my heart for Outright Games, there’s a template that is hard to ignore, having played enough of their games. The PAW Patrol platformers, PJ Masks and The Grinch games are all achingly similar to what is on offer here in The Elf on the Shelf: Christmas Heroes. If you’re on the hunt for something a little different, then this isn’t the game.
But hey – what isn’t broken doesn’t need fixing. This is a 2D platformer spruced up to look at least a little 2.5D, with the titular elf hopping from platform to platform in an effort to reach the titular shelf. Fair play to The Elf on the Shelf: Christmas Heroes and devs Casual Brothers: while this is a game about a toy, that toy does have a baked-in motive. It really, really wants to get on that shelf.
Which means some softened, kid-glove platforming levels that could be completed by a pre-schooler. It’s no mean achievement: creating something that young hands can grapple with is much, much harder than people care to admit. It means a simple left-to-right goal, no threat, one face button (well, there are more if you want to get fancy, but more on that later) and extremely forgiving failure states.
On that last point, there’s a subtle brilliance to how The Elf on the Shelf: Christmas Heroes handles death, or the lack of it. When you fall to your doom or trundle into a toy robot, the Elf flies back to the last secure platform. But that’s not what’s clever: the Elf loses a small amount of the Christmas Spirit (the game’s collectibles) that they have gathered, and the player has a small amount of time to pick it up (think Sonic and his rings). But any that the player doesn’t grab gets placed behind the player. So, if you have an obsessive collector on the controller, they can just backtrack a few steps and collect what they lost.
Last Christmas You Gave Me Three Hearts
While there is combat, it’s of the bottom-bouncing variety and it’s entirely possible to ignore enemies and jump over them. And while there are platforms to navigate, The Elf on the Shelf: Christmas Heroes gets forgiving again. There’s always a path back to where you fell from – at no point can you progress to a point of no return. Falling into tacks or holly means a quick teleport back to the last sure-footing. Often there are multiple paths forward, and The Elf on the Shelf: Christmas Heroes doesn’t care which you take.
Collectibles come in two varieties. There’s the Christmas Spirit, which we mentioned, and only a couple of achievements are attached to them. Once you have 5000 in total, you can dismiss them entirely, and we got to that point halfway through the game. The other collectible is three golden doors in the level, and they each lead to a quick bout of minigaming. Complete a jigsaw puzzle, a memory match, maze or sorting game and you snag three golden hearts which, again, contributes to an achievement and little else. None of these are fiendishly hidden. We gained them all by following the critical path through the levels.
There’s a little spice in The Elf on the Shelf: Christmas Heroes’ mulled wine in the form of sporadic power ups. A snowball can be thrown to freeze enemies; a candy cane grappling hook swings across gaps; and a balloon acts like a momentary Flappy Bird. They need a press of Y to activate (a second button? Good gravy), but they’re ring-fenced to very specific moments in the game. Which is a little stingy, in all honesty. I can understand why the devs felt that they might be unbalanced, buggy or complicated, but they would have added a bit of fun, allowed young players to customise their build for a level, and letting them freeze toy aeroplanes and trains for more than a few seconds at a time.
Naughty or Nice?
So, what ends up on the ‘good’ list? I’m a big fan of the advent calendar theming to the level select. It’s a lovely nod to parents and players that hey, maybe limit yourself to one level a day. It’s a little late for 2025, but we can imagine this becoming a daily custom. It’s also impressive how often the backdrops get remixed. You move from a lounge to kitchen to Santa’s Workshop, which in turn has a post room, workshop and stable. And full-marks for letting the player customise and name their elf. Peppermint Fluffysocks, you will always be remembered for your handlebar moustache and long eyelashes.
The naughty list? The Elf on the Shelf: Christmas Heroes suffers for having a single playable character. PJ Masks and PAW Patrol are both good examples of kids’ games that inject variety by handing you control of different abilities. And while dressed differently, the levels themselves aren’t varied. You might find yourself travelling more upwards than sideways in some levels, and some might opt for more enemies than platforms, but that’s mostly it. The combination of a lack of abilities and a lack of level variety makes for an increasingly stale experience. Some out-of-screen flying sections don’t quite cut it.
A Perfect Match – If You Love the Elf
Which brings me full circle to the first paragraph. It’s subjective, but I’m not convinced that The Elf on the Shelf has enough charm in its Santaverse to support a £34.99 game. All it can offer in its bowl, Oliver-like, is the Elf itself. The enemies are all stuff you’d find around the average house at Christmas, baubles and the like. There are no other characters. There’s no signature music or sound effects. As clothing for a game, it’s just a bit thin. But hey, if the Elf is a big enough star in your household, and the notion of actually getting him to his shelf makes your kids a-quiver, then I may be wrong.
Which means there’s a complicated answer to the question of “is The Elf on the Shelf: Christmas Heroes worth £34.99”? Young players who are resistant to a bit of repetition, who thrive on simple platformers with forgiving mechanics AND carry a love for creepy shelf-goblins will find a welcoming game that is perfectly suited to a level a day over advent. For everyone else, we can sneer at The Elf on the Shelf: Christmas Heroes and mutter into our eggnog.
Important Links
Christmas is in Trouble in The Elf on the Shelf: Christmas Heroes – https://www.thexboxhub.com/christmas-is-in-trouble-in-the-elf-on-the-shelf-christmas-heroes/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/the-elf-on-the-shelf-christmas-heroes/9NHT89JX0DM9/0010
