Holiday Traditions Game: Save Christmas with Juniper--again!

Inspired with the Holiday Traditions quiz a few years back, I created my own game. Each year I upleveled my "game" and created a new one to explore different countries holiday traditions.

Last year I introduced a character called Juniper who went on a mission for Santa to collect missing artifacts from 6 countries. Once collected the holiday Cheerometer would be "full on cheer" and Santa ready to fly.

This year Juniper goes on another mission to save Christmas and is joined by the sidekick--the Christmas Bat Hollywings! Travel to 4 countries to solve puzzles and collect the missing artifacts.

What I upleveled:

Added voice to the characters using Storyline AI VO. Loved the voices it has but concerned with Eleven Labs retiring voices if I'll be able to use the same ones next year. So far, I have found Murf AI to be more consistent with keeping voices. Important when you need to update projects.

Animated GIFs--to animate Juniper, Hollywings, and the Yeti. Sourced gaming elements on Freepik for these characters. Used PowerPoint to generate the GIFs. Thanks for ideas from Alexander Salas and Jeff Batt's video on his channel.

Added motion paths and the timeline to get the movement effects I wanted.

Imagery and Story:

Used AI assistant to generate some of my graphics as well as Freepik. I often would find an image I like on Freepik and use its AI to generate the image in a vector style to match my style. I found that faster than generating my own prompt.

Leveraged Copilot to come up with stories and riddles for the game.

Play it:

Play the 2025 short game here!

Wishing you a delightful holiday season full of your own happy traditions!

And if you want to see the 2024 version, check it out here.