Intro
I'll admit, I'm not the biggest fan of wordplay so Amy's attempts at parodying the lyrics to "Rudolf the Red-Nose Reindeer" really aren't that funny to me. Though, I suppose others might find lines like "Rudolf, with your knowledge of the arcane so bright, Won't you raise the slain tonight?" a lot more amusing. And I suppose people can definitely point out the irony of me being critical of such humor when I devoted the start of a run for "7th Dragon" on the Nintendo DS to my team being comprised of four princesses whose name start with a p so my guild in the game is named Team 4P. And I've made more than few jokes about letting it flow throughout the parts of the run that are finished so far.
Gameplay
As for the actual game itself. If really isn't anything special and reminds me of old flash games like "Meerca Chase II" from Neopets. The only difference being instead of picking up neggs your picking up the corpses of frozen reindeer. And in the case of both games as you pick up the required object you gain a tail that grows longer and longer and longer until you either hit an object on the map or get taken out by running into your tail.
On the downside this version of the game is pretty bare bones and lacks the options you see in stuff like "Meerca Chase II" where you can choose to have access to a much larger range of motion than just changing your direction by tapping one of the arrow keys. An this game lacks the option to run over reindeer that are worth more or less points as you play in order to make it easier to earn a higher score. I suppose this does mean your final score is a lot less random in this game, but the potential of getting a personal best as a result of luck is nice every now and again in my opinion.
In fact, the only edge this game arguably has over an old flash game I can no longer play is that your team speeds up more and more as you run over more reindeer. An option, that really just annoys me since it makes getting a score over 30 or so rather difficult for me. After all, I just don't have the twitch reflexes needed to avoid running into my own tail after it's gotten to the point that if I'm running in a straight line that the end of my tail is right in front of my character.
Outside of that I suppose the game also insures that you can never get a score of zero. This is because you can run through solid objects like fences and tree stumps as long as you haven't picked up any reindeer yet.
Though, I'll admit my base assumption is that this is a glitch, but I'm open to correction on this point.
And I'm not sure if Amy intended for there to be a vertical as well as a horizontal line you can run on that is free obstacles while also allowing the player to run over a reindeer every time they loop around the map. On the bright side it means even someone with my terrible twitch reflexes can score 30 points in this game. On the downside it means you can get to at least 30 points while doing nothing but running in circles.
Conclusion
"Rudolf the Red Rose Slain Deer" is ultimately a very basic snake game that lacks the optional extras like multiple levels of difficulty and so on that I've come to expect from old flash games that had the same concept. As it stands this is just another snake game in an era with dozens if not hundreds of similar games out there for iOS. As a result the only thing that makes it stand out is the theme which may or may not appeal to people. As such, I just consider this another average snake game in a sea of equally forgettable versions of this game.
