Level reviews

"I practically live for Christmas-themed levels and this was one of the most entertaining so far. The atmosphere of the carnival is unmatched - this level, having so many NPCs, feels alive. I liked most of the challenges, and even though I prefer more linear and story-driven levels, this one has a good structure. I was never lost and most of the time knew what to do. Even though some of the challenges are a bit jenky, the only complaint is that you die a lot, which does not fit for the “fun and festive carnival” idea. Music, especially around the cafe area, is great. I also like collectathons in most of the Christmas levels. Good job to all people involved in making this slice of Christmas magic!" - MaxDeaconVR

"A super smooth and unique experience that I think will become one of my comfort games, in fact I’m fighting the urge to replay it since… the day after completing it? (that was 2 weeks ago) This adventure comes with a map illustrating all the points of interest and rides, even telling how many tokens are required for each. Particularly useful for those who, like me, are lost causes at orienteering and get lost even in video games. All locations and rides drip with details and atmosphere, I particularly loved the grinchy gardens, with that relaxing piano music that contrasts with the questionable intentions that dwell in there. The disco tent and the garlic breath ride are also favorites of mine: along with fantastic gameplay, they kind of give Batman vibes, and I’m here for it. Honorable mentions are also Little Venice, snakes and ladders, and the slides with the rockets to follow (really cool how you get off of this ride). I have to admit that, prior to playing, the idea of collecting flying tokens didn’t convince me too much, but it turned out to be super fun, as it added a lot of platforming and exploration, so I decided to collect all of them to earn the extra content. That secret room was a good idea, I’m relatively new to this community, and seeing how much I’m liking Christmas levels, I want to play more of them, and those suggestions are a good start." - Leti

"WOW! Having been absent from gaming for a few years, I specifically went searching for any Christmas levels I was bound to have missed and I wasn't disappointed! At first I thought the fairground was going to be quite contained but in the end I found it very expansive and got lost quite a few times, in spite of the map. To be perfectly honest with you, I thought some of the 'rides' looked deadly and too challenging for me to complete but with some guidance from the walkthrough I carried on and was amazed to have found all of the Golden Tickets and all of the red tokens seeing as I was playing in random order and only collecting tokens when they appeared (but to be fair they were quite hard to miss, thankfully). Reach For The Sky was difficult what with the angled jump sequences but this was made slightly easier thanks to stable ledges once you reach certain heights. I saved in two slots quite a few times but was so tense I thought I had cut off the blood supply to my lower limbs :D It was simply beautiful and made me wish there was a real fairground going on locally! Great music and quite funny to hear two cockney accents, then the stall holder who chastised Lara for getting her manky feet on her roof :P I really loved this level and am saving it in my files to play again sometime. Thank you to the team for creating a very enjoyable and festive environment." - High Priestess

"what a nice christmas game with a masterpiece leveldesign and beautiful soundtracks. must play! 10/10" - Raider278

"This was indeed lovely, and yes, I did see the end of it on the video walkie. Alas, that's all I could do, because I was "glitched". I noticed in the walkthrough you collect all the red tokens, and only after that visit the rides, but I made a different mix of the action , which I find natural, and at a certain point, getting back to my last save, way into the level, I found the snakes and ladders door that I'd opened (but not visited yet) closed. I ended up with 6 red tokens, but unable to finish the level, as there weren't, to my knowledge, any more tokens for me to collect. Sure, I could have started all over, but that's a bit too much to ask. So, I just kept going until I couldn't proceed, luckily near the end. My favourite rides were the shark dip, the sky is the limit (although I found that one particularly tough) and the one with the slides and the rockets pointing the direction. The garlic challenge was also interesting. All in all, I had a lot of fun, and I'm sorry I'll have to deduce a couple of points for gameplay and puzzles (I don't really know where else to do it) for the dreaded glitch." - Jorge22

"A big Christmas level with an extremely Christmas-y atmosphere. You explore a huge Christmas market and play minigames or rides. Definitely not something that should be enjoyed outside of the Advent season. It's a huge effort by an all-stars builder team, so it's obviously great and you can just play it and safely ignore my review. I'm just trying to give feedback on minor issues.

• It's all a bit on the easy side. I guess that's OK in principle. But the bow shooting game was a definitely too easy, almost pointless and not fun.
• Shark Dip is a weirdly dumb and easy game. The idea and imagery is a bit amusing and it gets points for the technical side. (I assume it requires heavy customizations not originally supported by the TR4 engine.)
• One of the Grinch rides is also a bit simple: Lara can push one of 3 levers. Using the wrong one simply kills her? That's it? But I appreciate the wicked humor of a ride at Christmas market killing the visitor.
• The Sky Is The Limit ride was pretty fun. This one also kills the visitor on a misstep.
• The Venice ride had a weird bug. If you repeated it (to get all the gondolas) sometimes a breaking gondola animation was shown even though the gondolas was already destroyed and not visible. Also the animation of the elevator in the entrance didn't work properly.
• Snakes And Ladders made me consult the WT, because I didn't realize I could pick up a key below the grate in the lowered block.
• The Space ride wasn't very convincing. I didn't understand where exactly to jump and made it through with trial and error. The whole concept seems like a good idea with slightly half-baked realization.
• I couldn't solve the color puzzle in the theater. The solution didn't look like the right color to me. Maybe I'm colorblind, or there's a technical issue.
• Telling the player how many tokens there are in each area is a good idea, but not all that useful if the player doesn't try to explicitly track it.
• The proportions are a bit on the weird side sometimes: huge blocks are tables with goods on it, with tiny humans standing near them. Some things looked slightly cruder than they should have.
• For my tastes, there were too many and too long cut scenes. Or at least they were not evenly distributed all over the level. The Grinch area had too many of them and stopped you too often.
• I'm not sure whether getting an old man arrested makes a good Christmas story?
• Why can Lara use her tokens to open most of the rides directly, while the Grinch area rides have this weird and technical activation switch?
• These are just small issues. I really enjoyed playing this game!

" - tuxraider

"These team efforts are always a triumph, but I have to say I think they have excelled themselves with this one. A carnival setting is bound to be a winner and there's a wealth of imagination at work on the various rides, to access which you have to find red tokens – an enjoyable treasure hunt in its own right. There are also five gold star secrets to find and it's a pleasure to spend so much time exploring the extraordinarily well made and extensive carnival park. Hard to pick a favourite ride out of so much enjoyment, but I think smashing gondolas to bits with a speedboat in the Venice section more than satisfied my inner vandal. Superb!" - Jay

"A playground in its truest meaning! This highly entertaining and unique level features a variety of smaller challenges that are diverse and not too easy, including quirky puzzles, memorable jump sequences with bouncing pads, a shooting range and many more, all combined into a sweet story. The technical skills are impressive, and object usage is stunning as well. While the rooms are smartly designed and texturing and lighting are on a high level, I found the atmosphere to be very good but not fantastic, everything is a bit flat and two-dimensional (but that's of course mainly due to the setting). Sounds and cameras are perfectly used though. I really enjoyed the quest for the extra items and at least finding all of them is a nice extra task. In short, not just another Christmas level, but rather another highly recommended raid of an hour of playtime." - manarch2

"A festive offering from the wonderful Advent Calendar team is always something to look forward to, and this ranks right up there with the best of them. Phil's minor complaint about the intermittent cutscenes between the various characters is somewhat justified, but it didn't personally bother me too much. Anyway, this is a near-perfect raid in all respects. The settings are awesome throughout and the gameplay constantly engrossing, being a sucker for puzzles I very much appreciated the variety here. The highlights for me (and there were many) included the gondola timed boat race, the brilliant springboard exercise and the masterful slope jump exercise inside the rocket attraction. The objective is to collect tokens scattered around the carnival (at least 55) to access the various rides, and then later on 10 golden tickets to rescue the imprisoned Santa and find out who is responsible for all these weird goings- on. Great from start to finish." - Ryan

"Had an absolute blast playing this fun Christmas romp in the titular Carnival! You collect tokens to access a collection of really fun rides, that are all really fun to play and really well made and designed! The Christmas vibes are strong and present here, and it looks fantastic! Couldn't recommend this level enough and that goes to players of all skill levels too!" - Feats

"There has certainly been no decline in the quality of the Advent levels from Team Christmas that bless us year after year, and the offering for 2023 ranks up there with the best of them. There's one mild beef I need to get off my chest first, however, and it applies generally to all custom levels. I understand the need to allow for creative license in evaluating a builder's work product, and to some extent I appreciate the desire to have a discernible "story line." But I'm not a fan of these periodic conversations that break the flow of the action and which to me add little or nothing to the playing experience. In this case I frequently found myself shouting: Let's just get on with it, shall we? But enough. Another Christmas Carnival is a sprawling exercise that needs to be played with well-planned forethought, and I've tried to spell all this out in the written walk. It's easy to get lost in the vast game map and to embark prematurely on tasks that ideally need to be saved for later. Your primary goal is to free an imprisoned Santa, but to do so requires finding 10 tickets. The tickets are found in the carnival rides, which can be accessed only after you've found the requisite number of tokens. You can collect some tokens, complete a ride, collect more tokens, and so on, but even then you can do things out of their proper order and find yourself stuck. Therefore, the video walk provided by AgentXP, one of the builders, lays everything out in the most intelligent sequence, so I followed it religiously while preparing the written walk. I took my time, finishing in just under four hours, but it was time well spent. A thoroughly satisfying collaborative effort." - Phil

"What Feats said ... major blast." - Dick

"Liked

• For those who like to do collectathons - there's plenty of tokens and secrets to collect around the fair grounds. Some are more tricker to reach than others, but not all of them are required to complete the adventure.
• The carnival rides provide quite a few fun and endearing activities, from a gauntlet of bounce pads to dipping a shark and racing a boat through timed doors.
• Some nice unique puzzles are here too, such as figuring out the sequence of switches in the security room, or picking the colors for stage lighting. Each of these comes with hints in the tablet as well, so it should be an approachable adventure for most players.
• This sprawling carnival is highly decorated and smartly textured to give each area a unique feel. The lighting is great too.

Time: 2 hours 39 minutes | Difficulty: Medium | Rating: 9.75/10" - JesseG

"The Calendar Team did a wonderful festive job here. It's all old yet new, hanging between throwback and invention, and feels warm despite of snow just like you'd expect this season to be. Minigames require attention but weren't a stress factor to me. And it gives even more with plot dialogues and subtitles which are a standard for these authors and make it understandable for almost any player. Was a pleasure testing it. Highly recommended." - DJ Full