Santa with a machine gun? Yeah!!!
No More Snow isn't an AAA game. It's not even a BBB game. Yet it put a wide grin on my face, and I'm sooo happy that I bought this love letter to the arcade games of yore (think Commando or Who Dares Wins) with a humorous Christmas twist.
First, Krampus tries to ruin Christmas, and Santa (or maybe St. Nicholas) must stop him and his minions. Then there are two add-ons. In the first one (my favorite part), Krampus attacks Mr. and Mrs. Claus while they are vacationing on a tropical island, and then he tries to conquer the world on Halloween.
The graphics are a bit on the low-poly side but stylish. The enemies are mostly winter/Christmas-themed. There are reindeers, elves, several kinds of snowmen, etc. The snowmen are my favorite, especially the tropical snowman armored with a log, and... the zombie snowman! The zombie snowman perfectly illustrates the game's vibes: hey, let's just have some silly shooting fun for its own sake! Each level dutifully culminates with a badass boss. The music consists of several themes, often hinting to Christmas carols arranged in a darker style, fitting the ironic nature of the game.
Santa's arsenal consists of about 15 weapons: e.g., an axe, a katana, and a shovel for melee combat, and pretty much everything from a shotgun through a machine gun through a flamethrower to a laser rifle on the firearm side.
There are no bells and whistles. Each of the game's segments starts with a short animation introducing the X-Mas/summer/Halloween theme and ends with another short animation of Krampus's defeat. The game is even true to its inspiration in that after you finish the Halloween part, it just loops back to Christmas, like 1980s' video games did. My only gripe would be about the non-rebindable keys, as I've never felt comfortable with WASD.
I completed No More Snow after about 6 hours of giving hell to snowmen on the highest difficulty, and it didn't overstay its welcome. This solo-dev affair knows exactly what it wants to do - and does it spot-on. It's simple, it's challenging, and - last and foremost - it's fun. At least I had a blast.