Yuletide Legends: Who Framed Santa Claus, buys into the Christmas mythology, that Christmas is magical time of year of cheer and good tidings for all. Where Santa delivers all the good boys and girls presents he made in the North Pole. In reality, I think Christmas is now an over-commercialized retail-focused holiday where you are almost obliged to buy overpriced needless junk for each other. I long ago stopped doing that, for the most part, because i thought it was meaningless, opting instead for home-made gifts from the heart. Still, Yule Legends clings on the Christmas Myth of Santa Claus and has you save Christmas from the evil clutches of Krampus.
The Evil Krampus has framed Santa for theft and stolen his voice. And you, Yuletide detective, is on the case. And off you’ll go on a merry adventure with twists and turns. If you’ve played an Artifex Mundi game, like the Lost Grimoires games I reviewed awhile ago, you know what you’re getting into with Yuletide Legends. You go from screen to screen, zooming in on other screen to pick up items to solves puzzles. You will also solve hidden object puzzles and mini-games that can be skipped. The game is rather easy because you can use endless hints, which takes some of the fun out of it, but its of course optional.
Being an Artifex Mundi game, in Yuletide Legends you get pretty bad voice acting that sounds like it was done by interns. I almost wish they’d leave it out. However, there was, also, some noticeable performance slowdowns at time. There was even a missing voice file at one point. Even the tight formula this game follows wasn’t as good as usual, the mini-game featured below was awful, and followed up immediately by another awful mini-game.
So what to make of Yuletide Legends? Its a standard game of this type, which is fine. However, I didn’t find this as engaging as others, maybe because the story is hokey beyond belief and the game formula wasn’t as good. Or maybe it was because the voice acting was worse than other games, and the slowdowns and bugs detract from the experience. I’ll give this a YMMV with a six back-end-score. I don’t feel it deserves more than that, given the current state of the game.
Overall: Yuletide Legends: Who Framed Santa Claus is a standard Artifex Mundi game, but somehow is worse than usual.
Verdict: YMMV
| Platform | Nintendo Switch |
| Release Date | 11/14/23 |
| Cost | $14.99 |
| Publisher | Artifex Mundi |
| ESRB Rating | T |
