When I say that every element of the Christmas Carol game was part of an overarching story, I mean everything. Every little thing had a bit of background and mythos behind it to give it weight.

• Carol was smart and resourceful because her job was to explore the world to find all children and ensure that they were added to Santa's list. That job makes her Santa's most trusted elf.
• The Evil Snowman is evil because his eyes, which gave him a soul, were two pieces of black coal cursed by a fairy, a long, long time ago. One winter, some children inadvertently set the coal on their freshly built snowman and unleashed an evil spirit upon the world.
• The difficulty levels are ranks, because Santa's Elite Elf Squad (of which Carol is one) are organized as a para-mililtary group, like the Boy Scouts really, where you start as a "Novice" wrapping presents, work your way to a "Helper" making toys, then to "Ranger" who help Santa scout out the world as he travels delivering presents; and finally make it to "Master," were you are a toy designer and team organizer and leader.
• The caves have candy because they are the lair of the legendary Ghost Of Christmas Presents, and he likes to haunt during Halloween (he's a ghost, of course) and loves to collect candy.
• The Ghost in the game constantly switches directions and targets because he is absent-minded and forgets quickly what he was doing.
  

And that's not even considering the cut-scenes, which were short vignettes depicting the interaction of the characters within their world. Most of them have nothing to do with the game mechanics, and are there just to advance a bit of the story arc (which is why, for example, Carol scares the Snowman with a fiery torch in a cut-scene, but there is no such weapon in the game).

Don't get me wrong, I did design the game levels and devised proper mechanics to make it fun and challenging. My point is just that all of it follows a story and depicts a bigger world which lived in my head.

Anyway, I always thought that it would be a good idea to write it all down as a children's book. It's definitely the sort of story that the 8 year-old me would have loved. I even wrote the first chapter: a single page that introduced the plot by having the Snowman sneak into Santa's Workshop and steal the presents. I thought it was good; the few people who read it thought it was good, including my wife; but there it remained, just a single page essay.

My wife thought the story had so much potential that year after year she pushed me to write it -- and year after year I procrastinated expertly, like the master that I am.

Six years. To me it has been just a mere blink of an eye, but to some ... specifically, to a very special girl, it is even greater than a lifetime.

I'll touch on the motivations behind this story on the next post.

-dZ.