Behind The Scenes: The Search for Who Stole Christmas
By William Clarke
The idea for this adventure began to formulate around the middle of November. My brother, Bryant, had already written and published Sandy Claws: The Very First Christmas Bear in 2024. Briefly recapping, a juvenile brown bear met an Indigenous princess, Rayelle, and he heard the story of a baby born in a manger far, far away - and a long time ago! The story resonated with Sandy, so Rayelle and his animal friends helped him catch Santa Claus as he was leaving the North Pole. Christmas magic turned Sandy into a teddy bear so he could tell all of the children about the special baby.
That was a very short and sweet dissertation!!! I had some time and had been wanting to do a Christmas adventure featuring the cupcake crew. I asked Bryant if I could put Sandy into my story, and that was the glue that brought together Santa and the pastries. Now, this story is the longest I've done, so far, as an interactive visual novel, I wanted to have an awesome adventure, but not be so long that children would get bored!!
Anyway, the original outline was to have dual tasks, requiring successful completion of both to restore Christmas. But I love "A Christmas Carol" and the musical, "Oliver!" over the holidays, so I decided it would be pretty cool to send them all back in time to interact with some of Charles Dickens' most memorable characters in a pre-electric England. I mean, who wouldn't want to hang out with Oliver Twist, right? And knowing what's waiting for Scrooge - well, I decided to throw him into the mix as an antagonist.
Not only that, but to have half the team travel back to northern Canada on a quest was part of the overall adventure. So many things went wrong, there was a possibility the team could fail.
Now a sidebar. One of the opportunities, in the visual novel space, is to have multiple branches and even, multiple endings based on decisions readers make. I had written some traps, but reasoned it would be unfair to have a family interacting with the story, and each other, to have the possibility of a "wrong" choice. So I provide options, and then the ability to see what happens with a different choice and still stay on track.
All in all, it's a pretty entertaining adventure, well-suited to Christmas eve on the sofa with a tablet or casting to a TV - but that's all I'm going to say for clues!!
You can purchase downloads at Itch.io for Windows/Linux, Mac, or as an UNSIGNED Android app. If you need to view online through a browser, email me at william.clarke@clarkebrands.biz.
