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Elf Ski
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About the game
Elf Ski is a top-down downhill run on a mountain full of snowy pine trees. The elf starts at the top and slides on its own; you decide the direction. The course is made up as you go, so no two runs are alike, and the trees get no thinner the further down you get.
Your score is the distance you cover plus 25 points for every present you pick up. Presents lie scattered between the trees and you can collect them at any speed, but you can only crash when you are going fast: if you steer across the slope the elf slows down, which lets you scrape past a tight cluster, at the price of distance. After a crash the elf is thrown off its skis, a short pause follows and the game ends with your score.
It is a game of one idea, played in short rounds: how much risk is a present worth? The 3D scene is drawn with WebGL, so it needs a browser with WebGL enabled.
Playing it here
Click Play and the game starts in the page, with a small bar above it for the score, pause, restart and sound. It works with touch: press and hold on the screen to steer. Nothing is installed and nothing is sent to other sites; the best score is not saved.
Controls
| Input | Action |
|---|---|
| Hold mouse button or touch | Ski towards the point you are holding |
| Left / Right arrow | Steer left or right |
| Down arrow | Straight down the slope (fastest) |
| Left or right + down | Diagonals |
A few things worth knowing
Slow down to squeeze through. Steering across the slope costs speed, and you cannot crash when you are slow. Use it for tight spots, then point downhill again.
Presents are worth a detour. Each one is 25 points, which is a lot of metres on a short run.
Credits and licence
Elf Ski is one of the mini-games of a holiday web app that Google published as open source (the santa-tracker-web repository). The code is under the Apache License 2.0 and the images and sounds are under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0, credited to Google LLC and the contributors of the project. The game is the same as the one Google published: for this site only the page around it was replaced (score bar, pause, sound), fonts and libraries are served from this site, and links back to the original app were removed, so the page never contacts other sites. The licence texts and the list of changes are in the licence file of the game. This is an unofficial copy and is not made, endorsed or sponsored by Google.
FAQ
Does it end? No. The run goes on until you crash, so the goal is a better score than last time.
Does it work on a phone? Yes, holding a finger on the screen steers the elf. It needs WebGL, which current phones have.
Screenshots
