THREE-HEADED SANTA: The Awakening is a free-to-play simulation game that puts the player in a weirdly horrific scenario. You play as Gregory, an average man decorating his home when he made a fatal error with his Christmas tree. He accidentally summons a three-headed variant of Santa Claus and now it’s up to the player to survive.

As an indie project, THREE-HEADED SANTA: The Awakening features limited content with no replayability value and short playthrough time. Still, it has an amazing premise and makes good use of the environment to scare you, much like First Land or Interrogation 091.

Survive the Three-Headed Santa

The first thing to note about the game THREE-HEADED SANTA: The Awakening is its simple graphics. While the game is rendered entirely in 3D, it gives off the usual low resolution that is common among indie titles. The game, however, makes an effort to provide a backstory of some sort through an opening cinematic. This intro also walks the player through the initial objectives, setting off the game’s story.

As an unexpected survival horror game, it makes use of the unassuming graphics quality to create some unsettling and disturbing scenes guaranteed to stay with the player after the game has ended. The same can be said for the sound effects. It makes for some surprising jumpscares, although the voiceover is entirely monotone and probably created with text-to-speech software.

Lastly, since the game revolves around a twisted reinterpretation of Christmas, expect depictions of gore, partial nudity, and the use of profanity across the entire game. It offers different types of scary scenarios that end in an unexpected confrontation with the Three-Headed Santa. All these experiences, however, can be completed in less than 15 minutes. There’s also no other endings, which leaves the game with basically no replayability value.

Good for a fun, quick scare

Overall, THREE-HEADED SANTA: The Awakening follows the vein of many indie horror games that are good at what they do, although they only do it for a short duration. In this case, there’s a mix of dark humor on top of the usual mature content like depictions of gore and nudity. The graphics, while laughably low quality, still manages to serve its purpose in a survival horror title. Recommended.