Free demo out now on Steam
Santa's Legacy
Build the North Pole one workshop at a time, then hand it to the elves and let Christmas run itself.
Windows on Steam · single player · no ads, no energy timers, nothing to buy twice.
- 7Minigames
- 40Skills
- 9Workshop types
- 6Languages
Announcement trailer
Seventy seconds at the North Pole
The village, the elves, the seven minigames and the sleigh leaving on Christmas Eve - all captured in engine.
What you actually do
An idle game with decisions in it
Christmas runs on a clock. Every year is Dec 25 to Dec 31, the elves work the whole week, and on the last day the sleigh leaves with whatever you managed to pack.
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Build the village
Nine kinds of workshop, paid for in cookies and Christmas spirit, placed on a grid where neighbours boost each other. An empty snowfield becomes a town you can watch working.
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Staff it with elves
Every elf has a name, a voice and a temperament. Diligent elves craft faster, Swift ones haul more - and each workshop asks you to split its crew between making gifts and carrying them.
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Retire and start again
When a run has given you everything it can, retire Santa. The years you played convert into Legacy Stars, and those buy permanent upgrades that make the next North Pole faster from the first minute.
Inside the workshop
Systems that talk to each other
Your gift rate is a single number with seven things multiplied into it. Change any one of them and you feel it on the counter within a second.
Every elf is a person
Open a workshop and you get a roster, not a headcount: names, traits and a live read on how many gifts are being made versus how many are actually reaching the sleigh. Put too many elves on the bench and the gifts pile up and spoil.
- Diligent, Swift and Steady elves, each worth a different split
- Over two hundred voice lines, handed out by name
- Upgrade a workshop and its whole crew gets better at once
Forty skills, nine branches
Joy is spent on a tree where every rung is gated on the one above it. Production, logistics, cookies, experience, festive spirit - and two branches that do something stranger: one buys you a longer night away from the game, one makes every building in the village cheaper.
- A separate permanent tree bought with Legacy Stars
- A level perk every five levels, picked from five boons
- A breakdown screen showing exactly where your rate comes from
Christmas under pressure
A year can turn on you. A blizzard halves production with two days to go; a frenzy doubles it and dares you to spend. Christmas Orders want a specific number by a specific date, and the route you send the sleigh on trades a bigger payout against a wider spread of luck.
- Four delivery routes, from the safe village run to Around the World
- Challenge runs: Silent Night, Short Winter, Deep Frost
- Elf errands that pay out one, four or eight hours later
Everything in the box
A full North Pole
A village on a grid
Place workshops so the right neighbours touch and the whole town produces more than the sum of its parts.
Named elves with traits
Over 150 elves walk the snow, each with a job, a personality and a voice that is always the same elf's.
Seven minigames
Drawn from a shuffle bag, so you see all seven before you see any of them twice. Each one sets the year's bonus.
Legacy Stars
Retire a run and bank it. Permanent upgrades carry into every Christmas that follows.
Offline progress
Gifts keep arriving while the game is shut. Four hours by default, ten once the Moonlight Shift is bought.
Year events
Blizzards, frenzies and calm years. You cannot plan the weather, only what you do about it.
Letters with consequences
Children write in. What you send them comes back to you later, in their own words.
Steam achievements
Achievements, per-minigame leaderboards and cloud saves across your machines.
Plays on a pad
Keyboard, mouse and full gamepad support, including the camera and every menu.
Six languages
English, German, French, Spanish, and Portuguese in both European and Brazilian flavours.
Music and elf chatter
A shuffled score per screen and a village that talks to itself while it works.
A card to share
End a year and take a Christmas card of your village, framed over the town you built.
Hands on the controls
Seven minigames, once each
Between Christmases you play one. It is drawn from a bag rather than at random, so every game comes up before any of them repeats - and your score becomes a multiplier on the year that follows.
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Cookie Bake
Pull the tray at the moment the cookie is done. A second early is dough, a second late is charcoal.
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Gift Wrap Rush
Paper, ribbon, bow, next. The line does not slow down because you are new.
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Naughty or Nice
Left or right, one child at a time, against a shot clock that does not care how sure you are.
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Reindeer Rhythm
Nine reindeer, one beat. Keep the team in time and they pull harder all year.
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Sleigh Dash
Downhill, fast, in the dark. Collect what you can and try not to meet a tree.
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Pack the Sleigh
Boxes of awkward shapes, one sleigh, and the quiet certainty that it would have fitted the other way round.
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North Pole Mailroom
Read the letter, pick the gift. Get it wrong and the child writes back about it next year.
Screenshots
All captured in engine
Nothing here is concept art. Click any shot to open it full size.
Latest update
The Big Winter Update
The largest patch the demo has had: the village got a voice, the elves got personalities, and the parts of the game that only existed in code finally got screens to live on.
Questions
Before you wishlist
What kind of game is Santa's Legacy?
An idle / incremental village builder. Your elves make gifts whether you are watching or not; you decide what to build, who crafts, who hauls, which skills to buy, and when to retire the whole run for a permanent bonus.
Is it a clicker?
No. Nothing asks you to click a cookie ten thousand times. Production runs on its own - the hands-on parts are the seven minigames, the workshop crews and where you put each building.
Is there a free demo?
Yes. The demo covers the first six Christmases, which is enough to reach the minigames, the skill tree and your first Legacy Star. It is a Windows build and it lives on the Steam page.
What platforms will it run on?
Windows 10 and 11 on Steam, with keyboard, mouse and full gamepad support. Nothing else has been announced.
Does it keep going while the game is closed?
It does. Offline production is credited when you come back, capped at four hours to begin with and ten once you have bought the Moonlight Shift branch. It is meant to cover a night's sleep, not a fortnight.
Are there ads or in-app purchases?
None. No ads, no energy meters, no second currency you buy with real money. You get the whole game once.
What languages is it in?
English, German, French, Spanish, European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese - and the Brazilian translation is a real one, not a copy of the European file.
When does the full game come out?
No date yet. Wishlisting on Steam is the way to hear about it the day it happens.
The studio
Pixel Studio
A small independent studio. We make cosy games with more going on under the hood than the art lets on - the kind of game you leave running in a second window and keep glancing back at.
Santa's Legacy is our first title. It is built in Unity, and it has been in the workshop long enough that the elves have names, opinions and a union.
- Title
- Santa's Legacy
- Developer
- Pixel Studio
- Publisher
- Pixel Studio (self-published)
- Genre
- Idle / incremental village builder
- Platform
- Windows (Steam)
- Players
- Single player
- Engine
- Unity, Universal Render Pipeline
- Languages
- EN, DE, FR, ES, PT, PT-BR
- Release
- To be announced - demo available now
One button
The sleigh leaves either way
Wishlisting tells Steam to tell you when it is out. It is the single most useful thing you can do for a small studio, and it costs you nothing.