So the further I get into this the more I am convinced that you can make a game with a dedicated week of work. However I am becoming less and less convinced that 3-4 days is sufficient - which is about the time I've invested in this so far. I just haven't been putting the time on the project I had originally planned for (no excuses, just the facts).

So, my project is currently at approximately the state I had hoped to reach on Thursday, leaving Friday for actually making it a game, Saturday for graphics and sounds type stuff as well as game parameter tweaks from play testing, and Sunday for polish like verifying installation links, title screen / score screen stuff, etc.

But alas ... now I am just hoping Sunday is enough to do Friday's work and make it a game somehow.

I've attached the current zip file if you want to have 2 minutes of entertainment zooming around "space" (aka the North Pole?). It is an XNA game (using the 4.0 refresh version, so you will need the XNA redist installed if you don't have it or the dev tools):
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27598

If you have the redist installed and it doesn't run, please let me know with a comment, thanks.

Oh yeah, in case you care ... the thing at the top (the BossWingus - one of Santa's minions) is spawning Scribs (little fliers) which are trying to capture the Heartupiguses ... which you want to save (by flying over them), and then protect (by intercepting the Scribs). There is no score, winning or any such right now ... just flying / intercepting and loosing your 3 scribs ...

The arrow keys are the only controls that matter right now.

And the camera is in "follow" mode, which was how I was going to do things when it was a top-down flier ... but now it should be in a fixed position for the fixed map mode I have now ... its on the todo list.