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The best holiday-themed video games to play this Christmas

Want some festive feelings in the video games you play over holiday break?

Update:
This list has been updated for 2021.

Holiday-themed video games are not nearly as common as holiday-themed TV shows or movies, but if you want to get into the Christmas spirit with a game or two before Santa Claus visits, there are options out there. Here is a selection of some recent releases and old favorites.

Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Like some of the best Christmas movies, Miles Morales isn’t actually about Christmas, but it does take place during the holiday season. This Spider-Man adventure’s earliest moments highlight a heartwarming Christmas dinner before letting you loose to swing around a snowy, well-decorated New York City.

A screenshot from "Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales" on the PlayStation 5.
A screenshot from "Marvel's Spider-Man: Miles Morales" on the PlayStation 5.(Marvel / PlayStation)
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Cave Story’s Secret Santa

Available for free (at least for a limited time), Cave Story’s Secret Santa takes all the trappings of Cave Story, a longtime indie game favorite, and wraps it in some nice, new, Christmas paper.

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This is a puzzle- and stealth-focused game in which you need to play the role usually filled by Santa Claus. Your character has recovered stolen presents, so now it’s your job to sneak into houses and put them back without getting caught by their sleeping residents.

It’s only on PC, but you can grab it on Steam, GOG or the Epic Games Store.

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Cthulhu Saves Christmas

An old-school roleplaying game (in the vein of the Super Nintendo-era Final Fantasy games you might have grown up playing) with its tongue firmly in cheek, Cthulhu Saves Christmas is a holiday-themed sequel to Cthulhu Saves the World. It’s self-aware and sometimes breaks the fourth wall, and it’s worth checking out if you want some very lighthearted Lovecraftian touches sprinkled into your holiday. It’s a short, enjoyable adventure that can make you feel nostalgic for both old video games and Christmas morning as a child.

It’s available now for a very affordable $10 (cheaper when on sale) on PC and Nintendo Switch, and it’s coming soon to PlayStation 5.

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Fortnite’s Winterfest

As has become tradition, Fortnite is celebrating the holidays with some festive skins, items, and some Christmas-y touches on the map.

As of this writing the event hasn’t started yet for 2021, but it is more or less confirmed to begin on Dec. 16 and end on Jan. 6. According to people known for leaking information, we can expect a character named Sgt. Winter to be driving around the map throwing both good and bad presents for players to collect. There should also be a share of longer lasting presents for players in the form of free skins and emotes.

Super Mario Odyssey’s Snow Kingdom

The latest (and greatest) Super Mario game is packed with diverse locales to explore, including sunny beaches and hot deserts. But one of its worlds, the Snow Kingdom, is decked with Christmas flair.

Well, OK, mostly you can just hear sleigh bells in the distance and some enemies wear Santa hats, but it's the little things that make the holidays cheerful.

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Dead Rising 4

While running over zombies with an electrified go-kart is fun all year round, Dead Rising 4 shines with its Christmas setting, which adds candy cane crossbows, explosive Santa traps and plenty more holiday weaponry to keep your slay bells ringing (see what I did there? Like, slaying zombies. Because of the classic so--you know what, nevermind). The game's zombie outbreak begins on Black Friday, but thankfully, most of the action takes place in a mall and its surrounding stores, which means you have a wide variety (and high supply) of items with which to creatively kill the undead.

Originally an Xbox One exclusive, PS4 owners can experience the Christmas-themed mayhem for the first time this year, alongside a bunch of additional downloadable content that has been released for the game.

Christmas NiGHTS

An old favorite of mine, Christmas NiGHTS was a special version of the Sega Saturn classic NiGHTS: Into Dreams that people could get free through various means (with gaming magazines, mostly). If played during December, the game’s environments would be decorated with snow, lights and presents, and an instrumental version of Jingle Bells replaced the original music. Don’t have a Sega Saturn handy? The recently released NiGHTS HD (available on 360, PS3 and PC) features Christmas NiGHTS as an unlockable.

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Christmas NiGHTS
Christmas NiGHTS(Sega via Steam)

Costume Quest: Grubbins on Ice

Costume Quest is by far one of my favorite games to play during Halloween, and its Grubbins on Ice downloadable content extends to festivities into Winter. Like the main game, it’s extremely charming and fun for the whole family.

Costume Quest: Grubbins on Ice
Costume Quest: Grubbins on Ice(DoubleFine via Steam)
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Batman: Arkham Origins

Like Die Hard, a movie that takes place during Christmas and is thus listed as a great “Christmas movie,” this Batman game doesn’t deal with the birth of Jesus or the importance of giving gifts to others ... But it does take place on Christmas Eve. The snow-covered Gotham setting is actually one of the first things that struck me about the game, and I like it a lot -- even though it has a relatively minor impact on the overall experience. The game itself is the weakest entry in the “Arkham” series, but it still has a lot going for it and is one of the better comic book video games out there.

Batman: Arkham Origins
Batman: Arkham Origins(Warner Bros. Interactive)

Merry Gear Solid: Secret Santa

Part Metal Gear Solid parody, part stealthy Christmas adventure, Merry Gear Solid is a fun, free way to spend a little time laughing at dumb video game jokes and sneaking past kids on the naughty list. It and its sequel can be downloaded directly from the creator’s website.

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Merry Gear Solid
Merry Gear Solid(Arthur Lee)

The Escapists: Santa’s Sweatshop and Santa’s Shakedown

Despite its retro, almost "cute" aesthetic, The Escapists is a pretty brutal game about surviving and escaping prison. Santa's Sweatshop is a free add-on to that game in which you play as an elf. Much of the moment-to-moment action is the same, but with a lot of festive flair.

The 2017 sequel, The Escapists 2, also has some free Christmas DLC available: Santa's Shakedown.

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Saints Row IV: How The Saints Saved Christmas

Saints Row's Christmas-themed DLC is brilliant through and through -- brilliant idea, brilliant execution. It takes the ridiculous, over-the-top world of Saints Row IV and tells a cheesy Christmas special within it. It parodies a lot of your old favorites -- A Christmas Story being a particularly popular target of references -- and had me laughing out loud more than once. Yes, it's extremely vulgar, which is why it's only for the adult players out there, but those adults will have a lot to love. Just don't shoot your eye out.

Saints Row IV: How The Saints Saved Christmas
Saints Row IV: How The Saints Saved Christmas(Volition / Deep Silver)
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Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa's Rampage

Let's just say, hypothetically speaking, that Santa was under a lot of stress. And let's just say that one day he finally cracked, got very drunk and slaughtered all the elves and reindeer, leaving a very bloody mess behind. Someone would probably have to clean all that up, and that someone is you. Merry Christmas! There's not a lot to it, but for its asking price of $2.50 there's some gruesome holiday "cheer" to enjoy here.

Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa's Rampage
Viscera Cleanup Detail: Santa's Rampage(RuneStorm)

Bayonetta 2

There’s not much that’s family friendly about this high-octane action game starring a kick-butt woman that spends her day shooting at both angels and demons, but it does take place during Christmas and opens with a lot of snow, presents, and a hard-boiled Santa Claus, so... there’s that.

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Duke: Nuclear Winter

This official winter-themed expansion pack to Duke Nukem 3D was largely blasted by fans of the original, but it's worth a mention here because of Duke's connection to the D-FW area (the series was made here). Snow-covered levels and pigs with Santa hats weren't enough to make this one stick in the public consciousness for long, but hey -- it's worth remembering that they tried.

Duke: Nuclear Winter
Duke: Nuclear Winter(3D Realms)
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Seasonal Events

These games aren’t normally holiday-themed, but they get into the Christmas spirit in the month of December.

Fortnite, Destiny, Overwatch and other multiplayer games tend to have big events at the end of the year where their maps get snowy and their loot drops get Christmas-y. We’ll update this story as some of those dates get announced.

All those mobile game updates

Yes, I know I’m cheating a bit on this one, but the fact of the matter is that there are way too many holiday updates to mobile games (especially free-to-play games) to cover them all in-depth -- especially when most of the updates do little other than put a Santa hat on their icon. Still, if you have a favorite mobile game, check to see if it has an update!

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Some other festive games:

-- Google usually has a cool page called Santa’s Village, connected to their Santa Tracker, full of simple online games to keep you busy.

-- The retro-inspired 2D action game Azure Striker Gunvolt, on the Nintendo Switch and 3DS, has a Christmas mode that can only be played on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.