Goodness gracious, doesn't time fly? It's Christmas! That day when people give each other gifts, scoff way too much food in one sitting, and nap in front of a cosy fire or sun themselves on the beach, depending on which hemisphere they live in. Many games celebrate Christmas by having winter-themed events, such as Fortnite's Winterfest (complete with Fortnite presents you can open up right now), Destiny 2's Dawning, and Call of Duty: Warzone's 'festive fervour'. Even newcomers such as Halo Infinite are getting in on the holiday havoc with its Winter Contingency event.
Wholesome as it all is, we still yearn for the halcyon days when developers themed entire games for the holiday season. Among the best-known examples is Christmas Lemmings - a set of special holiday-themed levels which saw the green-haired critters sporting dashing Santa hats. This kind of spin-off is distinct from games based on real Christmas from the ground up, which also exist and are mostly rather trite (but not the best Christmas games, of course).
Last year, we put a list together of Christmas 2020 spin-off games, complete with some cursed photoshop edits. It was so much fun popping a KFC bucket in Cyberpunk 2077 and an Among Us bean-person into Die Hard that I thought of some holiday-themed candidates for 2021's releases. It's also perfect speculative fodder for our regular feature series, What If, which we started this year.
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