Five Christmas games for your seasonal delectation
Jingle Jingle - it's the 2021 festive email
On the Fifth Day of Christmas RRD gave to me: FIVE! FREE! GAAAAMES!
It’s Christmas! And Hanukkah! And Kwanzaa! Yule, too, probably! If we’ve missed your preferred December celebration, feel free to let us know in the comments. Or write it on a letter and bung it up the chimney, either or.
Over the years we’ve made a few Christmas games and you might well not have been fully exposed to them, so in the spirit of the season please enjoy these five ENTIRELY FREE (pay for them if you’d like, it helps) games and game-like objects. Starting with…
WRECK THE HALLS
2021’s festive release (written in collaboration with the brilliant Thryn Henderson) is WRECK THE HALLS, a game in which you play a tinsel-wreathed cyberpunk murderboy and attempt to wrest Christmas back from the 1%. Allegations that WRECK THE HALLS is a direct protest game aimed at the multiple lockdown-breaking Christmas parties held by our Tory government in the depths of 2020 should be directed to our lawyer.
ADVENTURE CALENDAR
Talking of the depths of 2020, Grant was flailing wildly as the plague ravaged the UK and, in an attempt to make some sense of it all, wrote a 20,000 word book about the end of the world. And Christmas!
Adventure Calendar is 25 fun/distressing tables themed at the beginning around Christmas and at the end around the Apocalypse, and in the middle there’s a bit of crossover. He then had the entire thing illustrated by professionals, cutting his profit from the enterprise by a smooth 80%.
(He did not manage to make sense of it, but hopefully you can still enjoy all the jokes and horror vignettes he mashed into this charming booklet.)
IT’S A VERY NORTHERN CHRISTMAS (Starring Seans Bean)
This one is ludicrously high-concept. Uselessly so, some might say! Anyway: It’s A Very Northern Christmas is a game which hinges around the idea that Sean Bean is not only immortal but is also a plurality of somewhere between twenty and infinity beings all called Sean Bean, and if he manages to survive to the end of a film, he’ll break the curse placed upon him by a Cosmic Demon Witch and be allowed to die on his own terms.
Still following? Right: now you all play Sean Bean as you all film, act in, direct, cater and generally produce a Netflix Christmas special while accidents on set mean that the majority of you die. It’s absolute nonsense but it reads okay and it has some pictures of Sean Bean in it, so swings and roundabouts.
LAST CHRISTMAS
A Christmas Carol. We all love it, and by “we” we mean “some of us” and by “it” we mean “the clearly superior Muppets version which easily outperforms the original.” But what if A Christmas Carol went wrong?
LAST CHRISTMAS puts you in the spectral shoes of one of four festive spirits (Christmas Past, Christmas Present, Christmas Yet To Come, Cursed Moneylender) who accidentally gave Scrooge a heart attack and, by doing so, caused the end of the world. Using only your time-travelling abilities and ghostly powers, can you avert the apocalypse and save Christmas?
WE THREE KINGS
Written in the distant past by a dewy-eyed Grant who had not been reduced to a dilapidated lean-to of a man by age, disease and madness, WE THREE KINGS is a jolly romp which sees the traditional Three Wise Men myth pumped into a high-octane action extravaganza. One of them’s a swordfighter - one of them’s a wizard - one of them’s a necromancer who just can’t die - and they’re here to save Christmas! Or rather, save Christ.
You get +1 bonus for every King present in the scene, and the rules explicitly state that Jesus counts as a King for these purposes, so bear that in mind to maximise your damage output.
Right, that’s all! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Joyous Kwanzaa, Cool Yule, chiz chiz jingle bells penny for the goose etc. Be good to each other.
Yours,
- Chris, Grant, Maz and Mina