Every Friday, AV Club Staffers kick off our weekly open thread discussing game plans and recent gaming glories, but of course, the real action is in the comments, where we invite you to answer our perennial question: What are you playing this weekend?
Today is Christmas, the annual celebration that asks us to reflect on what really matters in life, that is, humanity’s decades-long obsession with murdering Santa, the hateful present elf who is immortal. spends days condemning us, dividing the species into mischievous and mischievous. nice, and just overall a ho-ho-awful spot on the planet that it dominates from its lair that sits literally on top of the world. Luckily (and actually we always say this) there are video games out there, which means we can put some of our anti-Santa Clauses into action this holiday season. As such, we delved into the swirling idea box that is the Steam bargain shelf to pull off all of them the hottest Santa-based games, most of which at least offer the opportunity to watch Jolly Old Saint Nick spill his metaphorical bowl full of jelly on the cold, numb snow.
To avoid being completely buried in Yuletide joy, we did put in place a few rules for this collection. First, the games had to be cheap (because no one wants to have a holly cheerful HR meeting about our efforts to pay a bundle of $ 45 Santa themed puzzle games for this dumb What are you playing? bit). They couldn’t be in VR because, no matter how much we want to get up close and personal Santa Sling, Santa Simulatorand other fine Virtual Santa products, we just don’t have the hardware to do them justice. And they had to be – and this is always an issue when you get into the cheaper side of Steam offerings – not super horny, which makes such anime-like listings as Sakura Santa, Santa girls, Strip Black Jack – Santa Babe, Bring Me A Man Santa, and of course, Santa’s big bag, the game that dares to ask in its Steam marketing copy, “Are you a piece of cake for Santa?”
Anyway, this is what we came up with, so let’s dive in. The fat man has it.
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Price: Free
MIDI loop of “Jingle Bells”? Only on the victory screen, but the hit.
Have you ever wondered, “What if Fortnite took place on a single square of land, on which burly men fight with katanas to become the next Santa after the previous one died in a fiery sledge wreck? “Then this game is for you. Did you make this game? It’s shocking to imagine multiple people asking themselves a question that resulted in this particularly violent and gritty view. Santa.
Price: Free
MIDI loop of “Jingle Bells”? Constantly.
“Oh, neat,” you say to yourself, “A lo-fi Christmas theme Metal Gear. “Wait,” you ask yourself a few minutes later, “Why does Santa have ‘sleeping dust’ to knock out unruly kids? Did that old lady just woke up and shot Santa? Why are their landmines? Oh god, Dracula is here, and he loves his presents! “An emotional rollercoaster, compelling, would not be missing.
Price: Free extension of $ 1.99 Kyle is famous
MIDI loop of “Jingle Bells”? Tragically absent
A paid extension to John Szymanski’s wildly weird text-based game Kyle is famous, KIS starts with the titular Kyle expelling dozens of ghastly, flesh-devouring elves from his body, only to get weirder from there. Are you putting the people in Kyle-Santa’s life on the naughty or fun list? Will you create a wide variety of apocalypse by bursting reindeer and presents from Kyle’s neck? Are you going to be usurped as the true symbol of Christmas by a woman who has a serious allergic reaction to all that goddamn fairy dander? Only time will tell, dear reader. The choice is yours.
Price: Free, with paid DLC
MIDI loop of “Jingle Bells”? No, but the main combat theme is a nice kickass version of “Away In A Manger.”
Let’s be honest here: we were a little worried that this freeware RPG Maker title would violate our “no horny” rule, with the unregulated length of Mrs. Santa’s skirt. Still, the actual content is healthy enough – make or take a bold joke about ‘snowballs’ here and there – as Mrs. on time. (Last night was ‘lawyer night,’ so he needs his rest – especially since his relationship with the a lot of Mrs. Santa Claus who looks younger is a very literal May-December romance.) Bonus points for giving Mrs. S an attack, called “Season’s Beatings,” to kick the thieves with a little Yuletide flair.
Price: $ 6.99
MIDI loop of “Jingle Bells”? No MIDI here; this is game true you play “Jingle Bells”, in the metal style it was always destined to achieve.
The premise of Santa rockstar is simple: an average metal guy finds Santa dead after crashing his sleigh (a shockingly recurring motif in these games), and becomes the new Santa by hooking his electric guitar into the body of the old dead elf and hitting it away . Then you spread the Christmas spirit by playing Guitar Hero, except on a computer keyboard, and with metal versions of “Hark The Herald Angels Sing.” (You can connect a USB Guitar Hero guitar for more “authentic” shredding during the holidays.) Also, the reindeer now all have earrings, which is very metal indeed.
Price: $ 0.99
MIDI loop of “Jingle Bells”? We don’t actually know which Christmas carol is trying to be the game’s only song, but we do know this: it’s about 30 seconds long, it’s extremely annoying, and it will keep repeating until you or it’s dead.
The most interesting thing about this extremely simple holiday-themed platformer is the way it sketches the underlying tensions of the supposedly peaceful North Pole, like the forces of winter: reindeer, ice and a snowman with a bad case of perverted face– an attempt to dissuade their ostensible master, a Santa with butterfly fingers, from picking up all of his fallen toys and taking them to a series of inexplicable freestanding chimneys. A poignant portrait of class conflicts among the donors.
Price: $ 0.99
MIDI loop of “Jingle Bells”? Right on the title screen!
Look: Should I have eaten Santa’s Christmas cookies, which were clearly left out for him? Probably not. Does that justify him hiding in my bathroom, scaring me, and then dragging me into some kind of boxy Christmas maze where I can always hear him running behind me, waiting to really really scare me with a second jumpscare? I would say this is one overreaction, Santa. Stop playing Slim, take some anger management lessons, and let’s try again next Christmas.
Price: $ 0.99
MIDI loop of “Jingle Bells”? Somehow, unlikely: no.
A very simple push game, Santa’s workshop has two standout features: a pink-cheeked version of Santa that appears to have been ordered straight from a Precious Moments catalog, and a player avatar that is, bizarrely, a snowflake. How does the snowflake push the toy cars and candy you have to push around in boxes? Is it a different snowflake in each level, hooked to some sort of ice crystal hivemind? Does Santa have dark powers over the ice and wind, or is the snowflake paid for it? These are the questions that keep us awake at night.
Price: $ 0.99
MIDI loop of “Jingle Bells”? Oh, you better believe it because nothing says “Let’s shoot Santa in his testicles” like a hard rock loop of “Jingle Bells”
See, no one says it is fun to aim at a horde of raging Santa Clauses, pull the trigger and then be lovingly rendered, Sniper elite-esque kill shots that show you all the damage you’ve done to Santa’s liver, brain or lungs – that would be sociopathic. But it’s kind of Satisfying. (Even if you have to kill way too many Santa Clauses – the singular ‘de’ in the title is a sharp misnomer – to get your hands on one of the very best Claus killing gear in the game.)
Price: $ 0.99
MIDI loop of “Jingle Bells”? Enthusiastic. Unrelenting, unrepentant, perverse so.
How did Santa get his hands on zombie technology? Why do zombie elves hate Christmas? Why do these penguins look like they’ve been thrown out of their heads? None of these questions are answered in this obnoxiously slow tower defense game, even if the idea of using “Rudolph’s Rage” to kill a bunch of zombie elves with a laser has a particular gory holiday theme.
Price: $ 4.99
MIDI loop of “Jingle Bells”? No! In fact, the game’s music is more or less enjoyable.
One of the joys of doing one of these large collections of small, largely unseen games is that you hit a gem or two every now and then. Santacraft isn’t surprising – it’s essentially a winter theme on games like Don’t starve or Forager-but it is infused with pixel-art charm and a fine sense of softness. Apparently, not all Santa Clauses have to die: some can co-exist with nature. A difficult lesson to internalize, but a healthy one nonetheless.