The Best Christmas Video Games & Levels ► Ludology Now!

The “why aren’t there enough Christmas games?” conversation seems to pop up every year these days, and I’m getting sick of it. If we want more Christmas video games, it’s clear people either need to make them themselves or stop complaining. That’s why, this year, I’m making my own Christmas game called Christmas Recall – more on that later.

For people who don’t have the time to make their own Christmas games to play in 2024, there are options. While the majority of the best Christmas video game experiences can be found in certain levels inside inarguably non-Christmas games, there are certain titles which are either set at Christmas or evoke the holiday spirit. Here are all the ones I tend to come back to around this time of year.

Insomniac’s Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales

Spider-Man: Miles Morales is one of the most recent Christmas games, and it’s also one of the prettiest. All the Insomniac Spider-Man games are beautiful to look at, but everyone knows New York is at its best when it’s under a few layers of snow. Miles Morales is also only about eight hours long – also known as “perfect game length” in this household.

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The story of Spider-Man: Miles Morales is also heavily steeped in the holiday spirit. The whole reason two of the most important characters in the game are brought together is to celebrate Christmas, and an important plot point – Miles’ mom’s political rally – takes place on Christmas Eve itself. It’s not the first superhero video game to do this (Batman: Arkham Origins gets a special mention here for also being set on Christmas Eve) but it is the best Christmas story in gaming involving superheroes.

Elf Bowling

People of a certain age will undoubtedly remember Elf Bowling and its many, many sequels and rip-offs. Originally conceived of as a marketing demo, Elf Bowling became so popular that it went all the way from weird flash game to getting an animated movie in 2007. [Editor’s Note: It’s bad, don’t watch it.]

It’s crass, rude, and, if you were playing it today for the first time, you might think, “Wow, this didn’t age very well.” It actually did age about exactly as well as it possibly could have, and those weird elements that bother you now bothered people back then too. However, there’s a nostalgic part of me that intrinsically links Elf Bowling to the holiday season, and it’s a Christmas game I still play every year.

Banjo-Kazooie: Freezeezy Peak & Click Clock Wood

While there are lots of Nintendo 64 games with quality snow and/or Christmas-themed levels, it’s impossible to pick something like Holiday Broadcasting from Gex 3: Deep Cover Gecko over Banjo-Kazooie. Freezeezy Peak is peak Christmas game, with dancing presents, marching Christmas lights, murderous snowmen, and the ability to turn into a walrus.

Click Clock Wood isn’t quite as Christmas-focused, but it does provide lovely fall and holiday vibes in its Autumn and Winter zones. Maybe it’s because the N64 reminds me of some of my favorite Christmas memories of all time, but it’s hard not to want to jump back into Banjo-Kazooie’s world every year around December. Honorable mentions in this part of my brain go to the multiple snowy worlds in Super Mario 64 and the Crash Site level in Perfect Dark. Also Shadowgate 64: Trials of the Four Towers, but that’s a discussion for another time.

GTA Online’s Annual Snowstorm & Mafia II

Every year GTA Online takes the hot, steamy air of Los Santos and replaces it with a winter wonderland. I barely turn on GTA Online at all anymore, but once a year since about 2015 I’ve hopped back in for a few days close to the holidays. It’s not exactly a Christmas game in the thematic sense, but GTA Online’s Christmas celebration is still a good time.

It takes a while to get to it, but people looking for more Rockstar-crafted Christmas experiences should also check out Bully, which includes multiple holiday celebrations. The Christmas portion of the game takes place during Chapter 3.

For open world crime fans looking for a much more directed experience, Mafia II contains a lengthy couple of missions set during the holidays and has been recently remastered by Hanger 13. While I personally prefer the original Mafia for weird reasons (I like really janky cars and having to worry about traffic laws, okay?) Mafia II is still an excellent experience. Nothing says Merry Christmas like a Tommy Gun, after all.

Batman Returns (SNES) & Clay Fighter 33⅓

I can’t stress enough that this is a list of games that I play during the Christmas season, and your own mileage will vary. Most of this is based more on vibes than actual Christmas settings, and it’s hard to recommend games like Clay Fighter to anyone who wasn’t indoctrinated into the series three decades ago. Still, if that’s you, it’s a fun time.

Batman Returns is an easier sell, as it is indisputably a Christmas game. This is one of those side-scrolling brawlers from the Final Fight and Captain America and the Avengers school of gameplay, and it was one of my favorites back in the early 1990’s. I remember it being much harder than it actually is, but that’s most games from the era. It’s definitely worth checking out if you like Batman and/or Christmas video games, and don’t forget to spam the grappling hook kick if you get overwhelmed.

Hitman: Holiday Hoarders & You Better Watch Out…

Agent 47 dressed as Santa in Hitman's Paris Level.

Embodying the persona of a cold-hearted killer might not scream “season’s greetings” but somehow IOI has made it work multiple times over the years. The first Christmas mission in Hitman was in Hitman: Blood Money, where Agent 47 infiltrated an elite Christmas party at a large mansion built into a cliff. There’s even a drunk Santa, and of course 47 can knock him out and become Saint Nick himself.

The three most recent Hitman games have now been combined into Hitman: World of Assassination, and as a complete package it’s one of my favorite games of all time – see my review of Hitman 3, my review of Hitman: Freelancer, and my interview with Associate Game Directors Jonas Breum Jensen and Torbjørn Vinther Christensen to learn more. Santa appears in this Hitman game as well, every year in a limited-time event called Holiday Hoarders. If you complete enough Santa challenges while playing Holiday Hoarders, you can unlock the Santa suit to take with you on any of the game’s other missions. After eight years of learning the Paris level’s secrets, Holiday Hoarders is pretty much the only way I can enjoy going back.

Christmas Recall: A New Christmas Video Game

An image of Santa in his sleigh with the words ART NOT FINAL repeating in see-through text over the entire image

Christmas Recall is a web-based Christmas game developed by Christopher J. Teuton (that’s me!) which releases for free later this month. The game revolves around Santa, who the player controls, as he desperately tries to save Christmas on his sleigh while avoiding enemies and projectiles in an infinite-runner style experience. It was created using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript code, and will be launching on DogTree Studios’ itch.io page in the near future.

The plot is, Santa has just returned to the North Pole after delivering presents all over the world. However, once he gets back he realizes there’s been a terrible mistake: one of the elves at the factory made a clerical error, and all the Christmas presents were switched with the North Pole’s coal reserves. Now the North Pole has no heating, and all the nice children will think they have been naughty! It’s up to Santa to save the day – by doing the biggest Christmas Recall the world has ever seen!

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To be honest, Christmas Recall is the final step in a 12-month long project that consisted of me developing all kinds of small experiences, from recreating games like Tic-Tac-Toe and Snake to creating full, Lovecraftian text adventures. If you are interested in how those projects turned out, my friend Eric and I recently played through twelve of them:

I don’t watch much late night talk shows anymore, but I do enjoy catching the clips from Late Night With Seth Meyers over my morning coffee. Every Thanksgiving, instead of celebrity guests, Seth brings on his father, mother, and brother, and they just talk about their family on stage. It’s always a heartwarming episode, and after years and years of family updates I can’t say it didn’t make me slightly proud to hear that Seth’s brother Josh finally got married this year. If nothing else, it’s worth it for the annual Myers Family Kids Turkey Party.
As someone who really enjoyed – and was incredibly frustrated at times by – Arctic Eggs, reading this interview with the game’s developer, Keven Brown (of The Water Museum)on Game Developer was quite interesting. If you spent even a little bit of time playing or watching a stream of Arctic Eggs since it launched back in May, this is worth reading.
It would be remiss of me to not mention Dreams on a Pillow, a “pseudo-3D stealth adventure game inspired by a historical Palestinian folk tale set during the ethnic cleansing that was the 1948 Nakba.” This game is being created by Palestinian game developer Rasheed Abueideh, and due to the current genocide it’s impossible for him to get funding through normal means. If you want and have the ability to donate to keep Palestinian art alive, please do via the link above.

A brief note on the word BEST: You'll see this a lot over the next few weeks, titles like the one I used here. Obviously, I mean "Best Christmas video games" as in "these are the Christmas video games that are the best for me." I tried hard to make that clear throughout this issue of Ludology Now!, but I want to make it extra clear here. There is no "objective" version of "best" when it comes to art. My "best" and your "best" can be the same, sure, but it is far more likely that they will be different, and that's okay. So when you see Best Game of 2024 awards, Best Shooter of 2024, Best RPG of 2024, all that stuff, all those SEO articles that are likely already being prepped despite the fact that there's 29 more days of game releases to go, don't get mad. Don't worry if your "best" isn't everyone else's. I think the best Final Fantasy game is Final Fantasy X, and I bet you have an opinion that's even more divisive than that. Don't let the end-of-year listicles get under your skin.