Christmas Games
Two hundred and nineteen Christmas games in the catalogue. Exactly one is a horror game, and eight of them are shooters.
48 games · hand-picked, then filled from the catalogue
Italiano ›Français ›Português ›Español ›
A Christmas game is an ordinary game with snow on it, and that is a more interesting statement than it sounds.
How this list is put together
Because the snow is free. A developer who adds a hat, a tree and a white ground to a working game has a second product and has spent an afternoon on it, which is why every browser catalogue on earth fills up in November. The question is never whether a Christmas game is a re-skin — it usually is. The question is what it is a re-skin of.
What the tag actually holds
Two hundred and nineteen games carry the Christmas tag here, and the split is not what most people picture.
Fifty-nine of them are dress-up or colouring games. Fifty-nine are puzzles. Eight are shooters. Snowball battles and rooftop fights, mostly, but they are shooting games with a festive coat. Six are driving games. And exactly one carries a horror tag, which is either restraint or an oversight.
So the shelf is broader than "for the children", and that is worth knowing if you are the adult who has been handed the tablet.
They do not know what day it is
This is the honest technical fact underneath the whole category, and it explains something that confuses people every year.
Nothing here has a calendar. A browser game is published once and then simply exists; there is no server switching it on in December and off in January, no seasonal content, no event. The Christmas games were here in July and they will be here in March.
Which means the useful test is the one you can run right now, out of season: play thirty seconds and ask whether you would still be playing if the sprites were not wearing hats. If yes, it is a good game and December is a bonus. If no, December will not save it.
The best of them pass that test easily. A physics driving game with an icy road is a physics driving game with a genuinely different surface model. A rooftop battle with snowballs is an arena game with a slow projectile, which changes the aiming completely. Those are real design differences hiding under the decoration.
The four at the top
An endless run across rooftops, a driving game where the ice is the point, a snowball arena that is a real arena, and a drawing game for the youngest people in the house. Behind them the Christmas and winter tags, with the horror handful taken out.
Questions people ask
Is there anything here that is not for children?
More than you would guess. Two hundred and nineteen games carry the Christmas tag and eight of them are shooters — snowball fights and rooftop battles, but shooters. There are six driving games, and a winter arena game that has nothing festive about it beyond the snow. Exactly one carries a horror tag.
Why can I play Christmas games in September?
Because none of these knows what date it is. A browser game is uploaded once and stays up; there is no seasonal switch and no server deciding it is December. That is also why the good ones are worth playing out of season — the snow is decoration, the game underneath either works or does not.
Which are good for a five-year-old?
The colouring, the drawing, the dress-up and the spot-the-difference games — and there are a lot of them, because fifty-nine of these carry a dress-up or colouring tag. Big targets, no timer, nothing to lose.
Do they work on a phone?
A large share do, and we mark which. Christmas games skew heavily towards puzzle, colouring and endless runners, which are the three things touch handles best.