In this Christmas Day edition of our regular culture and opinion feature, the focus shifts from what editors have already played to what they most hope to play as the day unfolds. The notes capture a shared mood: a blend of comfort titles, backlog burn, and portable escapism that fits around meals, naps, and loud family moments. From Switch 2 showcases to retro nostalgia and sprawling open worlds, the lineup is a reflection of how many gamers carve out a little personal space during the holidays.
Tom keeps the frame intimate and practical: "Whatever I can get my hands on I've bought my son Metroid Prime 4 and Civ 7 for his Switch 2, so I'm hoping I can get some time with the TV to give Geometry Wars-alike Sektori a proper go. Chances of this happening? Well, not high. Maybe I'll get some time to try it on the Steam Deck, but given I'll likely also be cooking lunch and suffering from sleep deprivation, maybe I'll settle for a few rounds of Mario Kart World with the family and hope I don't disgrace myself. Happy Christmas, everyone!" The sentiment is telling: the holiday is as much about shared moments as it is about personal high scores, and the practical constraints rear their heads early in the planning.
Tiny Bookshop centers on a gentler kind of joy. The note for Tiny Bookshop on Switch 2 frames it as a cozy dream: a management game about owning a small beachfront bookstore, with the kind of atmosphere that invites a long, relaxing session after the day’s chaos. "A management game about owning a small bookstore by the sea? It sounds glorious to me, books and the beach? Ideal. I'm always drawn to management games, but ones with a cosy vibe will always pull most of my attention. After hearing nothing but good things about it from the rest of the guides team, I am ready to get stuck in (hopefully!)." The holiday mood leans toward comfort picks that feel like a warm blanket rather than a sprint for new content.
Marie Clair Obscur keeps the cadence brisk, balancing backlog discipline with a torch for spectacle. The plan is to tackle this year’s backlog, starting with The Game Awards 2025 winner, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. "I'll no doubt end up buying far too many games in the Steam Winter Sale and playing those to death instead over the holidays, but my plan is to get through as much of this year's gaming backlog as possible, starting with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. I did play Act 1 back when it released, but I dropped it after getting stuck on Act 1's final boss... and now I fear going back to it. The holidays are my opportunity to restart my save and finally go see what Act 2 and 3 are about, provided I don’t let any other games get in the way first." Her notes underscore a common holiday veteran’s strategy: triage the backlog, then settle into something that has earned a second look.
Kelsey writes with a citrusy clarity about the Switch 2 era of gaming: Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment offers handheld catharsis, and the prospect of slipping away with a headphone set to cut through the day’s noise is appealing. "Gaming is essential at Christmas. No, not for playing with family - for escaping them. That's why I always like to have a handheld game available, so I can sneak away after too much food and drink, put some headphones on and ignore everybody. And what could be better for some escapism than thwacking and smacking a load of moblins as the Zelda series' titular princess? It's proving incredibly cathartic." The editor’s take highlights the holiday’s paradox: togetherness at the table, and solitude in a small screen.
Ed is drawn to the idea of catching up with what’s been missed, not just what’s new. Soulframe and Warframe sit alongside the wish to finally sink time into the latter’s latest update, The Old Peace. "The Christmas holidays are the perfect time to jump into a game you missed, or one you've foolishly left by the wayside. For me, that's Soulframe. It's this true fantastical gem I've only managed to sink a few hours into since gaining access to the Preludes servers. The game appears to be a weird one. Not in a bad way necessarily, but it's something I've yet to figure out properly. Here's hoping a few days free will remedy that. Between these I'll see my family and friends, I suppose." The note captures the dual pull of discovery and obligations—the holiday as space to test a curiosity that didn’t quite fit into the pressure cooker of the year.
Connor’s Christmas balance leans toward big, accessible adventures with room for a haircut of exploration. Star Wars Jedi: Survivor on PS5 represents a well-paced, open-world map affair that can scratch the itch for a daytime blockbuster while leaving room for casual evenings at the couch. He writes with affection for the game’s form, even as he acknowledges a prior review that called it merely "quite good." He still intends to revisit: "I love this game, despite reviewing it and saying it was just quite good. I stand by that - it is quite good! But it's quite good in the perfect way. I finished the story back then, but I have this quiet urge to go back and mop up the map, collect lightsaber parts and differently-coloured ponchos, and trigger a few small moments with BD-1 that I missed the first time." Alongside that, Lego City Undercover on Switch 2 offers a lighter, family-friendly sandbox—his playful riff on a familiar open-world structure, a spirited counterpoint to the feast.
Victoria’s day bends toward retro and parity with modern hardware. Super Metroid on SNES via Switch 2 anchors her schedule, with the rest of the day folding around family, dogs, and the year’s big day. She sketches a day that transitions from chaos to quiet, before the game-night energy returns with a post-dinner ease. Alongside that, she keeps a list of comfort picks like Balatro and PBA Pro Bowling, and even traces a post-Game Awards path that includes finishing Metroid: Zero Mission. The throughline is clear: a Christmas Day that prizes a sequence of familiar joys alongside a modern, platform-bridging retro revival.
Alex Avalon, speaking through a board game lens, centers Avalon as a social, endlessly iterative experience. "This newer edition of Avalon is so much nicer than the old one, and it has more rule permutations. Every time I go to my brother's house, which I am on Christmas Day, we end up playing Avalon. We're borderline obsessed as a group. To the uninitiated, Avalon is like Traitors, or Werewolf, more accurately. It's a game about hidden baddies who are trying to upset the game for the goodies. There are all sorts of Arthurian permutations to this, to the rules, and to characters like Arthur and Mordred and Percival, but what I've outlined is the essence of the game: it's a game about accusing other people of lying. This is endless, and rather precarious, fun." The piece closes on a note about the instinct to protect one’s social circle through clever misdirection, a Christmas staple for many gaming groups.
Bertie, contributing a reflective coda, unpacks the social dynamics of Avalon as well. "The newer edition of Avalon is nicer, and the permutations keep it fresh. The easiest-to-notice partner behavior often reveals itself in a shared space, where a twitch or a laugh becomes a signal. The precarious part is deciding how much risk to take to win—it's a study in trust, deception, and how much you're willing to gamble when the table is full of family and nostalgia." The reflection ties the holiday mood to the enduring pull of social deduction games and the way a Christmas Day table can become a testing ground for social instincts just as much as for strategic play.
As a snapshot, these notes sketch a culture of Christmas gaming that sits between the old and the new. There’s the return to beloved staples, a tilt toward portable play that lets players slip away from the table and still stay in the same room, and a recognition that the holidays are as much about shared moments as solitary quests. Hardware transitions—Switch 2 and the chance to revisit SNES classics—sit beside a year-end desire to clear a backlog, to finally conquer a stubborn boss, or to discover a new indie darling that feels like it was made for these quiet days of late-afternoon gaming and early-evening wind-down.
The holiday frame is less about chasing the next big thing and more about finding a comfortable rhythm that can flex around family routines. It’s a reminder that gaming can be both a shared ritual and a personal retreat—whether that means a quick round of a geometry-inspired shooter on a Steam Deck, a long session chasing a retro classic on Switch 2, or gathering around a tabletop to read the room’s mood before the next round of deception in Avalon. In that light, Christmas Day gaming becomes less about status and more about presence: the presence of a game that fits this exact moment, the presence of friends and family, and the simple, lasting joy of playing together even when the day has stretched into a long, contented evening.