What are we all playing this holiday?

It's almost time. In a few short hours, we will open the final door of the RPS advent calendar and reveal our favourite game of 2022. Oh, and we're all off work until the new year, bye. RPS won't be barren, mind. We have quite a few bonus festive treats lined up between now and our official return on Tuesday the 3rd of January, 2023, so enjoy those (or enjoy the ones you can; the cracker jokes are... painful). Thanks for reading RPS for another year. Before we go, please do tell us what you're playing this holiday. Here's what we're clicking on!

Alice Bee
Vampire Survivors is an ideal late afternoon game, post lunch, because you can play it while ferrying things from selection boxes into your mouth. I need to go back to Elden Ring because I haven't returned since my last rage-quit when I got stuck in a mine and lost thousands of runes, but I've also downloaded Tunic because everyone says it's good and cute. Also feeling the call to Among Trees after a couple of years of early access polish. But honestly I don't know if I'll play any games this year, because I'd have to fit them in around watching A Muppet Christmas Carol and hollering "NO CHEESES FOR US MEESES!", and there simply isn't time.

Alice0
I want to start and finish a few games over the break. Signalis has fantastic mood and intriguing mysteries but I grew so bored of needing to find a keycard to open a door so I could find a keycard to open a door so I could find a keycard to open a door so I could find a key to open a chest to find a keycard to open a door. I will persevere. I also want to check out dice-rolling roguelikelike Slice & Dice, which looks to have clever ideas about mapping classes and equipment onto the faces of dice. And after unlocking a ton of stuff in Brotato, it's time to push into the highest difficulty levels.

CJ
Christmas is a time for games old and new, and I'm planning on showing some attention to both over the next few weeks. Something I hadn't expected to be playing during the holidays was Star Wars: Dark Forces, a game I've not really touched since mucking about on a demo when I was a whippersnapper in the Nineties. Thanks to the recent Force Engine makeover, that's something I'm really looking forward to digging into at long last. My past few Christmases have mainly been taken up by Dragon Age: Inquisition, which I'm hoping I can finally finish before Dragon Age: Dread Wolf arrives. Other than that, I'd like to dip into some of the Game Pass stuff I've missed, such as SNES-esque RPG Chained Echoes and alchemy sim Potion Craft.

Ed
Merry Xmas! I hope to cart my PS5 over to my parent's place, so I can tackle some Lost Judgment. I cannot let my high school students languish over the holidays.

Hayden
After spending far too long thinking, I've narrowed down my list of potential Christmas games to Pentiment, Hades, and Disco Elysium. I'm torn between the three, so maybe you can all help me decide. Disco Elysium is probably a bit too dreary for the holidays, and I would like to feel some sort of festive cheer. Hmm, yes, maybe I should rule that one out. That leaves Pentiment and Hades, and I'm leaning toward the former. I hear it's a lot shorter, which should make it easier to squeeze in around the festivities of eating too many mince pies and spilling hot chocolate on new clothes. I suppose that makes Hades one for next Christmas, but I'm not sure if I can wait another year to romance some gods. Making decisions is hard!

James
This week, I tried out the PC demo for Stadia refugee Wavetale, and it's an aquatic pleasure. Breezy platforming sections punctuate bouts of speedy, self-propelled surfing, with cartoon charm and a sense of wisftful mystery to spare. I've been hankering for an easygoing solo adventure to play over the break, and this feels like just the thing.

Katharine
You know, I was compiling a big list of games I wanted to play over the holidays just the other day, and man alive, it is long. Top of my list is finishing off Pentiment, but I also want to dig into Warhammer 40K: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters' DLC Duty Eternal, and finally have a crack at Chained Echoes as well, a retro, Japanese-inspired RPG I've only heard excellent things about since I interviewed the dev last month. Then there are some smaller indies I want to mop up as well, like How To Say Goodbye, Goodbye World (I'm sensing a theme here), Stacklands and RPG Time: The Legend Of Wright. The list goes on, I'm not even kidding. We'll see how we get on, but needless to say, I won't be wanting for games to play this Christmas.

Liam
God rest ye merry readers. Christmas is officially here and for the first time in literal years I actually have a substantial amount of time off. Usually, I spend my limited festive break as far away from a PC as possible (I mean, I spend the best part 12 months sat in front of one, it's nice to allow myself a change of scenery) but this year that won't stop me from playing some gosh darned computer games. This Christmas I'm going to crawl into the sofa and play Yakuza 0, Persona 5 and Dead Space on the Steam Deck and neither you nor Santa himself can pry that beautiful device out of my hands. Have a lovely Christmas, folks! See you all in the new year.

Ollie
Goodness, suddenly I've got free time, and there are far too many games to fill it with. I've recently started playing Pentiment, which is really swell so far, and the kind of game that I expect gets better and better the more you play it. I've also been chugging through another Elden Ring playthrough, this time challenging myself to beat every boss with the use of Spirit Ashes or jump-attacks. So far, so good - but I imagine I'll be cursing myself once I get to the really hard bosses. And whenever I'm not at my PC, I daresay I'll be sneaking in the odd game or five of Marvel Snap, because I'll be damned if it isn't the most fun I've had with a CCG since my days playing Plants Vs Zombies Heroes during lunchtimes in the Hampshire County Council cafeteria.

Rachel
I have a long list of games I'd like to play with no idea if I'll play any of them, but I'm gonna be optimistic! First up are the games that I want to playthrough again, so Roadwarden and Signalis. Then there are games that I totally missed during the year when they released so We Are OFK and all three episodes of Citizen Sleeper's DLC. Then there are games that were released this December, so first up is finishing Lil Gator Game, then Aka, then Potion Craft. And finally, I'll be playing more V Rising and Vampire Survivors with my partner for vampire crimbo times. Phew!

Rebecca
By the time you read this, I will already have been off work for a week, having saved up my annual leave for an extra-long Christmas break this year. Speaking of saving things up, I believe that holidays taken in the bleak midwinter are the perfect excuse to indulge in our favourite things, which is why I've been saving the next instalments in the Ace Attorney and Danganronpa series until I could properly get stuck into them during my super-luxurious 17 days off. It's occurred to me that I could finally check out Love Is Strange as well, if I wanted to both stick with the visual novel theme and complete the hat trick of "game franchises I was extrahyperfixated on in 2022"... but realistically, any more time I have will probably go towards finishing the Boyfriend Dungeon: Secret Weapons DLC. Swoony K-pop laser-sword Seven isn't going to be my date to my cousin's wedding unless I ask him, after all, especially if we don't figure out how to beat that final boss together first.

But you, reader dear, what are you playing this weekend?