What new games have you gotten this holiday season?

The second half of December is a popular time for people to acquire new video games. Even if you don’t receive one as a holiday gift, there’s still a host of seasonal sales and giveaways to help you increase the size of your gaming backlog. There’s the Steam Winter Sale, of course, and the annual tradition of daily free games from the Epic Games Store. Nintendo has their Hits for the Holidays sale, and PlayStation and Xbox currently have sales as well. So what games did everyone get?

I only received one video game from Santa: Yars Rising for the Nintendo Switch, a game I enjoyed during this summer’s NextFest event. I’ve already caught up to the part that the demo ended at so hopefully this weekend I’ll get to explore even more of this bizarre but enjoyable prequel to a classic Atari game.

The main reason I only got one gaming present is because so much content comes via digital now and doesn’t really fit in a stocking. Fortunately, Epic and Steam have me covered. From the former I’m looking forward to trying out Vampire Survivors and Dredge since I was able to get them for free, and from Steam I picked up a couple site favorites in Balatro and Baldur’s Gate 3. Of these games Balatro is the only one I’ve put some time into (although I downloaded BG3 so I could start playing with the character creator) only to discover it sneakily gives me headaches! Luckily this isn’t a rare issue for players and there are settings I can adjust to eliminate medical problems while playing — which is good because I’ve definitely played it too long to return.

So what about you? Any games you got as gifts that you’re already enjoying? Did you pick up anything from the Steam Winter Sale, or does anything from the Epic Games Store daily free giveaway catch your eye? Or do you not care to play anything new because you’re getting ready for 2025?