The time has come for the return of the one-off Holiday Special

In Ho-Ho-Home Invasion (very nearly titled Santa Game Solid), play as Santa preparing his stealth skills ahead of the big night (Christmas Eve), delivering presents under trees, filling stockings, and making a swift exit – without getting caught! Whitepot Studios is excited to announce this free festive stealth micro-game, created especially for the festive season.

ELF-MADE WAREHOUSE

This year, due to social distancing requirements, Santa can’t undertake his normal training. Thankfully, his elves have crafted a fully automated Santa training area in a disused warehouse – with five bespoke “houses” for Santa to sneak his way through.

YOU BETTER WATCH OUT

Make your way through fake houses, past fake robot residents, and place some fake presents, all in record time. Be sure to:

• Peek around corners

• Tiptoe to be quiet

• Avoid training robots

• Place presents

• Safely escape the house

TRAINING ROBOTS

Make sure you avoid:

• Watchers – tiptoe past them when their head is buried in a book

• Sleepers – quietly place presents in the stockings at the foot of their bed

• And Patrollers – wait until their back is turned before making a run for it!

LAUNCH & PRICE

Ho-Ho-Home Invasion launches on Steam and Itch.io on December 15th for FREE. Whitepot Studios is using a bespoke “pay-what-you-liked” model on Steam, offering non-content DLC representing ‘tip tiers’ that fans can choose to purchase to support the developers.

INSPIRATION

In this non-canon year of 2020, never has it felt more appropriate to send a Christmas game rather than a Christmas card.

When we asked Twitter what everyone’s favourite festive video game is, the conclusion was that there’s just not that many anymore – sure, there’s board games, and party games, but how many actually festively themed video games exist?

Some had fond memories of a time when festive titles on floppy discs adorned the covers of magazines at Christmas – Commodore Amiga games, with Bullfrog’s Psycho Santa or Christmas Lemmings being the favourites. Honorable mentions also go to Bad Mr. Frosty (the Snowman from ClayFighters who appeared on the SNES game’s cover), and Jazz Jackrabbit’s Christmas Chronicles.

“Why oh why, are there not more oddly niche one-off titles that can only be played at a specific time of year?” absolutely no-one asked. Well, wonder no more – the time has come for the return of the one-off Holiday Special.