For many of us, the upcoming holiday break means having a lot of time on our hands. 

We’re at home with the family, off work or school, and we can only stand so many Christmas movies, so many cookies, and so much time with our beloved family members. 

Instead of looking for a million little ways to distract ourselves or doomscrolling on our phones, why not look for a single game to invest time in? 

The following games will each provide you with dozens of hours of fun, and the only regret you’ll come away with is that you spent less time with them.

Editor’s note: All of the games on this list are traditional “Web2” games without crypto or blockchain integrations. But you might enjoy ’em anyway!

Indiana Jones and the Great Circle

Platforms: PC, Xbox Series X/S

Have you ever watched one of the classic “Indiana Jones” movies and wondered what it would be like to step into his shoes, put on his hat and leather jacket, and dive into some bone-filled catacombs? 

If so, then Indiana Jones and the Great Circle is your game. 

This game gives you tons of mysteries and places to explore, and—going against the worries of the critical community ahead of release—it’s anything but a rehashing of Uncharted, now with Indiana Jones characters. 

As Indy, you’ll rock clever disguises and blend into the crowd, using your social stealth knack to crack mysteries. 

Dive underground, and it’s all classic Indy vibes—hat, whip, and wit—tackling puzzles, outsmarting fascist goons, and delivering knockout blows with whatever melee weapon you can scrounge up. Guns? Strictly a last resort.

It feels like a genuinely authentic Indiana Jones adventure that lets you role-play as the titular character in just about every way you can think of.

Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X/S

The Like a Dragon series started in the early 2000s (when it was originally called Yakuza) and has 10 games in its canon storyline. But you can totally start with Infinite Wealth, the most recent mainline game in the series. 

As Ichiban Kasuga, you’ve just been fired from a job and are heading to Hawaii to find your long-lost mother. What sounds like a paradise vacation, however, quickly turns into a tank of barracudas, sharks, and more. 

You’ll go on an epic adventure, make awesome friends, beat up Danny Trejo, and save Hawaii—stopping along the way to deliver pizzas, fill up your social network, and sing karaoke. 

Infinite Wealth is equal parts heartfelt, deadly serious, and goofy fun, and it all works together.

Dragon’s Dogma 2

Platforms: PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a weird game, and even its developers are probably surprised that the original got a sequel. 

This game puts you on a quest to retake your rightful place on the throne, but it truly is the journey, not the destination. Journeys can be long and arduous, and you must prepare for them. 

You can’t take everything with you, but the more damage you take, the less you can heal back. You’ll choose a class for yourself and your AI-controlled companion and borrow a couple from other players. 

Dragon’s Dogma is a strange, beautiful game, and there’s nothing else quite like it.

Astro Bot

Platform: PlayStation 5

Role-playing games are fun, but they’re a big lift. Sometimes, you just want to have some chill fun. Astro Bot is perhaps the closest that anyone has ever come to replicating the simple joy of a Mario game outside of Nintendo. 

As Astro Bot, you’ll visit themed planets, rescuing other bots inspired by a startling array of PlayStation franchises, both new and ancient. 

This game sports an incredible amount of variety; in one level you might get some grabby monkey hands to climb and fight with. In another scenario, you transform into a sponge that absorbs and releases water as it interacts with the environment. 

The game is packed with delightful surprises at every turn, features outstanding music, and delivers a particularly satisfying experience for older gamers with fond memories of PlayStation. It offers a complete and engaging experience for anyone capable of holding a controller.

Balatro

Platforms: Switch, PS5/PS4, Xbox Series X/S, Xbox One, iOS, Android, PC, Mac

You can play Balatro for just half an hour if you have the willpower of a mighty warrior. Or you can play it all day and night, forgetting to shower and eat as you try just one more round. 

Balatro, developed by just one person, combines poker, solitaire, and roguelike game mechanics. 

Each playthrough starts with 52 cards, and you’ll build your deck, adding special cards—and most importantly, unique jokers that modify your deck, multiplying what might’ve been a few hundred points into tens of millions with the right combinations. 

When you score high enough, your score meter sets on fire. That’s really all we need to say.

Metaphor: ReFantazio

Platforms: PS5/PS4, Xbox Series X/S, PC

Metaphor: ReFantazio might be a strange title, but stick with it. 

This is the new series from the developer of the beloved Persona series. It carries over many elements of those games into a brand new fantasy world—an opportunity to get in on the ground floor. 

Metaphor tells a thoughtful story about democracy and religion, features brilliant turn-based gameplay, and iterates on the time mechanics from Persona to keep them familiar and refreshing. 

It has some of the most memorable music of the year and retains the studio’s high standard of visual design in both the characters and user interface alike. Extra points for the enemies inspired by Hieronymus Bosch’s “Garden of Earthly Delights.”

Satisfactory

Platforms: PC (consoles soon)

Out here in the real world, we should strive to leave a minimal environmental impact on the world around us. In video games, though, why not do the opposite? 

Exploit the living daylights out of a beautiful alien planet, turning it from an unspoiled natural world into a sprawling complex of machines belching out smoke and creating a ruckus, all for the sake of profit… of the company you work for. 

That’s Satisfactory. 

FICSIT, Inc. drops you on an empty planet, and you must build a space elevator and orbital space station. By the time you’re done, you’ll have nuclear power plants, multiple train lines, and hundreds of machines spread across countless installations. 

You can play this one in multiplayer if you like, or you can play it alone. You can do lots of math, or you can wing it. You can work hard to make all of your machines aesthetically pleasing, or you can create a gnarly network of noodly conveyor belts. That’s the FICSIT way.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair

Microsoft has lowered the bar to gain access to lots of games on Xbox with an Xbox Game Pass—for just $10 a month, users can pick up a whole bunch.

Still, you’re looking at $120 a year minimum to get gaming on a system that probably cost you $500. 

Even if great games are worth the money, our budgets only stretch so far. You can get games like Forza Horizon 5 or Starfield that will last hundreds of hours, but even then, those may only keep your attention for so long.

That’s where free-to-play games come in. Free-to-play once meant a “short Flash game that you can play in a browser.” Now, the term really just means a game that you can start playing without spending a cent, and there are some serious bangers.

While free-to-play is far from a quality marker, it’s no longer a promise of a subpar title either. There are free-to-play games that can roll with the best of them.

Here are our favorite free games on Xbox Series X and S right now.

(Editor’s note: All of the games on this list are traditional “Web2” games with no crypto elements. However, if you’re looking for a compelling crypto game on Xbox Series X/S, Off the Grid just launched in early access and could be a future contender for this list.)

Call of Duty: Warzone 2.0

We offer up a few different ways to fire video game guns at friends and strangers, and each has its own appeal. But there’s nothing quite like Call of Duty in terms of tone and feel. 

Party up with your friends and live out your Tier 1 Operator fantasies, parachuting into a war-torn city to battle other soldiers of fortune. It’s like paintball, except all the paint is red, and you don’t leave with a bunch of welts on your back.

Fall Guys

Sometimes, gaming is about winning. Other times, it’s about being a smol bean and pushing your friends off of stuff. That’s what Fall Guys is for. Fall Guys is, in short, a video game version of shows like “Takeshi’s Castle” (aka “MXC”). 

You inhabit the body of a bean-shaped character and are tasked with completing different events like keeping out of the water, staying on falling platforms, completing obstacle courses, or keeping the other teams from completing an event before your team can. 

Every one of the games is silly slapstick action, thanks in part to how goofy the bean-shaped characters look. If you want to spend money on skins for your bean, you can—but it hardly feels necessary.

The Finals

If you’re an old kid, then you might remember “American Gladiators,” a game show that pits everyday athletes against trained, body-building athletes in a variety of physical events. 

The Finals is kind of like that. This online multiplayer FPS is a sort of virtual tournament—hence the name. Teams, usually of three players, drop into the map for an event like Capture the Flag.

Here’s the twist: Almost everything in front of you can be destroyed, up to and including full buildings. Grenades, mines, and the largest of the three character types can all destroy walls, meaning that simply being in another room isn’t the security blanket you’re used to in other shooters.

Fortnite

Fortnite might be a top-tier battle royale shooter, but it’s also a constantly evolving game. 

As we write this, you can use Iron Man’s boots or Leatherface’s chainsaw to zip around the map. Before that, we had things like the Omni-Gear from “Attack on Titan” and cyberpunk swords that let you dash around. Weapons filter in and out, and locations evolve. Every once in a while, the map completely changes.

You can play Fortnite alone or with up to four players. You can play it with or without building functionality. There are also countless user-created modes, alongside official things like Fortnite Festival and Rocket Racing. 

You can try to resist buying skins, but if you’re having fun with the game, its hard to say no when Epic Games adds a skin of your favorite character to the game, whether it be Jack Skellington, RoboCop, or Marcus Fenix from Gears of War.

Path of Exile

Sure, Diablo IV is on Xbox Game Pass—but you don’t need to pay for the pass to get an authentic action RPG experience. Path of Exile is an isometric, always-online action game in the style of the Diablo series. 

While there are ways to spend money, you can finish the campaign without cracking open your wallet. The game also has a monstrous skill tree that will give you practically infinite options if you like tinkering with your character. 

The Sims 4

If you don’t want to shoot guns or swing swords, though, The Sims 4 might be your best bet. 

As of 2022, The Sims 4 is a free-to-play game available on various consoles and platforms. This base download still offers everything it did at launch. If it hooks you, though, publisher EA has piles and piles of expansions and object packs to let you live out your perfect digital life.

Warframe

If you like deep, detailed game lore but don’t want to spend money, then Warframe is your jam. 

This third-person action RPG puts you into a Warframe, which is basically a biomechanical ninja suit. You can dash and jump around to explore, focus on customizing your character, and engage in player-vs-player combat. 

Since its release, the game has received massive support from its developer, with updates that have added piles and piles of lore to consume and explore.

Edited by Sebastian Sinclair