There are two types of people in the world right now: those who’ve already updated their Slack status to “🎄OOO” and those who are frantically working on wrapping up projects before Christmas Eve tomorrow.

This writer is in the latter camp. Yay. 

If you’re lucky enough to have finished all of your work on time, kudos to you. It’s time to take a breather and switch off. 

One way to do that might be controversial to some. Sure, they might ruin friendships and break up families, but who can say no to a 6-hour marathon of Monopoly?

Let’s round up some fun alternative games you might’ve missed this year. Family optional. You know, to avoid the fallouts and get some “you” time in. 

🐈 Stray: this cat-based adventure game goes into the category of “games we wish we could play for the first time again” and follows the story of a homeless cat roaming a robot-filled cyber-punk world. We’ve covered its pawsomeness in a previous newsletter if this didn’t already make you open a new tab.

🌗 Moonshot: a physics-based puzzle game where you play Moon Pi, a young moon separated from Mother Earth. Using slingshot mechanics and navigational puzzles, your mission is to help Moon Pi get back home from its journey across the mysterious universe.

🧱 Colonist.io lets you play the popular competitive Settlers of Catan board game online. 

🎒 Jetpack Joyride 2: this remake of the popular side-scroller runner action game features new HD graphics, animations, and gameplay. Barry’s back!

If you’re brave enough and do want to involve your close ones, this Avalon alternative has been thoroughly tested by the Product Hunt team. Don’t let the name keep you from trying it out. But be ready for a shouting match. 

• Sleeve integrates with Apple Music, Spotify, and Doppler, to display your currently playing track and let you control playback from anywhere.

• Create new recipes based on the ingredients that you have on hand with this AI recipe generator. 

• GridUp lets you automate recurring tasks in Webflow to speed up development time with the help of synchronized components and automated page building.

• HarvestingCat helps you get tax benefits by donating NFTs and crypto to charities. 

Firstbase launched Raise to give startups a way to be discovered by a pre-vetted network of VCs. 

For founders, Raise allows them to create a unified dashboard to track their company’s finances and business metrics, and determine what information they’d like to share.