Mayor Nelly is the leader of the humble Utania Village, but on Christmas Eve of year 242 AR, Goblin King Frinch suddenly declares war on the village because he hates their Christmas festivities. Fortunately, a trio of mercenaries show up to drive off the initial wave of enemies. Nelly and her friends proceed to hire several mercenaries to help defend the village against further attacks while using the spoils of battle to supply the mercenaries with gear and consumable items. However, the Christmas-hating forces keep sending increasingly stronger bosses after the village.
The gameplay consists of campaigns with consecutive enemy waves and bosses. However, the game is also "roguelite" in that levels are reset after each campaign, but consumables, equipment, and money are carried over. Additionally, the most basic consumables are refilled for free at the end of a campaign, though the more premium consumables must be manually restocked. Finally, players can only choose three mercenaries to use in a campaign, which means they'll have to consider the utility of the Nuker, Support, and Tank roles as well as the Physical, Arcane, and Force types.
This game contains examples of the following:
- Aliens Are Bastards: The boss of Invasion mode is Lord Aldwol, a tentacled and grotesque alien conqueror who answers Gobi's call to destroy Utania. Even outside of his hatred of Christmas, he disrespects his supposed allies Frinch and Matria.
- Arbitrary Headcount Limit: The player party can only contain three mercenaries, which forces the player to plan around the three combat roles and the three damage types. Enemy formations can have up to eight in their numbers.
- Because You Were Nice to Me: Gobi sees the various leaders of the Christmas-hating coalition as mere pawns. He is only loyal to Lord Ciceri, who took him in after Vyena's Holy Order slaughtered his family.
- Big Bad: Goblin King Frinch hates Christmas and attacks Utania Village with his army of like-minded minions in order to stop their celebrations. Unfortunately, he's overshadowed by his henchman, Gobi, who uses his connections to call upon stronger Christmas-hating villains when Frinch proves too incompetent for the task. In the final stage, Gobi himself subverts his Non-Action Big Bad status and becomes the Final Boss.
- Boring, but Practical: Draw Aggro skills that don't also attack the enemy may seem underwhelming, but this also means they won't trigger counterattacks and are therefore safer to use. Plus, Tank characters are generally inefficient at damage anyways.
- Christmas Episode: The game is a spin-off of Starmage's BlueSkies series and takes place in the year 242 AR of Vyen. Instead of focusing on the overall worldbuilding of Vyen, the game focuses on Utania Village's battle to protect their Christmas festivities from various Christmas-hating factions.
- Corrupted Character Copy:
- King Frinch is obviously based on the Grinch, but while most adaptations of the Grinch are thieves who use subterfuge and stealth instead of direct violence, Frinch declares war on Utania Village because he hates their Christmas festivities and finds them annoying.
- Gobi turns out to be a darker take on the Grinch's 2000 film incarnation, since his race was not only ostracized by Vyena's worshipers, they outright slaughtered his people on Christmas day. As a result, he is much more vengeful than that version of the Grinch.
- Cosmetic Award: Benjamin sells Christmas decorations and expands his inventory when the player completes new campaigns, but they exist solely to fill up dead space in Mayor Nelly's house. Fortunately, they are much cheaper than higher-end equipment, meaning the player won't be set back too much when purchasing them.
- Defeat Means Friendship: If Cameo mode's final boss is defeated on any variation of Nightmare, Gobi will attend Utania's Christmas celebrations and sell overpowered items to the mercenaries. While he can be challenged again in Cameo mode, the dialogue is changed so that he'll treat his boss fight as a friendly match.
- Divinely Appearing Demons: Matria is the demoness of illusions and artificial light, and takes the appearance of the goddess Vyena: a beautiful woman with angel wings. Her campaigns' battlefields also look like the inside of a holy temple, but is filled with demons and false angels. In Armageddon mode, she transforms into a grotesque monster and the battlefield transforms into a hellish location.
- Early Game Hell: The initially available equipment in the stores is good enough to beat the early modes, but even with good preparation, the first few versions of King Frinch can be tanky to take down. Starting with Invasion mode, better equipment and consumables will be unlocked, making it easier to min-max characters to finish off enemies faster while still staying alive.
- Entitled Bastard: In Invasion mode, Lord Aldwol is introduced threatening King Frinch into abdicating his position of leadership in the war on Utania, only to lose anyways. In Invasion+ mode, Aldwol threatens Frinch into helping in the rematch against Utania's mercenaries, and has the gall to push all the responsibility for their loss on the latter. In Divine and Armageddon mode, Matria pulls the same routine on Frinch and Aldwol, going as far as to blame them for their failed Wolf Pack Boss fight and non-lethally drain their power to achieve her One-Winged Angel form.
- Eviler than Thou: The moment Lord Aldwol shows up, he intimidates the weaker King Frinch into abstaining from the Invasion campaign, and then forcefully conscripts him in the Invasion Plus campaign. The demoness Matria proceeds to do the same to Aldwol and Frinch in the Divine and Armageddon campaigns, going as far as to mentally torture Aldwol into submission. In Armageddon mode, Matria non-lethally absorbs the life force of her comrades to achieve her One-Winged Angel form.
- Freudian Excuse: At the end of Cameo mode, if the player chooses to listen to Gobi's backstory, he reveals that Vyena's Holy Order slaughtered his goblin people on Christmas day, leading to him hating Vyena and Christmas. He knows vengeance won't satisfy him, but he's devoted so much of his life to his rage that he doesn't know what else to do. After his defeat, he's willing to hang out with the villagers, but he still can't completely forgive Christmas because he associates it with the genocide of his people.
- Genocide Backfire: In Cameo mode, Gobi reveals that the Holy Order of Vyena murdered his fellow goblins on Christmas. After training with Lord Ciceri and making contact with various Christmas-hating villains, Gobi orchestrates a war on Christmas itself, starting with Utania Village.
- Glass Cannon: Nuker characters have the best offensive capabilities, but have little defense or ways to protect themselves from damage.
- Hazy-Feel Turn: If any variation of the Cameo Nightmare challenge is cleared, Gobi will make peace with Utania Village, but he's still loyal to Lord Ciceri, whose agenda is unknown. Gobi is also recruited by the equally mysterious Time Deity, who claims to side with neither Vyena or Matria.
- The Man in Front of the Man: Gobi appears to be King Frinch's right-hand goblin at first, but it turns out he's using Frinch for his own vendetta against Christmas and he starts contacting stronger Christmas-hating villains when Frinch proves to be insufficient for the task.
- Not So Above It All: King Frinch, Lord Aldwol, and the demoness Matria are the nominal leaders of a Christmas-hating alliance because they find the holiday annoying. In a postgame skit, the three admit that they like Braith's cover of "Jingle Bells," though they still hate Christmas as a holiday.
- Saving Christmas: The premise of the game is that Utania Village needs to hire mercenaries to protect them during Christmas Eve, due to Gobi's anti-Christmas coalition declaring war on them.
- Smarter Than You Look: Despite everyone treating King Frinch as an unintelligent meatshield, he's at least perceptive enough to see through Matria's disguise as Vyena, since he knows the real Vyena celebrates Christmas.
- Stone Wall: Characters with the Tank class have abilities to Draw Aggro or increase the defense of themselves or the party, but they tend to have weaker offensive capabilities than Support and Nuker characters.
- Support Party Member: Characters with the Support class focus on skills that heal and buff the party. However, they are between Nukers and Tanks in terms of offensive and defensive stats.
- Supporting Protagonist: Mayor Nelly is the one the player controls inside the house and is the one to interact with the mercenaries during camping segments, but she never takes part in combat.
- Sympathy for the Devil: In Cameo mode, Crampax and Yvaine break free of Gobi's mind control, but fight alongside him in Nightmare mode because they want to help him move on from his hatred of Christmas.
- Tactical Rock–Paper–Scissors: Physical damage is good against Force, Force damage is good against Arcane, and Arcane is good against Physical. However, some bosses don't have a type and take normal damage from all types.
- Undefeatable Little Village: Downplayed. The village itself has no playable characters among its citizens, but despite their size, they have the funds to hire and outfit powerful mercenaries. Said mercenaries are capable of fighting off Frinch's army, Aldwol's alien invasion, and Matria's hellspawn army.
- Uplifted Animal: Nestlei was once an ordinary sheep, but gained humanlike intelligence after drinking from an enchanted river.
- Villain Cred: Gobi merely pretended to be Frinch's underling while manipulating him. Despite that, Frinch actually respects Gobi and is proud of him for becoming the boss of Cameo mode.
- Villain Decay: King Frinch initially leads the war on Utania, but when Aldwol shows up, he's reduced to a poorly treated minion. The same thing happens to Aldwol when Matria takes charge of the war and forcefully turns both Aldwol and Frinch into her minions. However, even when Gobi takes center stage as the boss of Cameo mode, Matria doesn't end up having her presence as a villain reduced, since she already realized that Gobi was manipulating the previous bosses from the start and only played along because of their shared goal.
