The Advent of Indies presents 23 free games in the runup to Christmas

Ho ho-how would you feel about 23 free indie games, one for each day leading up to Christmas? (And with a big prize draw on the 24th?) Yes, it's an indie advent calender - or to give it its proper title, The Advent of Indies . The difference between this generous initiative and a regular advent calender is that in place of a gritty, indistinct blob of chocolate you'll be getting a free game a day from a mix of "underdog and famous" developers, plus the chance to win codes for even more. The initiative kicks off on Saturday, December 1st - full details lie below the oddly chimney-shaped break.

Jana Reinhardt of Rat King Entertainment (Indie Busker and developer of 3D roguelike Pitman) is spearheading the campaign, along with 22 other mystery indie developers. We're promised a mixture of new and well-known faces, working across a number of different genres. Every day, from December 1st to the 23rd, "one team or single developer per day will present their finest free game, plus winnable codes for their current project." The final day will offer a huge prize draw, like those all-too-rare advent calenders that give you a larger bit of chocolate on the 24th.

The first game won't be revealed until the 1st, but the website for this generous and heartwarming iniative is available for your perusal right now. There's a different piece of floating gingerbread representing each day - feel free to comb each digital crumb for clues. Mmm, gingerbread.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.