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Overwatch Winter Wonderland 2019 begins with Snowball Deathmatch

Overwatch has kicked off this year's Winter Wonderland event with new holiday skins and a free-for-all deathmatch twist on Mei's Snowball Fight.

Ozzie Mejia

December 10, 2019 11:05 AM

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Overwatch isn't quite getting its newly-announced sequel for Christmas, but Blizzard's team-based shooter is still lining up three weeks' worth of holiday fun. It's that time of year again for the Overwatch Winter Wonderland event. While last year focused mainly on cosmetics, this year's event does have a new game mode lined up to bring winter merriment to all Overwatch players.

Past Winter Wonderland events have included Mei's Snowball Fight and Yeti Hunt and those will indeed be around for this year. However, players can also expect an all-new limited-time game mode called Snowball Deathmatch. This is exactly what it sounds like, putting eight players into a free-for-all deathmatch. The rules operate similar to the aforementioned Mei's Snowball Fight, only now it's every Mei for themselves, as all eight players will look to knock each other out with a modified Mei snowball gun. While snowballs can knock players out in one hit, the twist for this year will be that players can now "Catch" snowballs. Catching an enemy snowball means you're safe and will add the enemy snowball to your ammo count. Whoever can score 15 eliminations first is the winner.

It wouldn't be an Overwatch event without a handful of cosmetic items, so gather around the fire for this year's rewards. Weekly Challenges are making their return, with rewards including player icons, sprays, and one Epic skin for each week of the event. Those skins include:

Ugly Sweater Soldier:76 (Week 1)

Holly Moira (Week 2)

Snow Angel Mercy (Week 3)

Four other Legendary Skins will also be available over the course of this year's Winter Wonderland. Those skins are:

Jotunn Doomfist

Mountain Man McCree

Rat King Reaper

Rime Sigma

This year's Overwatch Winter Wonderland event begins today and is set to run through January 2. This is open to Overwatch players on all platforms, including the newly-released Nintendo Switch version. You can find more information on this year's snowy festival on the Overwatch website.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?