Earlier this year, development of the alien vs marines shooter game Natural Selection 2 was handed over to its community. Although developers Unknown Worlds Entertainment have not completely abandoned it, they did approve and vet a number of programmers and designers within the game’s community to safeguard its future.

There’ve been quite a few patches since then, and the latest one, Build 272, brings Christmas cheer to the game among other things. A number of maps have had a festive touch added for the season and a number of aspects of the game have been improved to make the game flow more fluidly. In fact, the patch was so large they had trouble getting it finished before the holidays.

“Build 272 has been a monster to get out, and it nearly didn’t happen. So as always special thanks to all the folks at UWE and our many programmers and playtesters on the CDT.” wrote WasabiOne in the patch update text, before noting that they had already begun work on the next Build hoping to get it out for New Year.

Obviously Build 273 will remove the festive aspects from the maps so if you’re interested in seeing them, you might need to be quick.