I’m too old for trick-or-treating, I don’t have any kids and I’m a big chicken when it comes to most horror movies, so one of my personal favorite Halloween traditions is to play creepy video games with the lights turned off.
When I was young and even more of a coward than I am now, this meant playing Castlevania late at night. Later I graduated to Resident Evil, then Fatal Frame, then Amnesia: The Dark Descent… Whether the game is actually scaring me or not, I enjoy getting into the spooky spirit of the holiday.
To share the spooks, here are 11 great video games and a couple bonus board games to enjoy on All Hallows’ Eve.
(For more suggestions, you can check out my similar lists from 2013 and 2012.
Neverending Nightmares
Some games are good at making me jump, but Neverending Nightmares is good at making me extremely uncomfortable. You might be tricked into thinking that, because the game’s black-and-white style isn’t exactly realistic, it won’t get under your skin. But the aesthetic makes the entire game feel like one of the most unsettling children’s drawings you’ve ever seen. The imagery in Neverending Nightmares often made me look away from the screen not because I was frightened (not always, anyway), but because I was uncomfortable.
It’s not exactly action-packed. It’s more of an interactive short story than a ”game” in some ways, so you should know what you’re getting into, but if you want some good psychological horror, you can find it here.
The Evil Within
As I said in my longer impressions of the game, The Evil Within is more gross than scary. It can be tense, sure. Creepy, yes. But while it certainly throws back to more old-school survival horror games, I don’t think it hits enough notes to make it a horror classic. Still, if you’re a fan of Resident Evil 4 and you want a game that feels like that in a lot of ways, The Evil Within has got your back. There’s spooky fun to be had.
The Last Door
Another good example of a horror game that doesn’t need realistic visuals to be unsettling, The Last Door is a good point-and-click adventure game that kind of looks like a forgotten SNES-era title. The story is unashamedly Lovecraft-inspired, and it’s effective at using your imagination against you.
The Last Door is episodic and free to play on the game’s website. Episodes are funded in large part by donations, or you could also buy a “collector’s edition” of the game with extra content.
Costume Quest 2
I admit, I haven’t played the sequel to Costume Quest yet, but I’m very excited to (it might be the thing I spend most of my Halloween on, as the PS4 version will be out by then). But I was a huge fan of the original game, and reviews for this one have been solid enough that I feel safe recommending it.
Costume Quest isn’t scary — it’s charming. It puts you in the shoes of a group of kids who have to save Halloween by becoming the things they’re dressed as and fighting monsters in RPG battles. Its puzzles and mechanics might not be challenging to the more hardcore RPG fans out there, but its simplicity makes it more fun for more age groups.
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter
This might be the least Halloween-esque game on this list, but I’m putting it here anyway. The Vanishing of Ethan Carter isn’t “scary,” but it’s got a really spooky atmosphere and a fairly creepy plot involving a missing kid and potential occult activity.
In the developers’ own words, it’s a game about “exploration and discovery.” You do a lot of walking in The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, and were it not for some simple puzzles it would feel more like a simulation of a creepy little town than a “game.” But it’s a good experience while it lasts (a few hours, depending on how fast you go), and it tells a worthwhile story.
P.T.
OK, look, I’m not going to lie to you. I haven’t played P.T., and I doubt I ever will. Just watching other people play through it had me cringing, looking away and closing my eyes. It may only feature one hallway, and it may require you walking down that same hallway over and over again (as things get progressively disturbing), but dang is that hallway creepy.
Even though I’m too scared to play it myself, the fact that it’s a teaser for a new Silent Hill game has me pretty excited. If you’ve got a PS4 and want some free horror, give this Playable Teaser a go.
Alien Isolation
That first Alien movie was pretty scary, right? There was something incredibly unnerving about the unknown, and the idea that just one deadly creature could massacre a crew of people in seconds makes every dark vent terrifying.
Alien Isolation captures that feeling brilliantly. One of the best things about it is that it makes you feel vulnerable. Even when you have a weapon or two, there is always the threat that you can die at any second, whether at the hands of another human, a super creepy android or the infamous Xenomorph. The game might be a little longer than it should be, and it can be more frustrating than fun at times, but it features some really well-executed sci-fi horror.
Five Nights at Freddy’s
Were you ever afraid of the animatronic mascots at Chuck E. Cheese’s? Yes you were, stop lying to yourself. Sure, they may have seemed fun-loving and could play some catchy music, but you just knew that if you got too close to the robots on stage bad things would happen to you.
Five Nights at Freddy’s exploits that fear, putting you in charge of overnight security at an old pizza place that has seen better days, thanks in no small part to the kidnapping and murder of several children by somebody dressed like pizzeria mascot Freddy. You have a shockingly horrible power source that will run down quickly if you keep the metal doors to the security office locked at all times (because that makes sense), so you have to keep a careful watch on the various security camera feeds instead. Because if one of the malfunctioning robots makes its way to you, things won’t end well.
Diablo III: Reaper of Souls
No, Diablo III isn’t scary, but it’s about killing demons and skeletons and other sorts of monsters, so that’s Halloween-themed, right? Right?
OK, look, I just want an excuse to play more Diablo III: Reaper of Souls. The expansion pack made Blizzard’s action-RPG a lot better in a lot of ways, and the game made a surprisingly great jump to consoles earlier this year.
The Uncle Who Works For Nintendo
You wouldn’t think a text-based game, particularly one that’s basically a choose-your-own-adventure with few branching paths, could be scary. But this short, creepypasta-esque story might get under your skin, especially if you grew up playing games around the GameBoy/N64 era. It takes the somewhat common, ridiculous concept of “My uncle works for Nintendo so I know all the secrets about their next games” and turns it into something surprisingly creepy — at least once you see all its endings and understand what’s actually going on.
It also preys on a very real fear I had as a kid: Sleeping over at a friend’s house. Even if it’s a friend you know well, there’s a sense of safety that you lose when you aren’t in your own bed, near your own parents.
You can play it for free online. It probably won’t take you more than an hour to get all of the endings, especially if you seek help from the Internet.
Go to Bed: Survive the Night
This one is incredibly simple, but it’s also incredibly cheap. Go to Bed basically just tasks you with clicking/tapping (depending on whether you’re playing on PC or iOS) on the shadows that are trying to get you throughout the night. Some wrinkles are added as you play, such as enemies that you want to avoid tapping and powerups you can activate after you collect enough light, but all in all it’s a very simple experience.
That said, it’s a mere $0.99 on iOS, and I think it makes for a good mobile experience. It’s also got a good, creepy vibe, so it might be a good game to wind down with after you crawl into bed yourself on Halloween night.
Disclaimer: One of the people behind this game gave me a lot of advice when I began my career as a freelance writer, and I backed his Kickstarter book on that very topic.
Betrayal at House on the Hill
Too scared to go into a “real” haunted house? Why not build one with a few friends by laying down room tiles each turn, encountering all the terrifying secrets of the mansion along the way? Everybody works together in this game, but there’s a catch: About halfway through the game, one of the players will be revealed as a traitor, and the game becomes them vs. everybody else. With 50 different scenarios could you randomly stumble on each time you play, there’s a lot of reason to play over and over again.
If you want to see Betrayal at House on the Hill be played by some nerdy celebrities, you can check out the Tabletop episodes featuring the game. Honestly, that’s what sold me on the game, myself.
Zombies!!!
This game doesn’t beat around the bush in terms of what it’s about. Zombies!!! is a game about killing zombies. You and the other players are trying to escape a city ravaged by the undead, so you’d better get to the randomly-placed helipad before they do. The zombies go down fast, but there are a whole lot of them, and you have limited resources with which to cut them down.
Don’t want to mess with physical pieces? Not a problem. A digital version of Zombies!!! is available on iOS and Windows 8.
Honorable Mentions:
Kraven Manor
There are a lot of things Kraven Manor does right. It’s sufficiently creepy, it’s got a clever room-placing exploration mechanic, and its got a type of enemy that you don’t see much in video games. It was originally a free game that came out of some local students at SMU’s Guild Hall, and in that context it’s extremely impressive.
But now they’ve polished it a little and attached a price tag to it, and as I noted in my review of the game for GameSpot, there’s a lot of missed potential that really brings it down.
If you’ve got $10 to spare and you want to support some local game developers, I can think of worse ways to spend an hour or two.
Among the Sleep
This is just an honorable mention because I haven’t played it yet, but I’d like to. Most things are much scarier as a child than as an adult (well, unless you’re afraid of things like taxes, which is fair), so I think Among the Sleep is clever in the way that it puts you in the footie pajamas of a two year-old child.