Five Games You Need To Play For The Halloween Season

Short of visiting a haunted house or cemetery, there’s no activity that gets you more into the Halloween spirit than video games. Putting yourself in the literal shoes of a hero in the most bone-chilling of situations can rock you to your core in a way film, TV, and books can’t always do.

Whether you’re looking for bloody gauntlets through cultish villages, a psychological trip through eerie and otherworldly dimensions, or just a charming celebration of the spooky holiday itself, gaming has something for everyone. And if you’re still trying to decide which game to jump into, you’re in the right place — here are five games that you should play this Halloween season.

Costume Quest

This underrated and often overlooked game from Double Fine Productions (Psychonauts, Grim Fandango) is one of the few examples of a perfect Halloween game that won’t keep you awake at night. The game follows a pair of fraternal twins who’ve just moved to a new neighborhood. On Halloween night, one of them is kidnapped by a mysterious monster, leaving the other to track down their whereabouts. Along the way, the non-abducted twin meets fellow trick-or-treaters who join in on this virtuous quest to save their sibling from the clutches of evil.

Costume Quest is a turn-based RPG where each party member’s Halloween costume determines their powers and abilities in combat. It’s a creative, holiday-appropriate spin on the resurging genre, one whose adorable art style and hilarious writing will put a smile on your face. If you enjoy its family-friendly vibes, then its 2014 sequel is just as easy a recommendation.

Mouthwashing

The most unsettling game of 2024 was Wrong Organ’s psychological horror game, Mouthwashing. In it, you shift perspectives between two crew members stuck aboard a derelict freighter ship stuck in remote space with limited resources. Over the course of the game, you’re following what’s presumed to be this five-person crew’s final moments.

While classic survival horror games like Resident Evil overwhelm the player with gruesome imagery and powerful monsters, Mouthwashing revels in the mundanity of its upsetting reality. Having to watch characters come to terms with the impending doom of dying quietly in space is already torturous. But having to watch as that sad reality plunges these hapless souls into the depths of madness is the sort of horror that will be sure to stick with you long after the credits roll.

Bloodborne

While it’s a shame you can’t play a remastered version of FromSoftware’s classic with modern concessions, don’t let the widespread call-to-action fool you. Bloodborne is every bit as playable today as it was when it launched in 2016, and it's still well worth your time even in 30 frames per second.

Bloodborne is a Soulslike dripping in Gothic style. The Victorian architecture and environments are a pitch-perfect place to spend the weeks leading up to Halloween. It’s dark fantasy monsters are FromSoftware’s best enemy design work to date. And the aggressive twist on the classic formula makes it feel unlike most other games in the developer’s illustrious library of classics. If you haven’t played Bloodborne before, there’s no better time than this month.

Resident Evil 7: Biohazard

There are a lot of Resident Evil games. But none of them come close to delivering the icky terror of 2017’s Resident Evil 7. Working as a bit of a thematic franchise reboot after three over-the-top mainline games, Resident Evil goes back to its roots by making things more intimate than ever.

When Ethan Winters receives a message from his missing wife Mia three years after her disappearance, he rushes to the desolate home in the middle of a Louisiana swamp to save her. What should have been a loving reunion quickly turns south when he encounters the Baker family, a miserable unit of haunting mutants looking to make this Ethan’s worst and final night alive.

Resident Evil 7 ditches much of the action that defined the series in the 2000s, in favor of a tense first-person adventure that successfully dials up the discomfort and thrills. It’s the scariest game in the franchise, hands down, and an easy recommendation for those who don’t want their horror games to hold back.

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare

Red Dead Redemption is one of gaming’s all-time greats. A western epic worth experiencing for its bittersweet story and old-school thrilling action. But as great as this open-world game is, I’d argue it's outshone exponentially by its horror-themed expansion, Undead Nightmare.

Undead Nightmare was the only DLC released for Rockstar’s 2010 game, and boy, did it make it count. After his wife and child are bitten by a zombified version of a family friend, John Marston sets out on a journey to find a cure for his family. He soon realized the wild west has been overtaken by inexplicable evil forces. Mystical and legendary beasts roam the land. Zombies have cemeteries across the state. Even the Four Horses of the Apocalypse have been set free in the wild.

At just seven hours, Undead Nightmare is Rockstar’s most focused video game. The B-movie presentation (complete with grindhouse-y narration) is as hilarious as it is scary. The DLC also cuts out much of the campaign’s side activities, making it one of Rockstar’s most focused video games. Undead Nightmare is widely regarded as the greatest expansion pack of all time, and for good reason. It’s definitely worth jumping into this Halloween classic.