Halloween is a great time to play games. There are plenty of horror-themed games to choose from, but sometimes it's better to change things up a bit. Halloween is about more than just the scares. In much of the northern hemisphere, Halloween comes around the midpoint of autumn, when the turn towards cold weather ramps up in earnest. Even in places not getting colder, it's drawing nearer to the New Year, entering the final months of the year.
It's a great time to reflect on the magic that is all around us, the mystical nature of autumn, and the stories we tell about goblins and ghouls. Each of these games approaches a different theme important around Halloween, all without ever getting too scary. A few thrills and chills may be expected, but horror games these are not.
10 Night In The Woods Captures The Spirit Of The Season
This side-scrolling adventure game follows Mae, a college dropout landing back in her hometown. The game has a wonderful autumnal atmosphere and killer soundtrack, and even features a Halloween-like harvest festival as a major plot point.
While Night In The Woods is not a horror game, it does a good job of setting up a spooky atmosphere when the story demands it. With branching storylines that lock each other out, Night In The Woods is a game to replay year after year.
9 Deep Forest Puts Monsters Front And Center
Written by Avery Alder and Mark Diaz Truman as a follow-up to the game The Quiet Year, Deep Forest is a tabletop game that guides the players as they play out a year in the lives of monsters reclaiming their home and culture.
The game takes place after the monsters drive off human invaders, and is a direct unpacking of the colonialism inherent to many fantasy stories. It's a great game to play online or in person, and its content makes it perfect for a Halloween game with a more contemplative feel.
8 Where The Water Tastes Like Wine Is A Spooky American Folktale
A skeletal vagrant wanders the United States looking for stories after losing a poker game with a wolf-headed man. With a premise like that, it's hard to argue against playing Where The Water Tastes Like Wine this Halloween. This game posits that the Great American Story is made up of legends and tales from all sorts of people of all sorts of backgrounds.
Once the player begins to collect stories, they can tell them to others over a campfire, causing the stories to spread and change like a game of telephone.
7 Root Is An Autumnal Beauty
Root is a board game that sees bands of woodland creatures battling it out for control of their forest home. Four factions, or six with the added expansions, struggle for dominance in this tactical board game. Each faction plays radically differently, giving the game significant depth and replayability.
The game's board and cards have a wonderful autumnal motif, and the medieval-style animals are incredibly charming. There is also an excellent digital version of the game, allowing players to play remotely and asynchronously.
6 Ashen Is Moody & Misty Adventure
This co-op action RPG is reminiscent of the Dark Souls series, though with its own strong identity. It is a third-person game set in a beautifully barren fantasy world. The player is tasked with delving into various dungeons and hunting down monsters, gods, and all sorts of creatures.
It can be downright scary at times, but the player never loses control over the situation, and always feels like they can fight back against the darkness. Whether alone or with a friend, Ashen is a great game to crack into on a late October night.
5 Brinkwood: The Blood Of Tyrants Is A Vampire-Staking Revolution
Vampires are a classic monster for Halloween time, and Brinkwood by Erik Bernhardt lets players slay them left and right. This "castlepunk" game has a band of Robin Hood-style brigands facing down a regime of vampires literally sucking the blood from their subjects.
It plays with the Forged in the Dark system introduced in Blades in the Dark to help simulate a growing grassroots revolution. All sorts of monsters await players, from thralls to walking mechanical sarcophagi, all perfect for the Halloween season.
4 Colors of Magic Lets You Indulge Your Sweet Tooth
This high-fantasy RPG by Jon Lemich makes great use of one of the greatest parts of Halloween: candy. Instead of rolling dice to resolve risky situations, players choose from a pool of colorful candy to decide the outcome. Having a fixed pool of candy with a set number of each color makes for wonderful moments of dramatic irony.
A player might take the final green candy, ensuring that any future rolls will face failure. Each character struggles with some kind of Wrongheaded Belief they must overcome to grow as a person.
3 Outer Wilds Shows That Space Is The Scariest Thing Of All
Annapurna Interactive's space exploration game got a shot of fresh content in September 2021 with its first and only DLC, Echoes of the Eye. There's something about this time-loop game that just feels perfect for Halloween.
Players can cozy into their spacesuit and venture into a solar system filled with danger before making a stop at one of the many campfires to toast a marshmallow. The eerie remains of the Nomai civilization add a chilling touch to this game making it perfect for the Halloween season.
2 This Discord Has Ghosts In It Lets You Build A Haunted House
This spooky roleplaying game uses a Discord server to mimic a haunted house. Players choose to either play as Investigators or Ghosts, with Investigators talking on a "walkie-talkie" voice channel, while ghosts create text channel rooms and fill them with spooky hauntings.
Written by Adam Vass and Will Jobst, This Discord Has Ghosts In It won the 2021 Indie Groundbreaker Most Innovative award, and it's easy to see why. The stories that arise from this game are often about souls being put to rest, a nice take on classic haunting tales.
1 I'm Sorry Did You Say Street Magic Lets You Trick Or Treat In A Magical New World
A worldbuilding game by Caro Asercion, i'm sorry did you say street magic guides players as they build a city from their imagination. Players take turns inventing Neighborhoods, Landmarks, and Residents, all the while framing scenes and vignettes within the city to flesh out the details.
If inventing the True Name of a fountain or a deli shop owner sounds fun, then this game is perfect. The game lends itself to creating spooky, ethereal cityscapes perfect for the Halloween season.