Treat Yourself With These Ten Games That Capture The Halloween Spirit

Most Halloween game lists are full of various horror titles. While titles like The Last of Us or Dead Space are certainly worth playing during Halloween, October's holiday is about more than scares. Some Halloween classics have a sense of spooky mystery, while others have a playful atmosphere of childlike wonder. All of these games may not scare your pants off, but they're easily some of the best games to get you into the spirit of Halloween.

Kingdom Hearts
For many people, the classic Halloween movie is The Nightmare Before Christmas. So when an entire world was based on it in the first Kingdom Hearts, the game became a Halloween staple by proxy alone. The location has since appeared in other games, but Kingdom Hearts' was the first rendition that truly explored it the most. The level design is filled with spooky locales as you visit iconic locations from the movie like Spiral Hill or Oogie's Mansion. This level alone makes the Kingdom Hearts series an instant Halloween classic.

Costume Quest
One of the most important things about Halloween is experiencing it with child-like wonder. It's hard to capture that but Double Fine managed to in their aptly named Costume Quest. An amazingly written comedy game with simple but solid RPG elements, even the mechanics follow the Halloween aesthetic. Candy counts as currency, costumes dictate the character's classes and trick or treating is highly encouraged. Since the game takes place on Halloween (with some Christmas DLC) the world is filled with decorations and interactive festivities. Even better still are the gamut of costumes available from robots and unicorns to French fries and a giant eyeball. The over the top battles and cute writing makes this game feel like Halloween through a child's eyes.

Animal Crossing
Decorating is a big part of any Halloween celebration. So what better way to get in the mood than to decorate your whole house in cute pumpkin furniture or like a mad scientist's laboratory? You can also scare other villagers into giving you candy to exchange a special character for more furniture, adding to the cycle of decorating, which is better than dealing with this game's real horror: crushing real estate debt.

Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon
Nothing screams Halloween more than a haunted house and anyone who has spent a night alone in a creaky old mansion knows how spooky it can be. Luigi, despite being labeled a coward, manages to do it for two games! While the first Luigi's Mansion set the ground work, its sequel Dark Moon built off that solid foundation. There have been quite a few games set in haunted mansions, but Nintendo's attention to detail makes this series stand out. Luigi jumps out of fear and nervously hums as he combs through each mansion's various puzzles and traps. The playhouse style took advantage of the 3DS' hardware and strengthened the ghost story aspect, which makes playing Dark Moon feel like sitting around a campfire telling tall tales.

Until Dawn
It's a story almost as old as time: a group of teenagers decide to spend a night at a cabin in the woods until their night of debauchery turns into one of horror as they get picked off one by one. It's a perfect Halloween movie trope that Until Dawn nails thanks to its realistic graphics. Actors went through strenuous mo-cap sessions so that everything done in the game felt more lifelike. Each action a player takes has a "butterfly effect" that changes events later in the game. This makes each playthrough horrifically unique, ensuring that even friends who are just watching are also entertained.

The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask
Majora's Mask isn't a traditional Halloween game but it's filled with similar themes. The town is putting together a festival to celebrate the passage of time, not knowing they're counting down to their own demise. Link wears masks, which grant him new abilities. Even the antagonist Skull Kid is particularly creepy. The entire game is filled with this looming dread as you constantly go through a Groundhog Day-esque death spiral in order to save the town. This story is still largely up for debate as people try to figure out the true meaning behind Majora's Mask. Considering the game's quality writing and atmosphere, it's no wonder this game is still considered one of the strangest Zelda games to date. 

Grim Fandango
Life sucks and then you die, except in Tim Schafer's classic adventure game there's a lot more paperwork. You play as Manuel "Manny" Calavera, an undead travel agent who helps souls reach their final destination. Each year on the Day of the Dead, souls are allowed to come back to visit their living loved ones. This may sound dreary but this classic adventure game has amazing writing thanks to the folks at LucasArts. While it isn't a traditional Halloween game, Grim Fandango is based on the Day of the Dead which is a sort of cultural equivalent. It's a treat to see a film noir style game that has characters which grow during the story's four year arc. The recent Double Fine remaster is your best bet if you want to try out this refreshing take on life after death.

Bully
Pranks are just as much a part of the Halloween spirit as candy or costumes, but no game nails this quite as well as Bully. Since the game takes place over an entire school year, eventually October rolls around with plenty of mischief to cause. Players can smash pumpkins, throw eggs at people or set off fireworks all in an effort to cause trouble. Various authority figures aren't around for this event, so there's no worry about being caught. It's an excellent excuse for a day of debauchery even if people make fun of your lame costume.

Monster Bash
The oldest game on this list, Apogee used to make plenty of shareware games that allowed users to play through the first part for free and then pay for the rest of the game. This meant many of the first levels of those games were easily accessible to kids. While Halloween Harry (unfortunately renamed to Alien Carnage) would seem more in line with the holiday spirit, it doesn't hold a candle to Monster Bash. When the Johhny Dash's dog gets kidnapped by the villain, he grabs his trusty slingshot and enlists the help of a few monsters to get through 28 horror-themed levels. Players have to collect candy for extra points or voodoo dolls for extra lives. This cute platformer was light on scares but was easy enough to pick up and play. It was fairly simplistic but is an interesting history lesson on early Halloween games that were done right.

Darkstalkers
If someone turned a playground argument of who would win in a fight between a vampire, a mummy, and Frankenstein's monster into a video game it would probably look like Darkstalkers. This series was originally built with the same hardware that powered Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo and Street Fighter Alpha 3, which helped give the series its solid mechanics. While some of the characters are a bit sexual, all the classic movie monsters are here: vampires, werewolves, zombies, and even little red riding hood make up the cast of this spooky brawler. Levels keep to the same motif, letting you fight in spooky cemeteries, abandoned towns, and even in front of a giant demon fetus. While the flagship character, Morrigan Aesland, has crossed over to other titles, the majority of the cast for this game are only accessible in a few releases like the most recent Darkstalkers Resurrection. Unfortunately that'll probably be the best way to play the games as Capcom doesn't seem to have plans for the franchise right now.

Scares aren't the only thing a game needs to get people into the Halloween spirit. Mechanics and DLC can help a game be themed for the season, but it takes a little more than that to also be a great game. Still sometimes it's amazing to just sit back and enjoy something particularly eerie, so I hope a few games on this list help you to have a happy Halloween.

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