Halloween is the spookiest season of the year, when monsters and macabre take the center stage! It’s a time when people partake more in horror media, including games. Horror games are more popular than ever with lists popping up of games that must be played to get in the mood for the season!

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But, not everyone enjoys partaking in the scarier parts of the holiday, instead enjoying the light-hearted spookiness. Whether the frights are just too much for them or they’re simply burnt out on the scares, these folk don’t want to be playing horror games to celebrate Halloween. So, for those folks who want to play something in the spirit without dealing with horror games, here are a handful of games that lean into that Halloween spirit in a more pleasant way.

10 Inscryption

Inscryption

For those wanting something grizzly and rustic, Inscryption is a strange experience worth a try. Inscryption is a card game rogue-like that sees you trapped in an old cabin with someone forcing you to play their strange game of cards. With the help of a few living cards, you have to solve puzzles between games and find a way to escape the cabin.

The game offers an excellent and simplistic take on a card game with its fascinating mechanic of sacrificing cards for more powerful ones and having to manage limited lanes, it makes for an engrossing card game. And the woodland theme makes for a wonderfully creepy experience almost like a cryptid legend. Though it must be said that you should be cautious if you come for just this as much like Daniel Mullins' other games, Inscryption has many surprises and changes in style that not everyone may be a fan of.

9 Yume Nikki

Madotsuki on a staircase with arms in a void

If you can handle something eerie but still don’t want full-blown horror, Yume Nikki is a game that can keep you on the edge of your seat. Yume Nikki is a game that sees you exploring the dreams of Madotsuki, a Japanese shut-in, trying to get to deeper layers of the dreams, find strange transformations, and maybe figure out what’s going on in their head.

Yume Nikki is a game unlike any other, following in the footsteps of LSD Dream Emulator but adding more structure to the exploration and making what you find more varied. It’s a game that leaves the player to figure out what’s going on with it. And what you find in these dreams has this strange eeriness, a sort of surrealism that makes you feel like something is wrong but not like you’re in danger. It’s a fascinating type of creepiness that everyone should experience.

8 Darkest Dungeon

Three characters from Darkest Dungeon

Leaning more into the gruesome spookiness of Lovecraft, Darkest Dungeon is by far the most disturbing game on this list. This Lovecraftian take on an RPG sees you returning to your home, recruiting heroes of all kinds to fight off a growing evil and madness.

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The main selling point of Darkest Dungeon is how absolutely brutal it can be. Every mission is a harrowing brush with death as heroes will go mad, get diseases, and even die permanently. You’ll grow attached to heroes only to see them go from the world. This combined with the game's aesthetic makes for an excellently spooky and gritty experience perfect for Halloween.

7 Crypt of the Necrodancer

Characters and Enemies from Crypt of the Necrodancer

While spookiness can mean being left unnerved without being fully scared, spookiness can also be a mood of fun mischief, that’s the spookiness Crypt of the Necrodancer offers! This dungeon-crawler sees you descending into an ancient crypt filled with the power of music in search of treasure.

The main gimmick of the game is that you can only move to the beat of the music, keeping you on your toes and asking for rhythm skill to win. The game offers plenty of silliness with musical and dance-related takes on usual monsters as you’ll be battling with a conga line of zombies, a minotaur with harp horns, and many more. A fun game just spooky enough for Halloween!

6 Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

Painted characters from Symphony of the Night

Castlevania has always been a perfect series for Halloween series with ghouls, ghosts, and vampires galore! And Symphony of the Night is the stand-out entry in this series. The landmark title sees you taking control of Dracula's son, Alucard, to explore Dracula’s castle and solve the mystery of why it returned.

The game took a different direction from previous games, switching out linear levels for the Metroidvania style of exploring different areas, finding upgrades, and unlocking new areas with those upgrades. And Symphony of the Night still stands as one of the best in this style, offering a lot to explore and plenty of player freedom. Plus with plenty of classic spooky monsters, a gothic setting, and more original creepy monsters, it’s a perfect game to get lost in for Halloween.

5 Cultist Simulator

Cultist from Cultist Simulator

There’s no better way to get in the Halloween spirit than to start a cult of unfathomable horrors and Cultist Simulator lets you do just that! This strange card game sees you managing resources both material and metaphorical to seek knowledge, conduct rituals, do cult business, and eventually ascend.

What makes Cultist Simulator, so special is that it has no tutorial and leaves the player to experiment and figure out how to work towards their goals, perfectly replicating the feeling of parsing through eldritch knowledge. This makes the game incredibly immersive and lets the player get into the spooky cult atmosphere absolutely for Halloween.

4 Skul: The Hero Slayer

Skul and The Hero

Halloween is practically synonymous with skeletons and Skul: The Hero Slayer offers plenty of those spooky scary skeletons! The game sees you as Skul, a lowly skeleton, seeking to rescue their king of demons from the “heroes” of the world.

The game is a roguelike, seeing you collecting upgrades and traveling further into enemy territory. Where the game stands out is its central mechanic: Skulls. Through the run, you can collect the skulls of fallen comrades and these completely change up the very way you play, each offering different moves, movements, and special mechanics! This makes sure that every run feels unique and doesn’t get old. A perfect game if you feel like being one of the fiends of the night!

3 Luigi’s Mansion

Luigi's Mansion 3 Game Cover

An absolute classic, any game in the Luigi’s Mansion series is perfect for Hallow’s Eve. This series sees Luigi drawn to various haunted locations in search of their brother and friends, only to find them crawling with ghosts. It offers a unique style of gameplay of having to wrangle the various ghosts and solve puzzles to do so.

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Each of these games is filled with so much fun personality from the unique puzzle bosses of the first game to the out there areas of the third, they all offer so much uniqueness that it’s hard to not love them. And when it comes to capturing that Halloween spookiness, nothing does it better than a haunted mansion full of silly ghosts. There’s no better time to get into the series than Halloween!

2 Deadbolt

The Reaper from Deadbolt

While the sillier aspects of Halloween can be fun, it’s also a time to embrace the darker elements of life and Deadbolt is one game that does that. This stealth game lets the player take control of the Grim Reaper in a strange afterlife of rundown apartments and shady business, needing to take out zombies, vampires, and skeletons that still cling to life.

The game is a 2D stealth game where you have to eliminate everyone in locations to complete objectives, the game offers a more methodical experience with having to perfectly plan out how to tackle the wildly different enemies and how to ration ammo and weapons. This makes for a very satisfying experience blowing through the level like a professional assassin. The unique takes on usual Halloween monsters are both funny and yet also compelling with their stories, an absolute must-play for that alone!

1 Grimm’s Hollow

Main Characters from Grimm's Hollow

For a game that perfectly captures that pleasant and wondrous feeling of Halloween celebration as a child, Grimm’s Hollow is the best there is. This RPG takes place in the Hollow, a place before the afterlife where souls have to be reaped to move and reapers must reap enough to move on. You play as a young girl named Lavender trying to find her brother and coming to terms with her death and place as a reaper.

The game offers an interesting take on usual RPG combat with enemies that work more like puzzles with unique gimmicks and a rather in-depth level up system, making it stand far above other RPG Maker games. It also offers a sweet and emotional story with twists and turns and some nice moments between Lavender and Grimm, the head of the reapers. On top of all this, the game is completely free! So there’s no reason to not try it out for Halloween.

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