Halloween Game Picks
Betrayal at House on the Hill (board game)
The pitch writes itself: you and your friends are exploring a randomly-generated haunted house, one spooky room at a time. Maybe you’ll find a cursed ring in the 2nd-floor ballroom, or a voodoo doll in the basement vault. Each game ends with a unique horror movie scenario — and one of you becomes the baddie! You’ve never had more fun chainsawing your friends. –Elliot Alpern
Night in the Woods, Alec Holowka (video game)
This game might feature a cigarette-smoking crocodile and a bear named Angus, but there’s substance behind its cuteness. Set in Possum Springs—a small-town of zoomorphic humans—Mae Borowski moves back in with her parents after dropping out of college, and finds that one of her old friends has disappeared. Strange dreams, cloaked fingers, mysterious happenings at the town’s Halloween festival—Night in the Woods is not only a perfect game for the occasion, but also one that feels particularly important today, as it grapples with relevant structural issues in contemporary America. —Gauraa Shekhar
Until Dawn (video game)
Look, Rami Malek is in this game, which is crazy enough. It’s not the longest game ever, but man, get a few friends together, turn the lights down, and explore the story. The choices you make directly affect the survival of the characters—and it does get pretty spooky at times. It’s a fantastic way to kill a weekend with whoever you’re holing up with. —Elliot Alpern
Ouija Board
It doesn't exactly qualify as a game, but I feel like, if you're the kind of person who has one of these or has been thinking of investing in one, then perhaps Halloween is the time to break it out. Gather everyone in the living room and see if you can summon the spirits of the past. I can't imagine anything scarier will happen then what's already seen in the daily news cycle, right? –Rachel A. G. Gilman
The Beginner’s Guide, Davey Wreden (video game)
Certainly the most meta video game I’ve played, The Beginners Guide is narrated by Wrenden himself, as he guides the user through a string of unfinished video games made by a mythologized developer named Coda. These unfinished games repeatedly place the user in surprisingly claustrophobic situations that they can’t solve their way out of since the games are, well, unfinished. There’s one mini (unsolvable) game here that I’ll probably never stop thinking of, in which the user finds themselves in a house on a deserted stretch of land where they’re asked to make the bed, clean the dishes, tidy the room, and do it again, and again, and again, until the narrator takes over. It’s chilling, truly. —Gauraa Shekhar
