If you’re looking to play a spooky video game this Halloween season, there are plenty to choose from. As promised, I’ve devised this list of titles to play based on age group. Five titles each. (Also worth noting: I’m only recommending games that I’ve personally played.)
💡 Under 7 years old
Luigi’s Mansion 2 HD
You play as Mario’s professional scaredy-cat brother, Luigi, to explore five haunted mansions with a ghost-sucking vacuum. (Nintendo Switch)Luigi’s Mansion 3
Same Luigi, similar game to LM2. Luigi uses the vacuum to make his way through a hotel, floor by floor, to rescue Mario and friends. You can also have a second player play as Gooigi (Luigi’s gooey green twin). (Nintendo Switch, Switch 2)Animal Crossing: New Horizons (Halloween Night)
If you own Animal Crossing: New Horizons, all of October your island sells candy and pumpkins, and on October 31, Jack (the Czar of Halloween) hosts trick-or-treating in the plaza. (Nintendo Switch, Switch 2)Halloween Ghost Grabbers
You fly around as a little which named Luna, catching ghosts, kittens and bats while dodging cursed pumpkins. (Nintendo Switch, Switch 2)Spooky Tales and Mummy Trails
You play through 14 cheerful platforming levels to break a spell before nightfall that has your brother turned into a mummy. (PC [Steam])
🕯 7 to 16 years old
The Legend of Zelda: Majora’s Mask
You play as Link to save the earth from the moon crashing into it. He has 3 days to do so, so he keeps reliving the same 72 hours to stop it. Absolute classic game. (Nintendo Switch Online, 3DS, N64)Plants vs. Zombies: Replanted
You plant sunflowers and peashooters to keep a goofy zombie horde off your lawn and out of your house. (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Playstation 5, Xbox One/Series, PC)Bendy and the Ink Machine
You explore an abandoned 1930s cartoon studio where the main cartoon character mascot comes to life. (Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, PC, Android)Ghosts n’ Goblins Resurrection
A famously brutal arcade game where you play as a knight fighting zombies and demons to rescue a princess. (Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, PC)Costume Quest
You go trick-or-treating, and in battle your characters’ homemade costumes turn into the real monsters and robots they’re dressed as. (PlayStation, Xbox, PC)
🔦 Over 16 years old
Resident Evil 4
You play as the famous agent Leon Kennedy who goes to a village in rural Spain to rescue the president’s daughter, but finds out while there that the villagers aren’t villagers anymore. I’ll leave it at that. Arguably one of the best horror games ever made. (PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series, PC, Mac)Phasmophobia
You (and up to 3 others) investigate a haunting and try to work out what kind of ghost it is, while the ghost listens to every word you say into your mics. (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC)Silent Hill f
You find yourself in 1960s rural Japan where a fog full of red flowers swallows the town – a novel haunting experience where you’re being hunted. (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC)Reanimal
You play as a brother and sister who go back to their flooded, monster-filled home island to rescue missing friends. Same developers of another game, Little Nightmares, that also rocks. (PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, PC)Amnesia: The Bunker
You’re a French soldier who wakes up alone in a WWI bunker with a creature hunting him. Simplest way to put it… (Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox Series, PC)
There you have it! I tried to stay fairly recent, as to not require online subscriptions and/or retro game consoles for them all. Pick one! Have a go with your kid. Enjoy the Halloween season.
Hit reply to tell me your favorite spooky title! IHonestly, I think mine remains Resident Evil 4. Although, Resident Evil Requiem did recently scare the shit out of me a few times 🙂
Thanks for pressing pause with me.
– Patrick