Halloween not only falls on a Saturday this year, but Daylight Savings is on November 1st. And you know what that means? A whole extra hour to game!
We present to you 13 different games you can consider for this Halloween, or any spooky game night.
Our suggestions for this year’s list are from Paul Benson, Alex Hart, Michael Knight, and Jonathan Liu.
Vampire Village
Build a cozy little village to attract villagers … but don’t forget to build up your defenses, because there are witches, werewolves, demons, and vampires roaming the outskirts. This card game plays quickly, just two rounds of building and monster attacks, and you’ll score points for villagers that survive the onslaught, plus any monsters that didn’t manage to get through your defenses. Read the full review here. (JL)
Hell of a Deal
Play Texas Hold ‘Em against the Devil and his minions and wager your very souls. It’s a cooperative game where you’ll have to cheat to win, but if you give into temptation too much, you still lose. This one just delivered to Kickstarter backers and may be a little hard to find, but if you enjoy poker it’s worth seeking out. Stay tuned for a full review soon! (JL)
Camp Grizzly 2nd Edition
It was out of print for over a decade, but Trick or Treat Studios brought back this classic homage to slasher films from the 70’s and 80’s with an all-new edition. In this semi-cooperative survival game, you play as camp counselors being stalked by Otis, a crazed killer in a bear mask. You must work together to find weapons, uncover objectives, and finally face down Otis in a climactic finale. You can still pick up the deluxe Kickstarter edition that released earlier this year, or find a retail version at games stores or at Gamenerdz.com. Look for a review on GeekDad soon, as well as new expansions coming to Kickstarter later this Fall. (PB)
Don’t Go In There
In Don’t Go In There, you’ll play as neighborhood kids exploring the many rooms in the mysterious haunted house up the street. Each room houses three cursed items and can hold up to three occupants. If you place your meeple further into the room, you’ll get a better pick of the cards, but you’re also more liable to attract ghosts from the glow-in-the-dark dice that are rolled before the room resolves. Collect the right cards and avoid having the most ghosts to leave the house with the least amount of curses and win the game! Don’t Go In There is a great spooky-but-not-scary experience for the whole family, it’s got a ton of fun push-your-luck moments, and it plays in a cool 20-30 minutes – perfect for a pre-Halloween treat! Find a copy on allplay’s website here. (AH)
Spooktacular
Halloween night, 1986. Movie monsters find their way off the silver screen and into an old, rundown theater, terrifying the moviegoers! In this family-weight game, you each play as one of 20 different movie monsters, each with their own special abilities, as you compete to scare and eat the most moviegoers. It’s easy to learn and play, and with so many different monsters to play, each game will be different. You can read my review here. (PB)
Dying Message
The bad news: you’ve been bludgeoned and are about to die. The good news: you have a little bit of time to leave a clue behind so the detectives can catch your killer. Use the cards to create your dying message and hope that you’ll be avenged! Read the full review here. (JL)
Deep Regrets
Fishing. It’s normally so relaxing…except when you’re pulling ever more horrifying creatures out of the depths of the ocean! You’ll have to decide whether you want to fight against the insanity creeping in your brain from these unnatural beings, or just go ahead and embrace it. The art is great, and there’s a terrifically dark sense of humor in this Lovecraftian game. You can read my full review here. (PB)
Disney Villainous: Unstoppable
Disney Villainous and its expansions are some of my favorite games. As a big Disney fan, I enjoyed how each villain has their own realm rich in the story and art of their movie. In addition, each villain had their own objectives, and each time you played as a different villain, you had a unique experience. Disney Villainous: Unstoppable takes the basics of the original game and makes it accessible to younger children with somewhat simplified rules and less reading required. There are four villains to play as: Maleficent, Scar, Ursula, and Hades. You can read my full review here. (MK)
Joe Manganiello’s The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness Quest Pack for HeroQuest
HeroQuest is another family favorite which I have played for over 30 years. Players dive into dungeons and fight all types of monsters while completing quests and searching for treasure. The original game was updated and rereleased a few years ago. Joe Manganiello’s The Crypt of Perpetual Darkness is the latest quest pack and written by the famous actor. This pack takes the heroes through ten more quests and even comes with a large dragon with a metallic finish as well as a great story and some fun, challenging quests. You can read my full review here. (MK)
Betrayal at the Niebolt House: The Evil of Pennywise
This expansion to Betrayal at House on the Hill (3rd edition) takes players back to the Niebolt house in Derry, Maine, to face off against the shapeshifter who likes to take the form of Pennywise the Clown from the movie It. Five new haunts are added to the game along with Pennywise encounter cards and three miniatures of Henry Bowers, Pennywise the Clown, and a Pennywise spider monster. This dark and challenging expansion is currently available from the Hasbro Gaming Store on Amazon. (MK)
Werewolf in the Dark
This party game (for 6 to 28 players!) is a mash-up of the classic Werewolf game (werewolves kill a villager in the night; everyone votes on executing a potential werewolf during the day) with hide-and-go-seek, as you literally play in the dark, with players sneaking around, trying to figure out who the werewolves are without getting offed in the process. 28 unique characters add bizarre powers or requirements for players. Dead players become ghosts, wandering around with little candles and doing spooky things. You do need a particular environment that allows for meandering around in the dark, but if you can make it worth, it’s a lot of nail-biting fun. I don’t have a full review of this one yet, but you can read more at the Tuesday Knight Games website. (JL)
3 Witches
This curious pocket-sized trick-taking game is for exactly 3 players: you’ll combine ingredients—eye of newt, wing of bat, scale of dragon—to control the fates. One of the twists is that every hand is a two-vs-one contest, but ultimately everyone wants to be the lone winner. Read the full review here. (JL)
Misfit Heroes
How can you have Halloween without costumes? Misfit Heroes uses transparent card overlays to create wacky combinations of characters and attributes, which you’ll play into your tableau to trigger effects and—hopefully—score a lot of points. And each time you play, you can swap up a few of the “costumes” so the mix of cards is different each time. Read the full review here. (JL)
Happy Halloween, and happy gaming!
Paul Benson
Paul is a comic book writer, screenwriter, an avid board and tabletop gamer, reader of comics and collector of statues and figures. He is the creator of the webcomic "Heroines for Hire" and co-writer of "Disaster!: The Movie." He currently writes "E.I.: Earth Invasion" for Wunderman Comics.
The extra hour from daylight saving is a nice excuse, but I’d probably still reach for the 20–30 minute push-your-luck haunted-house game rather than a longer dungeon crawl, since it keeps a mixed group moving between snacks and costumes. Does the quick setup hold up when you’re rotating players in and out all night?
Fun roundup — Werewolf in the Dark caught my eye, since big-group party games for 6 to 28 players are rare finds. We do a spooky game night every October, and I am adding a few of these to the shortlist. I have also been experimenting with no-setup options for the night, so I have been running a free browser version of Wavelength with real online rooms that guests can join on their phones.