Halloween Gaming
Halloween is probably my favorite holiday. Having always been interested in the macabre, Halloween affords me a month or so of that being expected. This year I plan to indulge with It: Chapter 2, Midsommar, Us, and Pet Sematary, on top of the yearly traditions with my kids of Lonesome Ghosts and Witch Hazel, the Vince Guaraldi Trio, and Bing Crosby's take on Brom Bones.
When it comes to Halloween games, I look for one of two things. Either the theme draws me into the Halloween spirit, or the mechanics do. Often it's both, but not always.
For a big theme-heavy Halloween game, my first pick would be Mansions of Madness: Second Edition. Mechanically, there's not much in here that invokes the horror, but you don't get much better when it comes to pure implementation of theme.
Which is why I'd pick these over some of the runner-ups, like Eldritch Horror, Arkham Horror: The Card Game, or Cthulhu Wars. All of those are great games, but it's a bit harder to sink your teeth into their versions of the same theme. MoM2E has you exploring through what's basically a haunted house. It's a smaller scale, full of mystery and puzzles. The app makes it much easier to play, mechanically, meaning you have that much more time/brainspace to focus just on theme itself. AH:TCG is one of my favorite games, but I'd sit down and be thinking about deck construction, action efficiency, and failure probability over "WHAT THE HELL IS IN THAT ROOM?"
Other shoutouts that I wouldn't say no to are Horrified, Mysterium, Mystery Rummy: Jack the Ripper, The Shadow Over Westminster, and Claustrophobia. These are all great games with darker themes that will feel right at home on your table at Halloween, even if the mechanics themselves aren't what does it. Horrifed is a simple but thematic co-op tasking you with saving villagers and warding off a cadre of Universal Monsters from Dracula to The Creature from the Black Lagoon; you basically get to be in the Monster Squad. Jack the Ripper is really just rummy with a few twists, but it actually does a great job pulling in the theme, as you play out corpses and gather evidence on possible killers. Westminster is a clever little deckbuilder that I think does a great job being more like a Buffy episode than any Buffy game. And Claustrophobia is a damn great game. Mysterium is debatable as to what the mechanics offer, given that there's a silent player and all that, but I find most of time spent in a game of Mysterium is just studying interesting art and making tenuous connections; it's a great group game and the big creepy screen with crows on it will go a long way toward decorating your Halloween table.
I'll also drop a nod in here at Ghost Fightin' Treasure Hunters as a great Halloween-themed game to play with kids. It's a KSdJ winner, with great components and a good sense of cooperation fighting off those pesky ghosts.
As far as games that mechanically pull me in to a Halloween mood, even if the theme doesn't, that's harder. I'd probably put Space Hulk at the top of that list. Moving through dark corridors, attacked by an unseen creatures that are incredibly deadly. The game can feel very tense and claustrophobic, which is great, even if the 40k theme itself isn't the first thing I think of at Halloween.
The other game I might put on that list is Deception: Murder in Hong Kong. Yes, it has murder as a theme, but it feels more like a more typical CSI sorta thing, as opposed to a creepy Halloween vibe. But the game itself is great fun with the right group, and it's one of the better hidden role games I've played.
That leaves the games that do both pretty well. There's a good many on my list, so let's organize by mechanic.
One mechanic that comes up a lot in games we like to play at Halloween are hidden role games, or hidden movement games. We find that looking around the table, unsure who to trust, and lying to your friends to be a real treat at Halloween. Or, in the case of hidden movement games, you're playing against the other players more openly, but there's still the mystery of where you are and what you're doing.
I don't think I can pick a favorite, but I'd feel negligent not to mention Werewolf first. We play every Halloween, and it's a great interaction of mechanics and theme. We often play at night, by low/candle light, and even do a bit of roleplaying as well as have gruesome descriptions of mauled villagers. It has its weaknesses, but with the right group this can be the reason you gather for a Halloween party in the first place.
Letters from Whitechapel and Fury of Dracula are both great hidden movement games set in the perfect theme for Halloween. They can both run a bit long, so this is better for a dedicated game group and probably not a Halloween party.
Escape from the Aliens in Outer Space is a wonderful marriage of both hidden roles, and hidden movement. All players are creeping around a darkened space station, no one knows where anyone is or who the aliens are, all players are having to lie (or sometimes forcefully tell the truth) about the noise everyone just heard. I've yet to finish a game of this where people weren't actually surprised about the outcome and spent more time talking about what happened than it actually took to play the game out. It plays quick, and with a lot of people, too.
Last I think I'd mention Mall of Horror in this category. Though not a hidden role game, everyone is still out for themselves and often lying to each other about their plans. It's a very simple game where you secretly chose where you're going, see where the zombies all spawn, and then the mob forcefully throws out the weakest characters to be corpsified. The remake, City of Horror, isn't bad per se, but it's bloated and lacks the simplicity of its predecessor.
The other mechanic we often find fun at Halloween is that of complete dread at the impossibility of our task. Games that beat you down and fill you with a sense of hopelessness. In this list I'd put Ghost Stories and Kingdom Death: Monster. They couldn't be farther from each other, but both use a Halloween-appropriate theme to give you a co-op challenge that will often result in your death or loss.
The last games I'd mention, a bit out of the normal scope, would be RPGs. Given you can create any story you want, it's not hard to take any RPG and tell a horror story in it. And there are plenty that are written from the ground up for just that purpose, as well.
FFG's End of the World series has been fun. We've played only the Zombie one, but have enjoyed it. In these games you create the character of yourself, and then play as yourself, in your current setting, but dealing with whatever end of the world scenario is thrown at you. So our last zombie apocalypse game started with zombies breaking into the house we were in while we were playing an RPG and killing the GM (me). What weapons can the characters use? Well...look around, what could you find? It makes the roleplaying part simple, gives you a setting you know to play in, and then has you deal with an upset to that setting. We've always just done 2-3 hour one-off games where everyone dies by the end.
Dread and Ten Candles are both fascinating RPGs that use unique mechanical systems to give players a sense of impending doom or urgency. Dread uses a Jenga tower, having you pull blocks for every check and giving a feeling of uneasiness as you know that eventually everything will literally come crashing down. Ten Candles uses...ten candles as a timer; it's a game where no one will survive to the end and as your character's lives grow dark the room will also literally darken.
Last, if I'm talking about RPGs I like, I have to mention Fiasco. There are plenty of horror playsets for the game. Though I've not played any of them, I've never not had fun playing Fiasco.
I think any game I'd ever want to play on Halloween is listed here now. Depending on the group, my first choices would be MoM2E, Mall of Horror, and Werewolf. The first for more of a typical game group, the last for a big group, and the middle one for any event with the right number of players.