7 Creepy Games To Ease You Into Spooky Season

There’s nothing inherently autumnal about a tiny neighborhood, I don’t think. Still, I feel that, by the time red leaves spin around you, they’re imbued with a sense of close-to-the-chest Twin Peaks mystery and opportunity.

That’s the idea behind Scarlet Hollow, a narrative-driven gothic horror game about a North Carolina coal town brimming with nightmares. Only four of its seven planned episode installments are currently available to play, but don’t let that hold you back. Even in its Early Access state, John Walker writes for Kotaku that Scarlet Hollow has “superb writing and [an] astonishing number of incredibly detailed drawn scenes,” all of which fuse to form intricate narrative arcs that are remembered across existing episodes.

“I found myself having to willingly refuse to think about how complex the back-end must be, to allow it to let me see major characters live or die in Chapter One, when seven chapters are planned and their non/existence carrying over significantly into Chapter Two,” Walker writes. To summon your hometown’s magic, play Scarlet Hollow.

Play it on: PC, Mac, Linux

Adventure game Night in the Woods is slightly haunted, the same way it feels to walk under rows of changing trees you’ll see eye-to-eye with. Like Scarlet Hollow, Night in the Woods happens in a little town with a lot of secrets, some of which are localized in its imposing woods.

But “mostly, Night in the Woods is a game about wandering,” Riley MacLeod writes in a 2017 Kotaku review. “[Main character cat] Mae climbs the same hills, passes the same people, and visits the same places in Possum Springs. [...] Everyone in Possum Springs mills around and talks. [...] Sometimes you have dialogue options, but who you choose to talk to matters more than what you decide to say.” It’s a winding, wistful walk home.

Play it on: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PC, Mac, Linux, iOS
Buy it from: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

The only thing better than hitting up a pumpkin patch for genetically modified squash is becoming one of those genetic abnormalities yourself. Everyone knows that. So if you love filling up a wheelbarrow with freshly cut pumpkins, try cutting up monsters in 3D platformer Pumpkin Jack. The game sports a vibrant, appealing setting and promises challenging combat as well as physics-based puzzles to work your brain.

Play it on: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PC
Buy it from: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

I don’t fully understand the Pumpkin Spice Latte, but I respect its refined frivolity. Similarly, The Sims 4 Spooky Stuff expansion pack polishes October essentials like the ocean tumbles a million-year-old rock. It’s got it all: a fairy costume, pumpkin carving station, and those candy bowls stuck with a witch’s hand. This is basic, basic stuff, and it’s your time to enjoy it.

Play it on: PC, Mac

Red Dead Redemption 2 is heavy with religious melancholy and the wide-brim hats necessary for a faithful Christian Girl Autumn. While you bond with its steady horses and soul-stirring sunsets, the sullen action-adventure game gives you plenty of time to stylishly weigh your sins.

Even its combat and dialogue can feel like slow crawls through the desert, each decision precise, but pained. You get the sense that, to really survive, you need to learn how to balance nature with needs, and that’s kind of like driving by Starbucks every day for a seasonal frappuccino.

Play it on: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC
Buy it from: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

Death’s Door, a fundamentals-focused Legend of Zelda-like released to critical acclaim in 2021, makes you wander through the most incredible, unsettling houses in pursuit of souls. It’s your boring day job—soul collecting—until one day, your routine is broken, and you’re forced to interrogate life after death.

“Many of Death’s Door’s individual elements are borrowed from The Legend of Zelda,” Kotaku’s Ethan Gach writes in his review, “but unlike so many other indie homages it imports, it only takes the pieces that fit together perfectly. Then, it improves on them in subtle ways, and re-arranges them into a unique new picture.” Like an exemplary haunted house, Death’s Door makes something you’ve seen before feel immediate and shocking.

Play it on: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, PC
Buy it from: Amazon | Best Buy | GameStop

October makes you wait 31 days for its pinnacle, Halloween, the day where some optimistically declare that you can embody whoever you want or, more commonly, you can get really drunk on suspicious punch. Perhaps the day has lost a little of its magic in the years since we could experience it as children. Double Fine’s trick-or-treat role-playing game Costume Quest honors the holiday’s dual-sided sword with sweet, big-headed kids you help collect costumes and fight monsters that answer the door.

The game’s imaginative embrace of the 31st sees your young protagonists not just dressed in makeshift costumes as knights, robots, and other alter egos, but actually becoming them when combat ensues. It’s funny and delightful, perfectly capturing the joy many of us once felt when we first took to the streets as a princess or a karate master, going door to door asking for candy and feeling a little less constrained by the bounds of reality and identity.

Play it on: PS3, Xbox 360, Xbox Cloud Gaming, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android

What games are you most looking forward to playing this October?