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Video games allow us to play with our fears, to be vulnerable in safety and scare ourselves in a way that lets us test our skills and feel a daring sense of fun. Across five different categories, I’ve picked out the best mobile games for All Hallow’s Eve.
Click here to visit Part One for more Halloween apps
Survival Horror
The Walking Dead – The Game
iPhone/iPad
$4.99
A companion story to the popular AMC television series, The Walking Dead has you making choices and decisions that affect a different group of people also caught amongst the walker outbreak. Yes, you’ll have to fight off the terrors, but the bigger emphasis is on navigating trust as every choice you make, every detail you reveal, is noted by all the other characters whose behavior adapts in response.
Dead Trigger
iPhone/iPad/Android
This free first-person shooter offers impressive graphics and a wide variety of zombies and tight, city streets to deal within them in. The focus here is on giving you a dream list of weapons, explosives, and special tools along with a variety of ways to use them to take out zombies. For Halloween a special update has been released so you can take the battle to a haunted graveyard and fight comical pumpkin-headed zombies.
Call of Duty Black Ops Zombies
iPhone/iPad/Android
$6.99
This variation of the popular military shooter lets you and your friends connect online to take on the undead hordes. Just like the console version it’s based on, you can use voice chat to strategize amongst a team of four, using guns and mines to deal with zombies in the icy cold of Siberia. If you’re not ready to go online to play with others, there’s a solo mode too.
Zombiewood
iPhone/iPad/Android
An arcade-style, dual-stick shooter, Zombiewood brings the undead to Los Angeles for a humorous battle amongst the movie sets and celebrities of Hollywood. This means wave after waves of bizarre and funny zombies and unlock after unlock of big effect weapons and ludicrous costumes for you to wear.
For Spooky Kids Of All Ages
Ski Safari
iPhone/iPad/Android
$0.99
Skiing down a monster hill, you must pick up a variety of different animals and humourous characters to give you different abilities to handle the changing slopes. For Halloween, a special upgrade has been given to cast the mountain in Twilight and offer up new monster allies such as dark wolves, giant bats, and creepy hands. Plus there are costumes to unlock too.
Plants Vs. Zombies
iPhone/iPad/Android
$0.99/$2.99
A strategy game against the undead, you must build up a defense for your house by planting formations of carnivorous plants that can shoot, eat, freeze, and explode. This requires you to learn how to manage resources (seeds and sunlight) and react to changing demands as the waves of undead get stronger and strong. Highly addictive to adults, yet silly and friendly enough to be a hit amongst kids.
Mo’ Monsters
iPhone/iPad
Free
This a monster trainer game, very similar to the Pokemon series, in which you collect and evolve creatures of light to help you explore a land in peril and battle creatures of the dark. Thanks to a new update, there are creatures that have a strong Halloween feel including encounter zombie-unicorns and Franken-pigs.
The Great Pumpkin Festival
iPhone/iPad/Android
Free
Inspired by the animated classic “It’s The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”, this app offers a guessing game where players are given a hint word, then use the touchscreen to carve a Jack-O-Lantern with a matching lit image, and offer it online for others to guess. Every player has their own Peanuts avatar to use as they play against each other, and with the points you earn you can unlock Halloween costumes.
Haunted Headphones
Blindside
iPhone/iPad
$2.99
This is an audio-only adventure best played with headphones. Actors combine their voices with a tapestry of sound effects to form an eerie world of mystery where you awaken to find the city you’re in destroyed and strange creatures that are roaming and eating people. As you physically turn while holding your phone in the real world, so you will face the direction within the audio world, and try to navigate the story where you must gather your girlfriend and try to escape.
Escape The House: A 3D Experience
iPhone/iPad
Free
A tie-in to the movie House At The End Of The Street, this audio-adventure is played through your headphones with a soundscape that describes the world and characters you’re in. You find yourself trapped in the dark of house-turned-dungeon and must find your way out. You must shake your device to ward off attackers, scream into its microphone for help, and tap its screen to walk slowly or run in a panic. Turn out the lights and play this one at night and, well…. you might want to leave one light on just in case.
Zombies, Run!
iPhone/Android
$3.99
A fitness game you play while running on a treadmill or on a safe path outside. As you run, an audio adventure plays out through your headphones, one where you’re the survivor of a helicopter crash in a post-apocalyptic world. You carry a radio which others in nearby camps call out to you. Using binoculars, they can watch you and help guide you to safety…from the zombies, whose heavy groans you can hear chasing you from behind. Your phone’s sensors will calculate how fast your running and so know if you’ve gone fast enough to live or not.
Gothic Games
Corpse Craft
iPad
Free
A real-time strategy game with an Edward Gorey feel, you must solve a falling block puzzle to build up the resources to produce armies of reanimated corpses and send them off after other eerie, New England characters to do the same. Allow the game to connect online and you can do battle against others who share your odd taste in gallows humour.
Elder Sign: Omens
iPhone/iPad/Android
$3.99/$6.99
A board game based on the Mythos of author H. P. Lovecraft, Elder Signs challenges players to beat the clock and assemble a team of investigators that can explore an ever-changing environment in order to collect all the items needed to stop the apocalypse. Hanging in the balance is the world, and their sanity.
Dead Runner
iPhone/iPad/Android
$0.99
You wake up in a dark forest, surrounded by the sounds of wailing souls trapped in trees. Sensing great danger, your impulse is to run, run for your life. Following a similar dynamic to Temple Run, the idea here is to simple dodge and navigate your way through the dark woods and it’s obstacles before the darkness consumes. See how far you can survive..
Dark Meadow: The Pact
iPhone/iPad/Android
Free/$2.99
A 3D adventure game with both a sophisticated story and elegant visuals, Dark Meadow has you suddenly awakening within a hospital where an old man recruits you to deal with a witch and her minions whom roam the halls. An excellent mix of action and exploration in a world that is all about delivering a spooky atmosphere.
Soul
iPhone/iPad
$0.99
A man dies and his soul begins the journey to heaven. Your job is to guide it there through a dark and frightening world of rooms, corridors, and pathways that twist and turn into challenging mazes. A simple puzzle game in concept, but very rich in atmosphere.
Puzzles
The Curse
iPhone/iPad/Android
$0.99
This is a collection of 100 puzzles tied into a story where solving them helps defeat the villainous Mannequin and the curse that unleashed him and his evil motives into the world. There are puzzles designed to test your reflexes, memory, and logic. Get them all and you’ll face one final cryptic challenge within a spellbook.
Midnight Mysteries: Salem Witch Trial
iPad
Free/$6.99
This is a hidden object puzzle, a series of scenes in which you must find a collection of items that are right before your eyes, but hard to spot because of how well they blend into the background. What makes this game stand out to others of its genre is the incredible visuals, the ability to zoom into the scenes, and the characters, such as a cast of ghosts who recruit your help and are available for you to interview.
Spirits
iPhone/iPad
$2.99
Is it a video game? Is it art? Or might it be both? As the autumn leaves fall they give up spirits that rise and try to journey home. Without directly touching them or guiding them, you must find ways to help them along the way, by giving them wind to boost their movement, blocking currents that get in their way, and forming bridges or tunnels that will help the leaves overcome obstacles in the way. Although spooky and supernatural in feel, it’s one of the few games on this list that is more relaxing than scary.
Nightmarium
iPhone/iPad
Free
While a sweet, little girl sleeps in her bed at night, you must protect her from the awful creatures that reach out to nibble on her from the darkness. With an outrageous comic book style that draws a comparison to that of Jhonen Vasquez (Invader Zim) the girl’s bedroom becomes ever more nightmarish the longer you help her survive. It’s a simple game of tapping and reflexes, but worth it just for the visuals and dark humour alone.
Click here for Part One and more Halloween apps