Halloween falls on a Friday this year: maybe you’re hosting a game night while you wait for trick-or-treaters, or perhaps you can break out a few games after you get back from taking your kids around the neighborhood. Either way, we’re here to help with a list of games to help you add some tricks and treats to your October gaming sessions!

Our suggestions for this year’s list are from Alex Hart, Jonathan Liu, Paul Benson, and Michael Knight.

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)

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)

This one was included in our list last year when it was still on Kickstarter, but now the game is finished and available for purchase! Girls vs Ghouls pits two teams against each other in a race to control the houses in a cul-de-sac using tricks and treats. The catch? You don’t know who’s on your team until the end of the game! Check out the full review here. (JL)

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)

This tiny box from Oink Games has a bunch of little trinkets: you hold them all in your hand, and then try to drop only the correct ones to satisfy the ghosts. Be the fastest, and you earn a bell … which also goes in your hand, so try not to drop it! A clever dexterity game that’s a real treat. Available in stores or from Oink Games. (JL)

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)

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)

Science Fiction is full of rogue robots causing murderous mayhem. Those security robots in Chopping Mall. Hector in Saturn 3. And, of course, The Terminator. You’d think those scientists would have worked on their programming better, but they still produced a bunch of glitchy robots that end up killing a lot of colonists in the tableau-building Moon Colony Bloodbath. Will your lunar colony survive? You can read my review here. (PB)

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 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)

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)

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)

Okay, this one isn’t technically a tabletop game, but it’s also more than just a simple jigsaw puzzle. Murdle: In the Hedge Maze is a murder mystery where you can use the included clues and deduction grid to match up each suspect with a weapon and a location, but some of the clues can only be interpreted by assembling parts of the jigsaw puzzle! It is possible to solve the murder before the puzzle is complete, but you can also use the finished image to trace everyone’s paths through the maze to see which suspect entered the hedge maze. You can read more about it (and other murder mysteries!) in my Stack Overflow column. (JL)

Happy Halloween, and happy gaming!

Source: geekdad.com