Shared fear is one heck of a drug. There’s something comfortable about being part of a group of scared people, especially when everyone knows they aren’t in genuine danger. Every October, I feed my addiction to collective dread by playing my favorite spooky video games with my nearest and dearest.
We’re examining spine-chilling games that reach their peak performance when played by a group of players. Some games we’ll discuss are multiplayer, while others are single-player games that benefit from the audience experience. Despite their differences, every game on this list will love you with Halloween memories that’ll stay with you for years.
10. DOORS
Inspired by Spooky’s Jumpscare Mansion, DOORS is one of the most impressive Roblox games ever crafted. The goal is simple on paper: you and up to three other players must make your way to the one-hundredth room of a sprawling, eerie hotel. Unfortunately, each room between you and your destination is the hunting grounds of a horrifying host of “Entities,” each more terrifying and competent than the last.
DOORS‘ strength lies in its deceptive complexity. Initially, the game may seem straightforward, but as more Entities and items are randomly dropped into the mix, things escalate quickly. Luckily, while the exact location of the game’s enemies and artifacts change, their behavior and function never do. This consistency allows players to learn from mistakes and improve their subsequent runs, creating an addictive gameplay loop that doesn’t dampen the game’s scares.
9. Resident Evil 4
Resident Evil has never settled into a constant formula, and Resident Evil 4 proves why that’s a good thing. Leon Kennedy’s second run-in with runaway bio-weaponry exchanges a significant chunk of the raw survival horror that defined previous installments for a more action-oriented gameplay structure. Ironically, this restraint allows RE4 to instill a different terror in you.
There are more toys to play with here than in most Resident Evil games, but it also throws more enemies at you. Environments are brightly lit and open-ended, which gives monsters more opportunities to ambush you from corners you can’t see. Resource management, situational awareness, and improvisation are the name of the game here, and RE4 will quickly become a terrifying game if you don’t learn to balance these skills.
Whether you’re playing the 2005 original or the 2023 remake, RE4 is excellent fun, especially with friends. The game’s linear, chapter-based progression gives you plenty of opportunities to pass the controller to another player, who’s probably learned a few tricks from watching you play.
8. Luigi’s Mansion
Mario’s green-capped younger brother was barely a character until Luigi’s Mansion turned him into the goofy coward Nintendo fans know and love. In the GameCube’s launch title, Luigi discovers the mansion he supposedly won in a contest is full of ghosts. Armed with a special vacuum, the younger Mario brother sets off to capture every ghost in the mansion and rescue his kidnapped older brother.
Luigi’s Mansion operates like a score-based arcade game, challenging you to rack up the highest point total possible as you navigate the titular abode. Competing with your friends to see who can catch the most ghosts never gets old, and it’s a fantastic way to spend a Halloween night if you have a GameCube.
7. Five Nights at Freddy’s
There are a lot of Five Nights at Freddy’s games these days, and all of them are fantastic picks for this list. With that said, there’s something about the simplicity of the franchise’s first game that keeps players like me coming back whenever October rolls around. If you can talk some of your friends into revisiting it with you, that’s all the better.
The original Five Nights at Freddy‘s didn’t become the viral phenomenon it did by accident. The light-flickering, door-slamming gameplay loop has just enough moving pieces to keep things exciting but uncomplicated, and the grungy art design gives its four murderous mascots an air of menace their later incarnations lack. I was in high school when the first FNaF dropped, and I still remember the times my friends and I jumped whenever one of us closed a door a bit too late or too soon.
6. Until Dawn
Interactive graphic horror titles have been bringing players together for a good, scary time since the heydays of Telltale’s The Walking Dead, but Until Dawn firmly cemented these games as prime Halloween party material. One year after the deaths of their friends, sisters Beth and Hannah, eight college-age young adults face their demons, and something much worse, on the snowy slopes of a creepy mountain.
Until Dawn is, at its core, an interactive horror movie. You decide how this teen horror story ends through timed button inputs, exploration, and choices that determine who lives, who dies, and how everyone feels about each other. So imagine how exciting things get when you arrive at a significant story branch and hand your controller over to a friend you know will make very different choices than you would.
5. Lethal Company
Lethal Company‘s only been out for about a year in early access, but it’s become one of the most popular co-op horror games out there right now. You and your friends are workers employed by “The Company,” tasked with retrieving valuable scrap from abandoned space colonies. Alien threats and dangerous environments jampack these colonies, but the real enemy is the ever-increasing scrap quota your employers expect you to fill, no matter the cost.
Besides your in-game salary, there’s a lot to love about Lethal Company. Despite the simplistic graphics (or maybe because of them), the monsters are surprisingly terrifying, and no one will hear you scream if you wander too far from your teammates. However, if you want to amp up your Lethal Company experience, I’d recommend looking into the game’s mod scene. Seriously, the Rolling Giant has never been more terrifying.
4. Buckshot Roulette
Russian Roulette is a dangerous game of chance smeared in glossy paint that gets people killed. Buckshot Roulette is one of the most addictive and creepy games I’ve played. The rules are simple: you and a grotesque grinning ghoul known as “The Dealer” take turns shooting at yourselves or each other, praying to whoever or whatever you believe in that the round in the chamber’s a bullet or a blank, depending on who the gun is pointing at.
Buckshot Roulette combines the dirty, industrial aesthetic of its developer’s other projects with the pixelated tabletop charm of Inscryption. An in-depth item system turns a glorified lottery into a complex game of strategy that will make you sweat. Right now, the only way to play the game with friends is to pass the keyboard around, but that will change once the game’s multiplayer update drops this Halloween.
3. Left 4 Dead 2
Valve can’t count to three, but their sequel game is second to none. Left 4 Dead 2 is every bit the strategic four-player zombie shooting experience the original game was and more. This game is still getting updates, and it’s still fun to play a decade after its original release.
Left 4 Dead 2 thoroughly sells the message behind almost every scrap of zombie media: cooperation is the key to survival. The levels encourage multitasking; a lone player can’t kill most enemies, and you can’t move on until every living player makes it to the end. The only thing holding L4D2 back is that every player needs a copy of the game and a working computer, so it’s not ideal for gamers working on a budget.
2. Dead by Daylight
Dead by Daylight is what you get when you take a game of hide-and-seek and give it the most horrifying digital glow-up imaginable. Four players step into the shoes of survivors trying to escape a bleak hellscape before a killer, controlled by a fifth player, sacrifices them to an evil god. Both character groups have tools the other doesn’t, and it’s a race to see who can complete their goal first.
The massive cast of survivors and killers and an ever-expanding list of perks means you’re never short on ways to customize your play style. On top of that, Dead by Daylight nails the horror aesthetic. Everything in the game thrums with Halloween vibes, even the HUD. Whether you’re the hunted or the hunter, DbD is a fun time.
1. Phasmophobia
What’s more Halloween than a good old-fashioned ghost hunt? Phasmophobia has reigned as the unchallenged sovereign of horror multiplier for the past four years, and I don’t see that changing soon. You step into the shoes of a ghost hunter, and it’s up to you and up to three other players to find out what species of haunt is menacing a specific residence, then make it out alive before the ghost ensures you take its secrets to your grave.
Phasmophobia makes you feel like a genuine paranormal investigator. The tools at your disposal are straight out of an episode of Ghost Hunters, and you’ll need to learn how to use them to identify each of the game’s twenty-four ghost types. If you’re ready for the ultimate Halloween gaming experience, suit up with three of your friends and get hunting.
