Hell-o-Ween!

October means the leaves fall from the trees, the winds start to bite your face and the rain freezes you to the bones. And I LOVE it! Halloween and Christmas are my favourite times to play games!

Of course, Animal Crossing will always hold a special place in my heart for its Jack O Lantern related clothing, event, sweets and furniture, but seeing as we have to wait until March 2020 for Animal Crossing for Switch, the game of my choice is the spook-tacular Don’t Starve!

3….Don’t Starve

Don’t Starve (and Don’t Starve Together, EU 12+/ US T rating) plus it’s DLC are available on Xbox, PlayStation and Switch. The creepy art style and atmosphere the game provides, along with the slow (or fast, if you make it so!) slipping into the descent of madness makes it one of my favourite spooky games! That, alongside the hounds of hell, killer penguins and spiders to name a few, means it’s a great game to curl up with a hot chocolate and fluffy blanket and lose your dark days to! So gather your carrots, get ready to gobble your way through some turkeys and, for goodness sake, DONT STARVE. Or forget to light your campfire…you won’t even live to regret it!

Players heed this warning – much like life, this game doesn’t have a pause and, like death, your end is inevitable! It’s just a matter of how long you’ll last! Keep an eye out for it on sale on Switch; you’ll get a great game and Wilson does have a rather magnificent beard. What do I mean by that? Play it and you’ll find out!

2…..Amnesia Collection

My second choice of ‘Ween themed games has to be Frictional Games’ Amnesia: Collection ( EU 16+ /US M rated) which is, like Don’t Starve, available on Xbox, PlayStation and Switch! In the collection you get Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Justine which, just for the size of the building in the first game, will give you the creeps for a long time to come! You play as Daniel, a mysterious man who wakes up in an equally mysterious manor of epic proportions. Find you way through the dark with your not-so-trusty lantern, which will frequently leave you in the dark, and keep your sanity high with your Laudanum – lest you start seeing things that go bump in the night.

Ah who am I kidding, you’ll see them anyway. Worse still, you have no weapons, so you’ll have to keep your wits about you as you hide, run and avoid the pesky deformities that wander the halls of the manor. Pick up your scattered memories from a torn up diary as you go, but you might not like what you start to discover as you unravel the mysteries of Amnesia.

(Ashromer has just reviewed the collection, find it here)

1….Ju-On- The Grudge

My third and final fall favourite is one that I don’t even want to think too much about. As gamers, we all have a franchise or two that sticks with us for all the right reasons. You know the ones I’m talking about; anything from Pokemon and Animal Crossing right through to the likes of FIFA and Call of Duty. And we religiously go out and buy the next game, because we know what to expect and it’s what we enjoy. This game, however, is one I would much rather forget, for all the right reasons.

Ju-On- The Grudge, for Nintendo Wii (EU 16+/ US M rating). Yeah, it was a while ago. Revealing my age and that I really shouldn’t have been playing it.

In Ju-On, which is of course based off the films and books that have been published worldwide, you are given a flashlight. Oh, you expected a list? No, it’s just a flashlight and one set of the worst batteries you’ll ever experience. You task is to explore a variety of places with your poor quality flashlight and try to find clues and/or a means of escape. But, of course, Kayako (also, Sadako, The Grudge or Samara if you’re into The Ring franchise; for a dead girl she has many alias’) is ready to frighten your pants off with her death rattle if you move too slowly or linger in one place too long…which is exactly what you have to do to find the various objects so that you can progress and also so that you can find batteries so that you don’t get an instant K.O from The Grudge herself. This game is an absolute no win situation. It’s creepy, it frays your nerves to the point of not being able to sleep, and it gives you a life long fear of running out of batteries. Amongst other things, of course.

So if you’re as into The Grudge/The Ring as films then you’ll probably enjoy the game. I say probably because gosh damn I’ve never peed my pants so hard in my life playing this game. I am eternally scarred by its horror. So if you’re braver than me, dust off your old Wii, bring out some adult nappies and prepare your sanity, because you’ll probably lose it along the way!