By Logan Jacobs

As the month of October is in full swing and Halloween is fast approaching, gamers may be looking for new or different scares. However, fear often takes a back seat in this style of play and tension takes over. And that tension is delivered in different and sometimes unusual ways. Multiplayer, Psychological, and Traditional are a nice triad of horror.

Multiplayer Horror: Phasmophobia is a fun 1 to 4 player ghost-hunting game in which players find pieces of evidence to determine what type of ghost is pursuing them.

As the ghost initiates what is called a “hunt” all players who are in the house at the time get locked in with the ghost until the conflict is resolved.

Players have tools to assist them such as the walkie talkie. During the hunt the walkie talkie also shuts off so players’ voices can only be heard by those nearby.

Death is always a risk. The ghost’s primary purposee is to track down players and kill them with a touch.

However, there ways to avoid these disturbing deaths. Different items like smudge sticks or a crucifix can ward off ghosts, buying the players more time.

Players can buy these items using a shop system offering many different items such as a head-mounted camera so teammates can see a first-person perspective from the van or candles that maintain player sanity in dark rooms.

However not all items can be bought in the shop like cursed possessions. These cursed possessions range from a ghost summoning circle to tarot cards that may save players from death.

Overall, this game is an engaging first-person paranormal investigation with mortal consequences yet a fun team-based action.

Phycological Horror: Yume Nikki is a true cult classic. Released in 2004, Yume Nikki explores dreams and nightmares.

While this game is far more psychological than horror, there are still horrific elements which have inspired other great horror games such as Omori, and the Lisa franchise.

As young shut-in Madotsuki, players go around dreams, collecting effects, doing events, and diving deeper into said dreams. Effects are the closest things you get to a progress system in Yume Nikki. Not all effects are useful, but some are extremely useful such as the bike making you go faster or the lamp lighting up dark worlds.

Although the effects can be described as a “progress system” gathering all 24 effects should not be the goal when playing Yume Nikki. Looking at Yume Nikki through that lens may lead to overlooking impacting events and areas such as going to Mars or meeting Uboa. These events and areas make up such a huge part of Yume Nikki and can be witnessed only after doing very specific steps that would have been missed by just chasing after effects.

Traditional Horror: Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion, has the player exploring a haunted mansion. In the mansion players will find different specimen, these specimens all have unique abilities each having their own way of trying to kill the player.

Unique abilities can range from having a puddle of goo to slow the player down, to forcing the player to constantly look at the specimen as they venture through the different rooms of the mansion.

After venturing through the mansion’s 1000 rooms players will face off against a final boss and depending on their score will either get a good or bad ending. Players will also face a sad truth of the mansion that had been hinted at all throughout the game.

Even after beating the story mode Spooky’s continues, by beating the paid hd version players will unlock an endless mode and two new dlcs.

Karamari Hospital and Dollhouse are both vastly different from the past formula of Spooky’s, instead of mixing in random specimen encounters and scripted encounters the two dlcs choose to go down the route of just having scripted encounters. This style of just having scripted encounters makes the story shine, letting the player explore a large dark abandoned hospital, discovering the past secrets left behind by GL Labs.

In Spooky’s Dollhouse the player explores a large mansion with many dark secrets left behind, eventually coming to a climax the player sees Spooky’s final moments. The endless mode opts to ditch the lore aspects and instead just focuses on scaring the player, the player can be chased by any monster across both dlcs and the main game, even adding more specimen exclusive to endless mode.

Phasmophobia, Yume Nikki, and Spooky’s Jump Scare Mansion are three games I will never forget playing and games that I would recommend to anyone who’s looking for a good scare this Halloween.