Halloween has a survival horror fangame, and it's bloody, brilliant

As a big fan of eighties slashers and survival horrors, I have a weird feeling that indie horror game Halloween was made specifically for me, perhaps after some sort of psychic interference by developers Pig Farmer Games. As the name suggests, it's pretty much Halloween The Game, and if any of John Carpenter's lawyers are watching: look at that shiny distraction over there. As for the rest of us: you're going to want to play this, particularly if (like me) you're a video nasty or a Resident Evil fan.

You're a babysitter looking after an annoying brat on the spookiest day of the year: Ash Wednesday Halloween. After a bit of item-hunting and puzzling (tip: you can access your inventory with Escape), the lights go out and things get a little bit more stabby. Michael Myers himself makes an appearance, taking time off from Austin Powers to return to his halcyon serial-murdering days.

There are several control schemes, but I played in 'movie' mode, which essentially borrows Resident Evil's wonderfully awkward tank controls. I am moderately in awe of Pig Farmer Games' ability to recreate the eighties/VHS aesthetic, which you can witness in the trailer below.

(Many thanks to John Polson of IndieGames fame.)

Tom Sykes

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.