It's not often that you see games as diverse as Mortal Kombat, Back 4 Blood, Cult of the Lamb, and Outer Wilds gathered together under one big thematic tent, but Steam's annual Halloween sale manages to get it done with deep discounts of hundreds of spooky, shocking, silly, and scary games.
Even if conventional videogame thrills and chills aren't your bag, there's plenty here to dig into. Halloween isn't really meant to be frightening, after all: The varied horror trappings are essentially the "pumpkin" in pumpkin spice, which is to say that we associate it with the season, but there's not actually any of it in there.
With that in mind, here are a few selections from Steam Scream 3D, as the sale is officially known, that won't have you screaming and jumping out of your chair. (Probably.)
- Mortal Kombat 11 - $5/£4/€5 (90% off)
- Batman: Arkham Collection - $9/£7.49/€9 (80% off)
- Observer: System Redux - $9/£7/€9 (70% off)
- System Shock - $16/£14/€16 (60% off)
- (and since we're at it, System Shock 2 is 75% off- $2.49/£2/€2.40)
- Rusty Lake Hotel, Roots, and Paradise - half price across the board, putting them under $2 each, and I will never not recommend these for genuine creepy experiences
- Castlevania: Lords of Shadow Ultimate Edition - $6/£4/€5 (80% off)
- Vampire Survivors - $4/£3/€4 (25% off)
And if you do happen to be in the mood for some traditional frights, you can get the whole Frictional Collection—that's all the Amnesia games, SOMA, and the Penumbra Collectors Pack—for 82% off, The Chinese Room's Still Wakes the Deep is down to $23/£20/€20 (that's 33% off), Alien Isolation is $10/£9/€10 (75% off), and Subnautica, which isn't really a horror game until it very much is, is half price, making it a very fair $15/£12.49/£15.
May I also suggest, since this passed my way recently, the demo for Dead Letter Dept, a typing game in which you pursue a very dull, dead-end job while weird stuff keeps happening around you. I haven't played the demo enough to render any sort of meaningful judgment but there's a certain Stories Untold vibe to it straight off the top that I dig, and I'm eager to get back to it.
Steam's 2024 Halloween sale is live now and runs until November 4.
