To celebrate Halloween this year, I'm playing through a bunch of horror games that were included in the Itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality from a few months back. The goal is to play and blog one of these horror games every day until the 31st; I've deliberately picked shorter ones to make this work. Each will be rated on their overall quality and "spookosity" in what I'm sure will be a very clinical critique. Let the chills commence!

October 25th

• Game: Halloween Forever
• Developer: Imaginary Monsters
• Release Year: 2016
• Available: Itch, Steam, PS4, PSVita

Is there anything more Halloween than a pumpkin man who barfs candy corn? Halloween Forever doesn't think so, and I'm inclined to take its lead as its 8-bit no-frills platforming is entirely too charming. Built closer to the NES blueprint than most throwbacks, for better and worse, Halloween Forever has you progressing through five stages - each containing a mid-boss and an end-boss - with a gaggle of spooky characters. The first of these, Pumpkin Man, is the only one unlocked initially (along with his Christmas holiday special doppelganger, Santa Pumpkin) though others can be found in secret areas as you progress for a maximum of one unlock per playthrough.

In gameplay terms, Halloween Forever is a simple enough platformer where your characters are granted a ranged attack and a double jump. The level design is functionally (and thematically) similar to Castlevania in that there are multiple branching paths that ultimately lead to the same place, and taking the less obvious routes is where you find the game's few secrets, unlockable characters, and helpful 1-Ups. You start with five hearts, though certain hazards like spikes and pits are instant kills. Most enemies have basic attack and movement patterns that shouldn't trouble you unless you mess up or find yourself surrounded, though flying foes and the bosses can be a little more of a handful. The game only checkpoints at bosses, but the levels aren't so long that you're looking at too much work to get back to where you were and it offers another opportunity to look for the secret routes. Silver linings and whatnot.

Having multiple characters to futz around with works as a tonic to the game's most prominent 8-bit trait: a game over state that drops you right back at the start. Each new character that the player finds makes their next playthrough easier, as Pumpkin Man's candy corn emesis has terrible range compared to the others: Butternut Man (Pumpkin Man's "gourd from another lord") tosses explosive squashes that hit multiple times, the Skeleton throws two bones with different arcs, Ms. Witch has her army of cat familiars, and so on. Given the whole game's about 30 minutes long give or take, and there's health refills and the aforementioned 1-Ups to find, the game over state isn't quite the dealbreaker you might expect and the game has accessibility options (by way of a 99-lives cheat that disables achievements) if you just want to enjoy the game's eerie if cute visuals and dig up the handful of secrets strewn about without the risk of losing all your progress.

I wish I had more to say about Halloween Forever, but it's a deliberately simple and short platformer that uses its many unlockable characters as its only means of extending its longevity. Since the Itch version doesn't have achievements, I'm not quite as inclined to complete it seven times to see the full breadth of its content, though it's evident that the level design takes on a whole different angle with its last character: a winged imp named Demon Joe that can safely skip most of the platforming challenges by flying over them. If you're really bad with jump scares but still want to get into the horror spirit with some video games, this is definitely an acceptable, inoffensive PG-rated option.

• Quality: 4 Stars.
• Spookosity: 1 S.T.A.R.S.