Four of the year’s biggest, scariest horror movies and the four games to go along with them. Probably not at the same time, but if you like one, well, you just might like the other. Dim the lights, spark some candles, and lets get our spooky game on.
Sinners and the Dark Quarter Make Music
Sinners, a movie that combines the magic of music with the fabulous fashion of vampires, couples a jazzy sense of mystery, terror, and hope. Coupling those same 
themes is The Dark Quarter, which sends you and your pals to 1980s New Orleans, a place suffused with the supernatural. The Dark Quarter is an app-driven cooperative adventure game, like fellow horror game standout Mansions of Madness. You’ll each pick an agent to venture out into the sultry streets, seeking to solve various crimes. Expansions exist too, adding in more stories, characters, and deluxe components, as is par for games like this.
So far, so appealing, but The Dark Quarter sets out to leave a mark by weaving its scenarios into campaigns. Your characters aren’t just stand-ins either, but play active roles in the story as themselves, even when you’re not focusing on your character’s personal quest. As you venture, you’ll build up skills, chuck dice to attempt checks in classic Arkham Horror style, and try to get to the heart of what’s gone wrong in the Big Easy. The Dark Quarter doesn’t serve up that solution in thirty minutes, though. This is a game best played with a small group in the warm light of lit candles for the several hours it’ll take to complete a scenario.
You won’t, though, spend those hours sifting through rules or tackling extreme difficulty. This isn’t Dawn of Madness or Lobotomy, and those seeking serious challenge and complex gameplay should check out those two instead. The Dark Quarter is about the story, the atmosphere, and the evil lurking in the shadows. Put on a creepy playlist and immerse yourself.
The Conjuring Goes Above and Below
The Conjuring films are creepy stuff, with this year’s The Last Rites telling a good ol’ ghost story. Most of these stories revolve around a house with a presence needing to fulfill something (or get itself exorcised) so it’ll stop meddling with the people trying to live their lives. In a similar vein is Above and Below: Haunted. This
standalone sequel to Above and Below has the same whimsical art style and general goal – build a village, score points – but, pertinent both to this article and your spooky game nights, adds ghosts.
Above and Below covers multiple genres. You are building a village, yes, and you are scoring points based on how that village is constructed. That’s the ‘Above’ part. ‘Below’ swings in with short, twisty narratives earned by sending your brave townsfolk into the caverns beneath your village. They’ll explore, find treasure, and go on adventures. In Haunted, those adventures expand, with more dangerous caves with (obligatory) better rewards. It’s a thornier setup than the first game, with more to risk, but in turn, you’re getting more excitement.
Those ghosts, given marquee wood token treatment, aren’t short on thrills either. They’ll haunt your buildings, which would be annoying until you realize you can banish them to another player’s favorite spot instead. It’s a neat interactive mechanic that meshes with horror movie standards: the ghost is rarely gone for good, just moving on to a friendlier place to spook. Leaving the ghost alone costs you reputation, which you’ll have to earn back by going on those deep cave expeditions. It’s incentive, it’s interactive, and the production makes the whole thing a pleasure to play.
With a low rules difficulty – a notch above family weight but far from a heavy game – and a playtime cutting in around an hour to 90 minutes, Above and Below: Haunted makes a perfect intro to your next Halloween movie night.
28 Years and a French Resistance Later
If there’s a common line in the 28 series, from days, to weeks, to years, it’s scrappy survivors standing up to both terrifying zombie hordes and powerful militarized forces. Pressure that pushes its characters to make tough decisions and rely on a frantic mix of skill and luck to make it through. In the Shadows: Resistance in France is much the same, putting one player in the shoes of the French resistance during the Nazi opposition of 1943 and 1944. You might think it’s 
odd to put this sort of thing in a piece on scary board games, but Nazis, particularly at their most ruthless, are about as terrifying as it gets.
Shadows takes a lighter approach to the card-driven war game formula, with familiar events and action points driving turn-by-turn play. France itself gets divided up into zones to scrabble over. On the Resistance side of things, you’ll feel more fractured thanks to suits on the cards making playing optimally both more difficult and thematic. You might want to run a fiery op in Marseille, but your hand, and thus, your forces are all concentrated in the North. You can force the issue, but it’ll cost extra ops points to pull off – moving those supplies, agents, and intelligence across an occupied country isn’t cheap.
The German player’s going to be doing their best to make it harder, too. Like in a COIN title, they can’t just gun down French agents, but have to expose them first. That’ll happen thanks to dangerous operations or informants, or the results of a resolution deck. These cards replace die rolls and add color – a yes-and or no-and form of consequence that adds narrative flavor to any event. While they’re hunting down the resistance, Germany’s need for material and forced labor will be ramping up too, and you’ll need to loot France to keep the war machine going. This drives more disaffected citizens into the Resistance, and the struggle continues.
Though not for long. Shadows drives towards a conclusion in under an hour, every minute pulsing with dynamic action. It’s not one for drawn-out plans or hundred-hour campaigns, but a lighter, lightning event you could fit in over a lunch break. Thrilling, tight, and tough, Shadows marks a great entry into card-driven war games, and with a designed solitaire mode, works great even if you’re a solo fan.
Weapons, Dungeons, and Dragons
While Weapons didn’t quite come out of nowhere – the director did the also-excellent horror flick Barbarian – it did shock with its original premise and top-notch execution. It’s hard to find a better Halloween pedigree than the Horrified franchise, and while the swerve to this year’s Horrified: Dungeons and Dragons might not match Weapons in its originality, it’s nonetheless a different tack than expected. But then, last year’s Horrified: World of Monsters had Cthulhu, so what else was left?
Anyway, Horrified: Dungeons and Dragons keeps the game’s core formula: find the way to beat the monster while keeping civilians alive, and iterates, embracing its
Dungeons and Dragons license to do more than paste on familiar creatures like a beholder and cough a dragon. For example, characters have a selection of D&D classes, from Rogue to Bard, that add more unique abilities. Because Horrified is so similar to Pandemic, it’s easy to fall into a trap where every character feels vanilla and you’re just shifting pieces around. Instead, here, it’s the Paladin luring the Beast away so the cleric can save the hapless townspeople, while the Rogue discovers the monster’s weakness. Thin thematic dressing, but it goes over well with the light rules load.
The other major change you’ll find here is the inclusion, and much use of, the D20. Because this is Dungeons and Dragons, you’ll be chucking the dice for various checks throughout the game. This is a spicy inclusion for this sort of title, adding more randomness to what’s often pitched as an action efficiency puzzle. For those that prefer to math out the solution, the die rolling might be frowned upon (and to which I’d say check out the other Horrified titles for your spooky game nights), but for embracers of chaos like myself, the D20 element is a much-needed dose of narrative juice. The highs and lows that come with those little numbers turn this Horrified from a pleasant hour-long excursion into a heroic story. It’s a great reason to return to the game after you’ve beaten the four included baddies (and is more fun than just bumping up another difficulty level).
All told, Horrified: Dungeons and Dragons is well done, with a quality production, modular difficulty to match to player experience, and worth picking up if you’ve never tried one of these games before. If you have the other Horrifieds, I’d say add this if the dice mechanic is right up your alley. Or take advantage of Noble Knight’s trade-in options to swap a version you’ve played to death for this new one.
Lastly, a quick bonus hit – House of a 1000 Corpses came out more than two decades ago (I’m so old), but, somehow, received a rather nifty board game this year. House of 1000 Corpses does the fun bit where you’re playing as the evil Firefly family, working together in co-op style to capture those meddling kids and, uh, take care of them. Best served up to Rob Zombie fans, the game’s a snappy bit of fun, not hard to learn, but deceptively tricky. This is the 2025’s would-be gag game that delivers.
