02nd Nov2021

Top 5: Spooky Games To Play As The Days Go Dark

by James Smith

Nothing gets people involved in a game, than when their most primal senses have been awakened. Scary games electrify our fight or flight mechanisms and that puts us on edge, never knowing what the right choice is to make. This is why as the day draws to night, we think you should never be without a good spooky game to play. But there are all sorts of games, board games, video games, physical games, etc. Which one to choose for your next family or friends gathering? There are lots of different choices so we think you shouldn’t be limiting yourself. Some are about fantasy middle ages, some are about banquet murders, others about modern spy thrillers. When you have such a rich field to choose from, why spoil it for yourself by limiting what you should buy and keep in your home?

Let’s start off with a classic

There are plenty of modern iterations of horror and ghostly games, but one of the all-time favorites is the murder mystery board game. It’s one of those things you get out of the pantry or wardrobe when the power cuts out and you know you’ll be stuck in candlelight for the next few hours. But there are modern versions of this old genre, just take a look at the vast array on Masters of Mystery. The masquerade ball/carnival murder mystery host your own game kit is incredibly good fun. All you need is between 4 and 8 players, but it can easily go up to 20. It is a classic Venetian ball after all and lots of people are invited. It’s set in 1755, and it’s carnival season in one of the greatest cities on earth at that time, Venice in Italy. Rich, poor, old and young are all mingling, having a good time. The food is being shared, the wine is flowing and thankfully, everyone can enjoy themselves without any hitches because they’re all wearing disguises to hide their identities.

Nobody knows who they are interacting with and this allows people to let their hair down, speak about unseemly things, share secrets and let their true opinions fly about people they dislike. Suddenly, there is a sound of glass smashing and the figure in red is lying dead on the floor. They were just seen speaking with lots of people, but nobody seems to know who they were, if they were even invited and what they were doing at the ball. It’s your job to find out these questions, but also, why someone wanted them dead and who did it!?

Dead Space comeback

Dead Space was originally made in 2008. It wasn’t just your average deep space abandonment horror game, it was about political ramifications of our future as space-venturing humans. It is the 23rd century, and humans are now capable of exploring different worlds. As you might expect us to do, we are going far and wide to find resources. We use giant mining ships to transport tools, people and goods across planetary systems. These giant ships are referred to as planet crackers, for they go out and find resources in very difficult planets, made of harmful gases, ice, lava fields and high gravity zones.

On one of the ships, a lead researcher called Michael Altman leaks information about an alien artefact that could be a source of almost limitless energy, which the earth could use indefinitely. that was found in one of the craters on a planet they were exploring. The global entity EarthGov, assassinates him to keep any more information from leaking out. There is an uproar and he is seen as a martyr. You’ll have to play it to find the rest out. So far there are 3 dead space games and it has just been announced that a remake of the series is going to commence this year. It’s one of those fascinating stories with multiple questions, not just about other life and our prospects on our own planet, but what if the things we crave to explore could lead us to show our dark sides?

Making your own escape room

Escape rooms have been ascending in popularity because they get more and more intense as the clock ticks by. It’s also a very simple premise. You are locked in a room, if you don’t escape something bad will happen, maybe you die from poison gas flooding the room, maybe someone in the other room that can only be freed by you gets the chopping block, or it could be that you stop a nuclear disaster from happening by pressing a button located just outside of the room. These could be any reason to get out, but the bottom line is, you have to get out within a certain timeframe.
You could make a series of puzzles, riddles and leave clues behind as rewards. You can go online and learn how to make your first escape room. They get easier the more you make. It also depends on how many people are allowed to play. It could put two people together and ask them to use different skills they possess, to get free. Or it could be that you have one person chained up in one room, with clues on the wall, which they can read but cannot touch. They can give these clues to the people in the next room who can move and touch things, but are blindfolded. This spurs on teamwork and you have to race against the clock. It could be a 30 minute limit, 1 hour or more.

Hide and seek in the dark

Hide and seek is a game everyone can understand and play. But the thing is, we don’t want to play it in a small space because it would be easy to find everyone. But what if you could turn that space much bigger, purely because it could only be covered at a snail’s pace. The game is going to be played in the dark. It can be played in the house, both gardens and the garage. So you have plenty of places to hide.

The rules are, the person who is ‘it’ and has to find everyone, can use a flashlight but it can only be turned on for 5 seconds once every 30 seconds. This involves you trusting the person who is finding everyone not to cheat, but it’s so much fun doing it the right way so if you do it, don’t be tempted.

Make it more fun by adding a timer between each find. If the person who is it, doesn’t find 1 person per x amount of time, the people who have been found can one by one go back into hiding. This prevents the seeker from taking their time.

To add even more fun to it, if one of those hiding can sneak up on the seeker and put a sticker on them, the seeker is dead and they lose. This means that the hiders can also stalk the seeker and it’s a game of cat and mouse, not just a waiting game.

This is really fun when you are playing in the forest or park late in the afternoon or at night. Just remember that everyone should have their phone on them, just in case they get lost or someone they don’t know tries to interact with them in an unwarranted way. So you may not want to play this with kids, but teens and adults should have a ball.

Telling ghost stories

Everyone has done this at some point. Telling a horror story in the middle of the night with just a torch shining on your face, come on, we all used to do this as a kid to scare our friends. Well, this is still in fashion. When the power goes out and you’re all gathered in one room, the house is silent bar for the wind and the rain hitting it. A spooky story can really get everyone’s hair to stand up on edge.

But practice though. You have to have a good story, a good plot, characters and ending. You can find all kinds of horror and ghost stories online and memorize them for when it’s time to scare the heck out of everyone. The trick is to have a good flow. You need to pause at the right time, let the situation you have just described sink in. make sound effects to really immerse your listeners into the story.
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Which one of these is your favorite? We think that a classic murder mystery board game is timeless. Everyone can get involved, play different characters, get dressed up and make a night of it. Most games like these last for about 1-3 hours, so you can really get your money’s worth each time. But, who can skim over modern classics like Dead Space? It’s a great game that is due for a revival and the story is one of a kind.
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