Dark Pictures Anthology Headlines Humble’s Horror Bundle
Halloween may be over but that doesn’t mean that you have to stop enjoying everything scary. For those who love a good thrill, Humble Bundle has a great deal going, letting you snag seven horror games for only twenty bucks. Available until November 12, the collection’s headlining title has to be the entire Dark Pictures Anthology thus far, which will treat you to a handful of horror stories pulled right out of classic B movies.
For the unfamiliar, The Dark Pictures Anthology is an ongoing series developed by Supermassive Games, the team best known for PlayStation’s cult classic Until Dawn. Like that 2015 title, The Dark Pictures Anthology seeks to capture the feeling of a horror movie that you can play. In each of the anthology’s titles (of which there are currently four), you’ll be responsible for deciding the fate of each cast member. What makes these experiences so enjoyable are the permutations the story can take depending on your mood. Sure, you could save everybody and let them live happily ever after, but it’s a bit more fun to see just how much mayhem you can cause, even if it means letting the killer take out the entire cast. Choosing your own style also makes the Dark Pictures games perfect to play with a group of friends.
Because the Dark Pictures games are an anthology, you can pick up any of the four titles first. Each one has its own horror vibe to fit the mood you’re in. For my money, the best of the four is 2021’s House of Ashes, which leans into Lovecraftian cosmic horror in a claustrophobic cave setting out of 2005’s horror flick The Descent. The third title in the series, it’s clearly the one on which Supermassive hit its stride, both in narrative and gameplay. The roughly six-hour experience never lets up, constantly putting pressure on you and the cast. It also has a great star in Ashley Tisdale (of High School Musical fame), and she turns in a pretty fantastic horror performance.
In addition to the rest of the Dark Pictures games, the Humble Bundle will also net you Little Nightmares, its expansion, and Little Nightmares 2. For $20 that’s a pretty great belated Halloween treat.
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Dead Space And More Are A Bargain During EA’s Halloween Sale
Even with Halloween now in the past, it feels like almost every game under the sun is on some kind of sale for the holiday. Storefronts like Steam, GOG, and PlayStation all have big sales running right now that you can take advantage of. Not to be outdone, EA has joined the club, offering its own bounty of treats in a Steam sale that extends the spooky season fun until November 11.
As this is the Electronic Arts Halloween sale, and you are probably in the mood for something scary, there is no better place to start than 2023’s Dead Space. A top-to-bottom remake of the 2008 modern horror masterpiece that is essentially Resident Evil 4 but in space this time, Dead Space still stands as one of the scariest games you can play. The remake modernizes the horrifying setting of the seemingly abandoned space ship The USG Ishimura to great effect, making the atmosphere even spookier than it was in the original. Dismembering enemies with your plasma cutter remains a satisfying way to take down the zombie-like necromorphs, even if it doesn’t make them any less terrifying to look at. If you like it, the rest of the series is on sale too!
Of course there are plenty of games offering something other than Dead Space’s scares to get as well. Here are some highlights to look out for during the EA Halloween sale.
- Dead Space (2023) – $17.99 (was $59.99)
- Dead Space (2008) – $7.99 (was $19.99)
- Dead Space 2 – $3.99 (was $19.99)
- Dead Space 3 – $3.99 (was $19.99)
- Titanfall 2 – $4.79 (was $29.99)
- Burnout Paradise Remastered – $3.99 (was $19.99)
- Mass Effect Legendary Edition – $8.99 (was $59.99)
- It Takes Two – $13.99 (was $39.99)
- Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order – $7.99 (was $39.99)
- Star Wars Jedi: Survivor – $24.99 (was $69.99)
- Mirror’s Edge – $4.99 (was $19.99)
If you’re over the Halloween mood, then might I suggest diving into Mass Effect Legendary Edition? This collection of the first three games in the series is a bargain for less than ten bucks and will give you one of the best epics in gaming, full of wonderful characters. Sure, everybody else is currently enjoying BioWare’s latest release, Dragon Age: The Veilguard, but you can’t really compete with three games for such a low price.
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The Incredible Oxenfree Games Are Less Than Five Bucks
Halloween is literally tomorrow, and if you don’t already have your plans sorted, I’m going to help you out right now. If you aren’t going out, chances are you’re staying in and watching a movie or playing a game. With a bunch of sales going right now on every imaginable storefront, it’s a great time to pick up a great horror game or two, and I think the Oxenfree games are a perfect one-two punch for the season.
As it so happens, the critically acclaimed narrative games from Night School Studio, including the seminal indie title Oxenfree from 2016 and its 2023 sequel, are both heavily discounted on Steam right now. I’ve highlighted a number of shockingly low deals in my time doing this, but I don’t think I’ve ever spotted a deal as good as this one: both Oxenfree and Oxenfree II: Lost Signals will run you just $3 till November 4.
Why is this such a steal? Besides the low low price of approximately three Arizona drinks, the Oxenfree games are just some of the most effective minimalist horror in the medium. At their simplest, they are 2D side-scrolling narrative games featuring branching dialogue options. But Oxenfree distinguishes itself with some exceptionally grounded writing, bringing to life its teenage and later young-adult casts as they unearth ghosts both real and imagined.
In the first game, a crew of teenagers goes to Edwards Island, a tourist trap off the coast of their hometown that’s also a famously “haunted” locale. On the night that Alex, her stepbrother Jonas, and the rest of their friends depart for the island, they start picking up weird radio signals and wavelengths that begin to open what can only be described as a schism between worlds. The angular portals that begin appearing around Edwards Island invite other kinds of beings into Alex’s reality, at which point the crew stops being able to discern reality from the tricks of otherworldly spirits.
I love intimate stories driven by characters rather than larger plot machinations. A good character study is one of the most enjoyable things a story can deliver, and that’s what Oxenfree really is. While both games are set against hauntings, possessions, historical tragedies, and even the goings-on of a cult, they mostly center on the unraveling of the leads, characters so tightly wound that they need ghosts to shake loose traumas that therapy could barely touch. Alex and her friends—as well as Riley and Jacob in the sequel—are each holding onto a lot before their fateful encounters, but they walk away from these experiences fundamentally changed, and as players who learn to love them, we hope, at least, that it’s for the better.
The oft-unspoken highlight of these games, though, is their runtime. The first game can be finished in about five hours, meaning that if you simply sit on your couch tonight and play it straight through to the end, you can be in bed at a completely reasonable time. That then sets the stage for you to enjoy the slightly bigger, and similarly ambitious, sequel (which clocks in at between 6-8 hours) tomorrow on Halloween. Remember when I called this pick-up a one-two punch? That’s what I meant.
For an even sweeter deal, you can pick up both Oxenfree games, the soundtrack to the first game, and even Afterparty, one of Night School’s more underrated titles about drinking your way out of Hell, for about $3. No matter how you slice it, this deal is out of this world.
Even if you don’t specifically enjoy these games just in time for Halloween, the fall is a notoriously spooky season. Make a weekend out of enjoying Oxenfree, that’s what I did when I played the first game! If you ever need a low-key and casual scary time, and you don’t want to watch a movie or show, why not pop on these two games? They’re as good as any season of TV, they’re relatively easy commitments, and they’re both incredibly thoughtful coming-of-age stories set at two completely different stages of life, because we’re always growing, we’re always learning, and more importantly, we’re all haunted by something.
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