Halloween: The Game is not the massive, polished, big budget Halloween game I have spent years hoping someone would make. It is janky in places, occasionally awkward, and clearly arrives with some technical rough edges. But man, it also feels like it was made by people who actually love Halloween.
That matters a lot. This franchise deserves a great game, and ideally it deserves a huge single player adventure where I can slowly stalk Haddonfield as Michael Myers for 20 hours. This is not that. What it is, though, is an asymmetrical horror game with a surprisingly involved multiplayer mode and a short single player campaign that gives me something I have wanted forever: the chance to properly creep around Haddonfield as Michael.
I would recommend it to patient, hardcore Halloween fans. If all you want is the most technically impressive horror game possible, this one may frustrate you. But if the atmosphere, the locations, the score, and the feeling of being The Shape are what you came for, there is genuine fun here.
Key Takeaways
- Halloween: The Game is a 1v4 asymmetrical horror game where survivors save civilians, call police, and try to escape Michael Myers.
- Michael’s Shape movement, sabotage tools, finishers, and stalking system make his gameplay feel especially authentic to the 1978 film.
- The six level single player campaign is short, but it delivers a satisfying Haddonfield stalking experience for dedicated Halloween fans.
- Performance issues, glitches, uneven animations, and uncertain long term support mean patience is required.
Table of Contents
- How the Multiplayer Works
- Survivor Perks Add More Personality Than Expected
- Playing as Michael Myers Is the Main Event
- Abilities, Progression, and Customisation
- The Short Single Player Mode Is Still Worth Experiencing
- The Rough Edges Are Real
- Is Halloween: The Game Worth Buying?
How the Multiplayer Works
The multiplayer mode is a 1v4 asymmetrical horror setup. One player takes control of Michael Myers, while four others play as Haddonfield survivors trying to stay alive, help civilians, call the police, and eventually escape.
That formula should sound familiar if you have spent time with games such as Dead by Daylight or Friday the 13th. The difference is that Halloween puts a lot of effort into making its survivors feel like active participants instead of helpless targets waiting to get picked off.
As a survivor, I move from house to house and make decisions under pressure. There are civilians to find and save, telephones to use, keys to locate, hiding places to exploit, and tools to use against Michael.
- Call the police: Successful calls put more pressure on Michael and bring police closer to the area.
- Find and help NPC civilians: Saving people is part of the survivor side of the match, not just an optional distraction.
- Search for escape options: Keys, vehicles, bicycles, and routes through the neighbourhood can all become useful.
- Use improvised defence: Pocket knives can save me from a grab, while firecrackers can create a distraction and pull Michael elsewhere.
- Hide intelligently: Houses contain plenty of hiding spots, making every room another possible gamble.
The best thing here is that playing as a survivor is actually fun. I never felt like I was just wandering around waiting to die. There is enough to do, enough room to improvise, and enough pressure created by Michael’s presence to make each match tense.
Survivor Perks Add More Personality Than Expected
The survivor roster has character specific perks, and these are more creative than the usual obvious stat boosts. I expected basic stuff such as faster running or better melee attacks. Instead, the perks actually connect to the role each character plays during a match.
- Laurie Strode can keep Michael down 10% longer after she downs him.
- One survivor earns bonuses for helping civilians.
- Another can lock doors that are harder for Michael to break through.
- One character can hear Michael breathing nearby while he uses a certain ability.
These abilities give the survivors a little more identity and encourage different priorities. It also means that survivor play has more depth than simply running, hiding, and hoping for the best.
Even after a few hours, Michael can still show up in a way that catches me off guard. The neighbourhood maps are dense enough that, when he suddenly appears at the edge of a driveway or in the shadows of a house, it can still create a proper scare.
Playing as Michael Myers Is the Main Event
Of course, playing as Michael is the big draw, and it delivers on that fantasy better than I expected. He can walk, move faster when necessary, use weapons, stalk prey, and use his Shape mode to move around the map while invisible.
Shape mode is especially important. Michael can quickly travel while avoiding light, allowing him to turn up in places where survivors do not expect him. It might look a little strange from the outside, but it feels aggressive and satisfying to use. It gives Michael that supernatural, impossible presence without turning him into a generic monster with a sprint button.
Michael has a range of tools to work with:
- Weapons: He can equip and use different weapons, including light, heavy, and throwable attacks.
- Environmental kills: He can turn locations into finishers, including garden features, appliances, and other objects around a house.
- Phone line sabotage: Cutting phone lines stops survivors from calling the police.
- Power control: Shutting off electricity makes it easier to use Shape mode and invade homes under cover of darkness.
- Unlockable loadouts: Progression opens alternate starting weapons and abilities.
There are some genuinely brutal finishers, and the game nails the tone of the early films with them. The stabs hit with the right musical punctuation, the violence is nasty, and the whole thing has a pulpy slasher movie energy. Sometimes the camera or animation gets weird during a kill, but the basic appeal of stalking someone through a house and ending the chase is still there.
Stalking Is the Smartest Michael Myers Mechanic
The strongest mechanic in the whole game is stalking. Michael can look through his mask in first person, observe his surroundings, and follow people long enough to build stalking points and Bloodlust.
Bloodlust makes Michael stronger and can unlock more satisfying kills, although some of the longer animations can become a little tedious after repeated use. More importantly, stalking encourages me to behave like Michael Myers should behave. I am not supposed to play him like a hyperactive killer charging from target to target. I am supposed to lurk. I am supposed to wait. I am supposed to stand outside a window and decide how I am getting in.
That is where the game feels closest to John Carpenter’s 1978 film. The streets have fallen leaves, jack o’lanterns, period appropriate cars, dim porches, and neighbourhood homes that make it fun to peer through windows and plot an entry. Haddonfield has a vague Pasadena feeling, which is exactly the kind of detail I wanted from a Halloween game.
Abilities, Progression, and Customisation
Michael’s unlockable abilities fit the character well. Reality Tear can let him Shape jump in situations where the usual rules would prevent it. Detection Pulse helps locate nearby people. Blackout temporarily shuts down surrounding systems, including lights and potentially vehicles, which can completely throw survivors off.
The game also has progression beyond basic level numbers. Survivors can spend earned points on tarot cards that grant additional equipable perks. There are customisable lobby banners, unlockable characters, outfits, hats, glasses, and eventually different starting items and weapons.
Laurie’s classic outfits are a cool reward for Halloween fans, while Michael gets alternate jumpsuit colours and skins. I would have liked more Michael looks at launch, but there is at least something to work towards. It may get a little grindy, but it does not feel like an empty progression system slapped on at the last second.
The Short Single Player Mode Is Still Worth Experiencing
The other half of Halloween: The Game is its single player story mode. It is presented partly as a tutorial, but it is much more exciting than that. This is the Halloween experience I have wanted for years.
I get to play as Michael, walk through Haddonfield, stalk people around their homes, cut the power, enter houses, and kill them. Simple as that. It is not a giant campaign, but it understands the specific fantasy that makes the character work.
There are six levels, and a first playthrough can take around two hours depending on how I play. That is definitely short. There are unlockables and multiple difficulty settings that can add replay value, but I still wish this was a full dedicated campaign rather than a smaller companion mode.
The story retells the original 1978 Halloween film while filling in a few gaps around it. It does not go wildly off the rails, and it stays surprisingly faithful to the mood of the movie. Dr Loomis narrates parts of the experience through cutscenes, which helps sell that familiar structure.
It is not top tier AAA storytelling or presentation, but the important pieces are here:
- Michael looks and feels right, which is more difficult than it should be.
- The environments capture the houses and streets of the film well.
- The soundtrack is excellent and does a lot of the heavy lifting.
- Shadow and darkness are used effectively across both modes.
- The Myers house is recreated with impressive attention to detail.
There are character model issues. Laurie in particular looks too generic, and her face is oddly similar to Annie’s. Still, Loomis, Michael, the locations, and the overall visual language mostly land. The game clearly knows what it is trying to recreate.
It Captures the Creeping, Mean Fun of Being The Shape
The early prologue has awkward gameplay and poor checkpointing, so it does not make the best first impression. Once the single player mode settles into its actual rhythm, though, it gets much better.
I found myself stalking people in driveways, shutting off their power, slipping into their homes, and using the environment for kills. Shoving someone onto a hot stove or pinning them against a wall is ridiculous, mean spirited slasher fun, but that is exactly the point. The screams are over the top in a way that works, and the houses are packed with enough detail to make every kill scene feel like it has a place.
I can absolutely see myself returning to this campaign every Halloween. I just wish there were much more of it.
The Rough Edges Are Real
This is where I have to be honest. Halloween: The Game has plenty of jank. The camera can misbehave. Animation transitions can fail. Sometimes Michael fumbles a grab, sometimes a kill animation completely breaks, and sometimes characters hold invisible weapons.
On PS5 performance mode, I did not always get a stable frame rate. I also encountered a crash. Some faces look awkward, and there are moments when the camera refuses to show what it should. This game feels like it is coming in hot.
Some of this could be cleaned up with patches, but I cannot promise how the game will be supported long term. I played before full release, so I also cannot make a definitive call on server quality, final balance, or the ways players may learn to exploit the rules once the wider community gets hold of it.
Still, I had fun despite the issues. That is the important thing. The systems are smart enough, the survivor side is more compelling than expected, and Michael’s side genuinely captures the right vibe.
Is Halloween: The Game Worth Buying?
At its $40 price, I think there is worthwhile stuff here for someone who wants both the multiplayer and the single player content. The multiplayer has more going on than it initially appears, and the campaign, while short, is absolutely worth experiencing for a Halloween fan.
If multiplayer games are not usually your thing, I still would not write this off completely. The single player mode is short enough that waiting for a sale may make sense, but it delivers a specific Michael Myers fantasy that horror games have not really given us before.
If you do want to pick it up, the original listing is available through this Halloween: The Game purchase link.
My verdict is simple: this is a flawed, low budget, occasionally messy asymmetrical horror game with a surprising amount of creativity and a whole lot of love for the Halloween franchise. It will not click with everybody. But the more time I spent with it, the more I appreciated what the team got right.
Halloween deserves an even bigger and better game someday. Until that happens, this is a pretty solid and very authentic way to spend a night stalking Haddonfield.
