Top 5 mobile games for a horrific Halloween

It’s Halloween once more, which means I’ll close the blinds, pretend I’m not in the house, and play some games instead of handing out treats, just like every year.

Naturally, as it’s the most famous Pagan holiday in the calendar, I like to get into the olde religious spirit by playing mobile games that are guaranteed to scare.

From classic survival-horror shenanigans to those modern ones where you get given an entire army’s worth of weapons (which kind of defeats the purpose of putting the word ‘survival’ in the title), there’s something for all connoisseurs of finely honed horror to appreciate in this list.

So turn the lights off, turn the sound up, switch on your phone, and get ready to play these titles. If you dare!

The Silent Hill Mobile series combines the survival-horror feel of the original game with some chin-stroking puzzlers to create one of the most interesting hybrids on mobile.

While the third game in this puzzle-cum-horror game is the most accomplished, the plot will leave you baffled should you start at that point due to the way it cleverly intertwines characters across the trilogy.

Actually, the plot might leave you baffled anyway, as it’s very Silent Hill and therefore a bit weird.

If you think Java is a safe haven in which to escape Halloween’s cold grasp, you only have to look at the truly horrific scenes in the old asylum, hospital, or mansion-that-looks-a-lot-like-a-hotel to realise the error of your ways.

If Silent Hill leaves you cold with fear, than Nowhere will leave you shuddering in terror. Read that line with some plastic fangs in your mouth and a terrible Romanian accent for the full effect.

Taking its inspirations from classic survival-horror games, and decking out the character to look a lot like Dr Hart from Flashback, Nowhere is a schizophrenic horror starring two people, Lucas and John, who we presume to be the same person.

The only issue is that while Lucas's life is fairly normal, with the emphasis on investigation and puzzle-solving gameplay, John is trapped in what appears to be a horrific mirror world filled with zombies and other nasties and must rely on his bullets to survive.

It’s not perfect – certain sections do drag on a bit – but Nowhere is still one of the most gripping and eerie games out there.

My darkest fear isn’t that dramatic unfortunately, unless you find the idea of sentient boulders unleashing hell on the citizens of the world particularly terrifying.

Thankfully, I don’t come up with game ideas, so rather than rubbish rocks and rubble, Darkest Fear - from Angry Birds developer Rovio - puts the player in all manners of dark and horrific situations from fighting through a hospital to exploring a spooky old town filled with the living dead.

It was one of the earliest examples of ambitious and well-designed survival-horror gaming we reviewed at Pocket Gamer, scoring straight Silvers for its creepy atmosphere and ambitious game design.

Despite being a good four years old now, Darkest Fear’s gameplay is still guaranteed to creep up on you with its clever dual light/dark mechanics and intriguing stories.

Silent Hill isn’t the only PS1-era survival-horror classic franchise that’s made its way over to mobiles.

Based on the game that arguably made the genre popular with the masses (purists like me point to Alone in the Dark and 3D Monster Maze as being earlier examples) Resident Evil: The Missions (3D version) attempts to distil the essence of the series into bitesize zombie chunks.

Each of the missions in question takes place in a small enclosed location and lasts only a few short minutes at a time, eschewing the series’ love of crazy puzzles in favour of direct action against the undead.

The difficulty does ramp up a bit too much near the end, giving Jill Valentine (for it is she) barely any time to achieve the objectives passed out, but as a 3D zombie slaying experience with an authentic home console look, Resident Evil: The Missions hits the target.

If all this ammo conservation’s getting you down, then why not take a horde of the living dead to task in one of Gameloft’s finest action-adventures.

Utilising the now ubiquitous aiming system in which a crosshair moves up and down the target’s body, Zombie Infection is a non-stop slice of excellent mobile gaming.

There’s still the odd moment of terror, either as a presumed dead body rises up to take a naughty nibble of your character’s shins, or when first approaching one of the large bosses (that spider will creep certain people out), so those wanting shocks won’t be disappointed either.