The Haunted Hoard: Halloween Forever (PC)

A game named Halloween Forever may be a bit of an ironic choice for the final entry in a Halloween review series, but at the same time, it might also be the most appropriate conclusion to The Haunted Hoard. With a main character who has a jack-o-lantern for a head that can fire candy corn and plenty of monsters brought to life by a necromancer as part of a plan to make Halloween last forever, it is a game that embodies the fun side of horror that the Halloween season aims to celebrate.

Halloween Forever is a side-scrolling platformer that quite clearly draws its inspiration from the early 8-bit video games, its simple throwback art style easy to read and its backgrounds detailed enough to make the game’s environments tap into the light-hearted spookiness the title is aiming for. Halloween Forever is definitely trying to evoke memories of classic platformers but still manages to have a defined personal identity. The game world is packed with skeletons, chainsaw-wielding maniacs, and boss monsters like fiery skeletons and huge chubby bats, but it mixes in some less expected ideas like a frog king and a level teeming with leeches to ensure it’s not just trotting out the usual Halloween suspects. The platforming doesn’t really have any gimmicks to it, most of it consisting of jumping challenges that include various traps and Halloween-appropriate foes to try and impede your progress, but you are given a decent-sized health bar and hearts to replenish it can often be found in the environment or are dropped by enemies when you defeat them.

Lives, however, are a bit rare, and this ties into how the game achieves its difficulty. Halloween Forever starts you off with three lives and if you lose them all, it’s Game Over, you have to start all over from stage one if you wish to play the game again. At first, this can definitely be disheartening, and the fact that some deaths are likely to be earned by blind drops into areas above instant death spikes won’t help dispel the sinking feeling that this game may be a bit unfair. Luckily, the game is actually pretty short on the whole, and while that doesn’t excuse the thankfully few cases of the platforming cardinal sin of making you drop down into an area that can instantly kill you without proper warning, the game does expect the player to play through it a few times to get a feel for the area layouts, and while the jumps and enemy placement can make for a bit of a challenge the first time you encounter them, you’ll eventually get things down to a science, able to breeze through the earlier stages to get to the new content. With only five levels total, each split into two sections, you won’t really need to tap into 99 lives cheat the game offers you, especially since most the time speed isn’t much of a factor, allowing you to take things at a pace you’re comfortable with.

Part of these repeated runs through the levels will involve finding the optimal route to take, as most levels have a few options in how you choose to progress. Hidden areas and split paths can prove to be shortcuts, have less troublesome enemies, or more importantly, contain the hidden unlockable characters. You begin with just Pumpkin Man, who has a double jump to help with the platforming and can fire candy corns at enemies in a small falling shot. Pumpkin Man’s template is lightly altered for the other characters you can unlock, most of them just changing what attack type they have and proving to be on the whole more useful than our default hero. Butternut Bro fires explosive shots, Ms. Witch launches cats that run around to try and damage enemies, and pretty much every character has a more reliable or useful shot than Pumpkin Man that can make doing a new run much easier. This also comes with the benefit of replacing the golden coffin you find them in during the stage with an extra life, so if you remember where they were locked up, you can still get a goody for dropping by it on a run you’re trying to win on. You can’t unlock everybody on the same run sadly, the game limiting you to one rescue per go, but the extra characters do make things a touch more interesting, as does the quest for a better ending involving finding six hidden runes.

In fact, most of Halloween Forever is counting on the extra goodies to keep you playing, as after you’ve figured out the stages from a few failed or successful playthroughs, you’re not left with much to do. It’s a short and sweet game that aims to test your skills when you encounter something new, but it can be completed after what are essentially the initial scouting runs. The speed of the game does mean going for the achievements is a quick enough amusement, and each character has an associated achievement to encourage you to beat the game with them. Some achievements ask you to perform odd tasks, so it’s not all about just beating the game again but with a different face running the same five levels. However, there are some odd technical issues in the game at the moment, such as a case where I unlocked the Chainsaw Joe character while using Ms. Witch and the achievement wasn’t recognized, meaning I’d have to delete my file and unlock him again to earn it. An unrelated technical issue also appears in the menu where something called “Friendly Continues” exists as, presumably, a way not to get Game Overs, but it doesn’t change anything when activated. Luckily, the game doesn’t really need them considering its length and how it trains you up to be good at it, although the 99 lives option does exist and works properly if the game’s set-up is just not clicking for you.

The bosses in Halloween Forever feel like the real main attraction. While the enemies in the stages are positioned to often charge at you and land hits, sometimes placed just so to knock you into the dangerous instant death spikes, the bosses are the real tests of your ability to dodge danger and land attacks. Regular monsters are dispatched usually in a few hits, but bosses have large health bars and patterns you need to be aware of, as very few of them give reliable health during the battle and they can sometimes whittle you down before you can hit them enough. More devious are the bosses whose arenas have spike pits, requiring careful platforming or else the boss might just push you to your death. Some levels have checkpoints right before the boss fight to make it hurt less if you die to them, but others kick you back to the start of the level section. Halloween Forever wants you to be careful and skilled in your approach to battle and jumping challenges, so death is not treated lightly. Every boss can be learned through experience, their predictable patterns easy to overcome when you know to look for them. Halloween Forever is a game that wants to reward you for the effort you put into learning its levels, and it does feel satisfying to overcome something that killed you before as if it was nothing on a second pass.

THE VERDICT: Halloween Forever certainly embodies the spirit of the season with its monster designs, and its challenging design taps into the retro platforming flavor its visuals are going for. Don’t give up after the few cheap deaths it dishes out and it can make for some quick platforming fun with strong bosses and mostly decent level construction filled with secrets to uncover. The size is a bit of an issue though, because while it does make the deaths forgivable, it also means it feels a little thin, especially since the secrets and achievements to earn outside of just beating the game are exhausted pretty quickly after you know the ins and outs of the five levels and have more capable characters at your disposal. Still, Halloween Forever taps into that drive to do better next time thanks to how much learning the game helps you finally become the King of Halloween.

And so, I give Halloween Forever for PC…

A GOOD rating. The spikes are a bit of a sticking point when it comes to this game’s design, because while they earn their spot opposite enemies who try to push you into them or in boss arenas to make you have more to consider as you dodge their attacks, the blind drops positioned right above them are a platform game no-no. The game accounts for quick and aggressive enemies by making them predictable and putting enough health pick-ups around that you can recover after you learn their attacks the hard way, so the flawed spike pits stick out as an oddity in a mostly fair game. Most of Halloween Forever’s design instead relies on the challenge of perilous platforming and boss battles, and the design there starts off challenging but is easy to learn to make the runs for secrets and achievements quick and enjoyable.

Thankfully, The Haunted Hoard gets to end on a good note with Halloween Forever, the game making for an enjoyable, challenging, and holiday-appropriate short little title you can play on October 31st. If you decide to spend your holiday playing this title, it might just make for a happy Halloween, and I hope the Haunted Hoard has brought you a happy October!