Halloween and tabletop gaming are so good together, and there are tons of options for getting a group together to explore some scary adventures. But you don’t need a group or a game master to get your spooky season fix!
Whether you prefer desperate sci-fi survival, gothic vampirism, or some good ol’ eerie folk horror, the eight solo roleplaying games below are some peak Halloween experiences I’d like to try next.
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The Wretched
On surviving crew member in the blackness of space. An alien predator on the hunt. A collapsing ship.
This one doesn’t need a ton of introduction for anyone familiar with solo games, as it launched the incredibly popular Wretched & Alone system. The Wretched by Chris Bissette puts players into the boots of the last remaining survivor on a ruined interstellar salvage vessel. The engines are down, your crew is dead, and a terrifying alien horror is trying to breach the airlocks.
A unique tool used in this game is a tumbling block (aka Jenga) tower, which along with a deck of cards and a die, represented the failing structural integrity of your ship. Every time you draw cards or attempt a repair you pull blocks from a tower that gets more precarious by the minute. It really amps up some genuine, sweat-inducing tension, which can be a hard thing to do in a solo game! Any time that tower starts to sway, you really feel the increase in danger in your story.
You are the last surviving crew member of the intergalactic salvage ship The Wretched. Adrift between stars after an engine failure, your ship was attacked by a hostile alien lifeform. The crew are dead.
You thought you had won. You launched the creature out of an airlock, and that should have meant safety.
It didn’t.
Carved by the Garden
Something ancient and hungry is waiting beneath the trees
If the claustrophobic sci-fi of The Wretched isn’t your preferred flavor of horror, Carved by the Garden by Cassi Mothwin takes the core mechanics of that game and shifts them into an oppressive, dark forest. Players step into the role of someone living alone at the edge of this ancient woodland, recording daily entries in a journal as unnatural events, missing memories, and strange rituals slowly erode your sanity.
Leaning hard into folk horror and psychological isolation, and trading deep space with a sinister forest, this game trades cold mechanical failure for quiet, unnatural dread. Even the mundane chores performed in the game feel deeply unsettling as the woods begin calling to your character.
Document your character’s last days in the nearby haunted woods in Carved by the Garden, a single-player structured journaling game. Using a standard deck of playing cards, you’ll follow prompts that reveal the horrors waiting for you among the trees. You’ll also roll dice, pull blocks from a tumbling tower, and write about your experiences in character.
Thousand Year Old Vampire
Be forced to watch your humanity slip away over centuries of blood and loss
Another one that many folks are already very familiar with, Thousand Year Old Vampire by Tim Hutchings asks you to chronicle the long, tragic life of an immortal. You’ll use dice rolls and prompt tables to navigate centuries of history, forming new connections only to watch them fade into dust… or destroy them yourself to satisfy your hunger.
This game is less “impending death via looming threat” and more “slow, melancholic burn and the eternal grind of time.” It will force you to cross out memories on your character sheet, choosing which dear moments are lost forever in a mind not designed to hold five hundred years of life. Erasing loved ones and pieces of your own humanity to make room for new, blood-drenched deeds makes for a uniquely disturbing psychological horror experience.
The book is also beautifully and amazingly designed, it does a fantastic job of using the aesthetic of the design to help inform the tone of the game itself.
A creaking hunter among dust and cobwebs, you prowl the night places, seeking the souls on which you feed. You have done this since time immemorial, or so you believe; you have no memories of living as a man-thing like those you catch and eat. But human traces linger; your fingers trace clever arabesques in the dirt of your grave-place and with the flourishes come whispered songs in a language you’ve forgotten. Far away, in a museum, hangs your portrait in oil by a master five hundred years dead–you might have been lovers but the diary you kept then is long lost.
Dead Letter Society
High-society secrets, dark cravings, and mystery via written letters
Set in an alternate version of the Victorian-era or modern world where the vibes are distinctly more “dark fantasy,” Dead Letter Society by Rori Montford focuses on dark intrigue and personal horror. You’ll play the role of a newly-turned or long-established vampire navigating a secret, underground world. You communicate via letters with a mysterious contact while managing your own dark desires and hidden agendas.
This game is such a good example of gothic, dramatic horror. You’ll use tarot cards to drive prompts in your gameplay and be challenged to weave a web of paranoia, lingering isolation, and political scheming. It’s a great space to play for doing some dark, immersive creative writing.
Live your best unlife as the newest member of the Dead Letter Society, an exclusive communication network for vampires. Pursue your ambitions, and question the Society’s motives, in this journaling and epistolary game for 1-2 players.
One Page Left
Can you outrun a masked killer before you run out of paper?
Inspired by 80’s slasher films, One Page Left by M. Kirin (who also has their game Iron Valley featured on 10 Solo Tabletop Games for Fellow Fields of Mistria Fans) is a fast-paced solo game where your main goal is simply to survive the night inside a deadly mansion. Armed with a single die and a pencil, you’ll navigate rooms, search for key items, and try to escape before the relentless killer catches up with you.
The twist to this game is that the entire thing has to fit on a single, physical sheet of paper. As it says on the product page: “If you run out of space, YOU DIE. If you run out of luck, YOU DIE.” It’s lethal, quick, and fun for some Halloween slasher action.
ONE PAGE LEFT is a solo journaling role-playing game inspired by horror and slasher movies. There is a killer on the loose and you’re trapped inside a strange mansion. As you roll dice you will be asked to complete prompts on a single sheet of paper, but be wary…
If you run out of space, YOU DIE
If you run out of Luck, YOU DIE
By the time your first play-through is over you will find yourself in possession of a document no different than the journal entries you would find in a horror survival game. Enjoy making your very own piece of environmental storytelling. Itchy tasty, indeed.
The Mansion Incident
Navigate booby-trapped halls and terrifying monstrosities on a solo rescue mission
If you love the vibe of early survival horror video games like Resident Evil, Travis Brightfield’s The Mansion Incident appears to deliver that exact flavor in tabletop form. Playing the role of an elite tactical investigator, you’re dropped into the Stepford Mansion in a search for missing team members. You’ll be forced to manage limited supplies and gear as well as do your best to dodge terrifying creatures.
That classic loop of puzzle solving, resource scarcity, and claustrophobic rooms and corridors in a solo tabletop package sounds like a lot of (scary) fun. The narrative hooks you’re presented with make you actually care about finding your lost teammates, raising the stakes on every door you unlock in the darkness of the Stepford Mansion.
…take on the role of a member of the Investigation and Rescue Implementation Service (I.R.I.S.) – an elite group of detectives tasked with finding, and in some cases liberating, missing persons in the sprawling mountains of the Midwestern United States – as you recover your team from a sinister, labyrinthian mansion that hides secrets and danger behind every door.
You aren’t sure what’s really going on in the Stepford Mansion. There are bizarre puzzles, booby-trapped rooms, hidden passages, and no end of ruthless, hungry monsters. But as part of I.R.I.S., you’ve bumped up against the inexplicable and the occult before. Mountain country is full of chthonic rituals, strange locations, and stranger beasts. There may not be anyone left alive from the helicopter, but you have to hold onto hope that your team survived. You care for each one of them. Among them are your best friend and your beloved. You won’t be leaving without them.
Lighthouse at the End of the World
Keep the light burning, watch the fog, and try not to lose your mind
Play as a solitary lighthouse keeper stationed on a barren, storm-blasted rock in the middle of nowhere in Ken Lowery’s Lighthouse at the End of the World. Very quickly, old routine becomes new nightmare as strange shapes begin to appear in the waves and the fog rolls in. Daily duties turn into a fight to preserve your sanity against an unseen cosmic threat while maintaining the precious light of your lighthouse.
The mechanics of this game force you to balance the routine maintenance checks your role as lighthouse keeper demand… against your characters unraveling mental state. It’s slow-burn cosmic horror in solo tabletop form that does a good job imparting feelings of ambient, unsettling dread.
Tend the light. Fend off the dead. In all things, persist.
You play a lighthouse keeper at the furthest reaches of civilization. Your tormentors are numerous: the crushing solitude, the chaotic weather, the penal colony nearby, and a legion of unquiet dead conspire to erode your sanity until one of them claims you.
You may well die. But you will not go quietly.
Pulp Dreadful
Pursue a mad killer through the fog-soaked streets of a dark Victorian-era city
“The Puritan” is loose in the city, a murderous fanatic spreading madness and bloodshed anywhere they pass, and it’s your job to find and stop them. Pulp Dreadful by Aaron Best casts you as an investigator on the trail of this murderous madman, forcing you to move from grim alleys to abandoned brownstones, collecting clues and keeping your wits about you in a race against the clock.
This street-level, pulpy investigation is a great mix aside some of the others on this list focusing more on helpless isolation. It has quick-resolving mechanics and combat systems that take a single roll, keeping the action moving at speed without bogging players down in bookkeeping.
The city of Ravenspur is in a stranglehold of fear. Whispers echo through its fog-shrouded alleys of a killer known only as The Puritan—a twisted figure leaving a trail of blood and madness in his wake.
Ordinary folk are turning violent, gripped by something dark, and it’s spreading fast. But you, somehow untouched by the madness, are driven to track him down and put an end to his reign of terror. Will you uncover the clues to catch The Puritan, or will the city of Ravenspur consume you too?
Solo horror games offer a really fun and unique way to get your tabletop roleplaying fix during the spookiest of seasons. These games take real advantage of the lack of group chatter and camaraderie to ratchet up the tension, in a way that creeps up on you.
Graycastle Press is Luke Miller
Building games, homebrew, modules, and digital tools for the tabletop community and beyond with a unique brand of creativity and sense of humor. Publisher of the bestselling solo worldbuilding roleplaying game Journey.
Specializing in games that offer new methods of engaging with your creative work. Go on an adventure and return with the choicest loot: fresh ideas and inspiration. Use it to add even more spark to the things you build.