Costumes and Candy

This game had a really interesting structure. There is a framing story (you’re a trick-or-treating kid competing against a bully) but after that it’s essentially 19 Halloween-themed short stories. You navigate around a map shaped like a calculus fence optimization problem and interact with people to get candy.

This includes a maze (which was thankfully very simple), a fetch quest or two, and even a miniature CYOA-game (which I think was acting like Mad Libs a bit, as there are tons of options for what character you can pick but it seems written in a way to easily adapt to different characters).

You can end the game at any time, and the ending doesn’t vary too much if you end soon or late (only the result of your contest changes), so if you decide to skip out after a few houses you can still get a good feel for the game.

This definitely had a 90’s or earlier vibe. Kids go trick-or-treating alone, people in the neighborhood seem to know each other, the only computing devices used are plugged-into-the-wall computers. The bully plotline is really reminiscent of 90s media (and IRL, in my experience) as well.

The candy descriptions definitely made me hungry, and the coding and creativity in house/host descriptions was impressive.