What to Play This Halloween Weekend: Phantom Blade Zero, Switch 2 Picks and More

Halloween weekend brings a crowded mix of big action, oddball indies and fresh ways to play on Switch 2. The standout is Phantom Blade Zero, but there’s plenty here for players after a spooky multiplayer chase, a short story with a mischievous streak, or a long city-building session. And if the costumes and creepy games are getting old, several new platform versions offer a good excuse to revisit familiar favorites.

This week’s notable stories include a report about BioWare and Star Wars Battlefront III, an Assassin’s Creed franchise update, a list of horror games for Halloween, and tips for new Phantom Blade players. There’s also a guide to graphics and performance settings for Phantom Blade Zero on PlayStation 5, alongside Game Informer’s review.

Big action and a masked menace

Phantom Blade Zero is the weekend’s major event for action fans. Beijing-based S-Game builds its combat around Wuxia, the Chinese martial-arts tradition, with fast movement and striking weapon work. The visual spectacle is immediate, but the deeper appeal is how distinct each blade feels: learning a new weapon can change your approach as dramatically as selecting a different character in a fighting game. The result is combat with enough variety to reward experimentation across a lengthy adventure.

The story is engaging, though the combat and exploration do most of the heavy lifting. A run can take around 40 hours, while players skipping the route to the preferred ending may finish in under 30. That makes it a substantial commitment, but one with room to focus on the parts that matter most to you. The world rewards wandering, and the combination of expansive areas with energetic fights gives the adventure a satisfying rhythm. New players can get a head start with the linked beginner tips.

Halloween games with different kinds of mischief

Halloween: The Game takes the familiar asymmetric chase formula associated with IllFonic’s Friday the 13th: The Game and puts Michael Myers at its center. One player hunts as Myers across suburban maps; the others play residents trying to save as many non-player characters as they can while surviving. That cat-and-mouse setup is a natural match for the film’s tense mood, and the game’s new update adds a map and Halloween-themed cosmetics to unlock.

IllFonic has also made its first single-player story mode here. It largely teaches players how to use Myers, so it may not replace the multiplayer draw, but fans of the films get a chance to encounter some of the series’ best-known kills. See the Game Informer review and the game’s update notes for more.

Overwatch offers a livelier seasonal detour in Mystery Madness: Graveyard Games. Each player starts by choosing one of three heroes assigned a random role, then selects perks as the rounds progress. Those upgrades can reshape a hero’s abilities, and the combinations can get wonderfully absurd: Orisa may grow to several times her usual size, while Torbjörn can put a giant turret on Mercy and send her into the air as a flying menace. Seasonal skins round out the event. The mode’s appeal lies in how quickly a familiar match can turn unpredictable.

Tom the Postgirl is a much smaller, stranger Halloween-weekend pick. You play Tom, an unsettling young courier delivering packages around a town drawn in storybook black, white and red. The deliveries are the setup; Tom’s curiosity leads her to peer through windows and discover the peculiar lives inside. One house is full of children living like dogs, while another holds a couple fascinated by tickling. You can also make trouble by trampling flowers, cutting cords or taking packages for yourself.

That blend of observation and mischief gives the short adventure its own offbeat charm. Its odd residents make each stop a surprise, and the compact length—just a few hours—makes it an easy break between larger releases.

Indies for a different kind of weekend

Virtue and a Sledgehammer turns destruction into a way of uncovering a family story. Its protagonist returns to her hometown furious and armed with a sledgehammer; swinging it can punch through walls or bring down whole buildings. The town’s residents are robots with human consciousness, and the mystery behind the woman’s anger leads back to her strained relationships with her mother and sister. Each new piece of their history raises a useful question: does learning why she’s hurt make all that smashing easier to defend?

Titanium Court brings its peculiar mix of match-three puzzles and tower defense to Switch 2. Players slide tiles to connect terrain such as castles, trees and rivers, collecting resources for the battle that follows. The board’s layout helps determine how troops attack or defend rival castles, so the puzzle stage directly shapes the strategy. New mechanics add depth as you play, while a silly story about a medieval court seeking its lost queen keeps the tone light. After its PC debut earlier this year, this is a chance for console and mobile players to try the game’s unusual loop.

Switch 2 gets room to roam

Sword of the Sea brings Giant Squid’s 2025 adventure to Switch 2. Its central image is a traveler surfing across sand on a floating sword, and its atmospheric journey recalls Journey. That connection fits: Giant Squid’s team also made Abzû and The Pathless. The Switch 2 release gives the game a new platform, with its sense of movement and visual beauty still at the heart of the experience. Read the review for impressions of the PlayStation 5 version.

Cities: Skylines also gets a more capable Switch 2 edition. The original city builder has been available on PC for more than a decade, and its earlier Switch version had fewer tiles than other console editions. The new version raises the limit from nine tiles to 25, improves performance and textures, updates the control panels, and includes a large selection of downloadable and additional content. Owners of the original Switch version can get the upgrade at a steep discount.

The extra space matters: city builders thrive when players can keep expanding, and the 25-tile limit gives that planning more room. The console and PC versions have both been reviewed by Game Informer: PC review and console review.

Minecraft arrives on Switch 2 this week, giving players another way to start a fresh world and explore its procedurally generated caves. The core appeal remains the pleasure of building and discovering at your own pace, but returning players may find more to see: recent updates have added blocks, materials and creatures. For newcomers, the new platform release offers a straightforward entry point; for lapsed players, it’s a reminder that the game has continued to grow.

A tabletop pick for Halloween night

For a group looking to put down controllers, Arkham Horror: The Card Game pairs cooperative play with cosmic-horror storytelling drawn from the Cthulhu Mythos. Each player takes an investigator through mysteries, monsters and plots involving cultists and ancient beings. The living card game uses core sets and expansions, with the same cards included in each installment, so players aren’t chasing random pulls to build a deck. A relaunch last year began a new chapter in its story, and its updated core set offers a good starting point.

There’s no shortage of ways to spend the weekend: Phantom Blade Zero for demanding swordplay, Halloween: The Game for a tense multiplayer hunt, or a Switch 2 arrival for a familiar world worth revisiting. The best pick depends on whether you want a long adventure, a short oddity or a group around the table.