Limbo pumpkin!

I love Halloween, don’t you? And besides the obvious reasons (and reasons that are better left unsaid), great jack-o’-lanterns are one of the holiday’s many things to appreciate. Jump past the break for dozens, I repeat, dozens of video game themed carve-jobs. Surprisingly, no Costume Quest representatives…

Gaming Pumpkins: The Most Epic Halloween Video Game Jack O Lanterns of All Time [Ranker]

These gaming pumpkins are a real treat, no trick [Joystiq]

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"That costume really brings out your pixels."

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Well, coming from someone with very little knowledge of professional game design, I’m going to say it can teach us quite a bit. There’s a reason why kids (and adults) love Halloween more than just about any holiday that doesn’t involve mass amounts of gifts; it’s fun!

Let’s just take a moment to look at what Halloween is all about. First, we dress up in elaborate costumes that allow us to pretend to be somebody or something else for a night. We even have competitions to see who has the “best” costume. Similarly, customizing our characters in video games has long been one of the biggest draws of gaming. We like to create unique characters that make other people jealous. Some games embrace this cosmetic expression that we’re all so secretly fond of, but most let statistics influence what our avatars suit up in, often resulting in everybody wearing the same armor. What I propose is a compromise between the two extremes.

Why should we fight this kind of self-expression?

Gamers should be able to vainly dress their character without worrying about the highest defense bonus, but armor shouldn’t relinquish real game consequences. So instead of putting the stats in the clothing itself, do everything through upgrades, not unlike Mass Effect 2‘s approach. Obviously, that’s sort of a bad example when we consider that the only real cosmetic variations available were different colors for the same suit, but the concept of separating the stats from the cosmetics is what’s important. There’s no reason a game with as much cosmetic variety as Fable III couldn’t use behind-the-scenes upgrades to make armor strategically important again. We’d still get to pick which stats we want to focus on while maintaining our snazzy get-up. It’s the best of both worlds.

After dressing up, Halloween is about being dropped in a neighborhood and exploring every inch of it in the search of loot. Kids zero in on every house with its lights on and venture forth to receive candy. Some houses are decked out in spooky Halloween garb and are inhabited by people who want to scare the crap out of anyone foolish enough to enter, while others tend to suffer the wrath of eggs and toilet paper as a result of the residents’ misguided moral lessons (it’s just a bad idea to give out toothbrushes and apples on Halloween). Either way, it’s the equivalent of an open-world game with a variety of quests and environments which all amply reward the player’s efforts.

Now this guy's crypt looks so nice that I might just do the same quest twice.

Lastly, Halloween runs on a time-limit that gives everything an extra sense of urgency. We know that we only have so long to get candy before it’s all gone or our parents come to pick us up. One of the biggest problems in sandbox games today is that we all stop to help some NPC find his lost kitten when we’re supposed to be saving the world. It’d be like taking a break from trick-or-treating to watch a movie for two hours. A time-limit forces us to create a plan of attack and follow through with it for better or worse. It’d be very interesting to see how every player’s world is different at the end of a game where time restrictions force them to decide which quests they want to take on.

So now that we’ve looked at what Halloween is really about–personal customization, exploration and loot, and the pressure of a ticking clock all wrapped up in an appealing aesthetic–it’s easy to see how game designers could model a game after the holiday and find great success. The tradition of vandalism even brings a morality system into this hypothetical game. The competition with other trick-or-treaters provides the template for a PVP system too.

Dynamic game-world that reflects your choices.

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Double Fine’s latest will prepare us for the inevitable day when Halloween costumes turn real and we take mysterious pleasure out of punching pirates in the face. I’d say $15 is a small fee to pay for that specialized training. October 20th, Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network. Be there or be square.

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Another hilarious episode of 1UP’s Whiteboard Episodes. Enjoy.

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"Does this shirt make my head look big?"

If you want the uninteresting details, just pay a visit to Kotaku. The only thing that really matters though is how awesome of a Halloween costume Big Head Mode makes.

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