PS5/PS4 Review: Bones of Halloween

Can you survive the rise of the pumpkin skeletons?

You awaken in a dark forest near a castle and quickly realize that you’re being hunted by grotesque pumpkin skeletons risen from the grave. They’re after more than just your Halloween candy. Shoot down as many enemies as you can! You’ll have to deal with a myriad of monster attacks including arrows, lasers, fire, and explosions. Choose from multiple gameplay modes and different challenges, and gain access to powerful weapons. Be careful with fortune cards! They will have either good or bad effects on your fate.

Bones of Halloween is a simple FPS where you try and last as long as possible fending off endless pumpkin skeletons that try to kill you. Depending on the mode you choose you can find new weapons or collect coins the enemies drop and use them to buy new weapons or ammo, although your pistol has infinite ammo. There are a few variants of the pumpkin skeletons that will use laser eyes, kamikaze explode near you as well as ones that swing swords or fire arrows at you.

One mode even has your money deplete as you go, so you will need to keep your killing up if you want to be able to buy a particular weapon in time. There’s also a handful of challenges for you to complete, these start out easy enough with objectives like gather a certain amount of money or kill 8 enemies to get a fortune card. The trophy list is incredibly easy and you gather the Platinum in roughly 5-10 minutes. You also get the PS4 version with this so you can get double Platinum trophies if you wish.

There isn’t any DualSense support and shooting the guns doesn’t have any rumble feedback, which is a bit disappointing but not a deal-breaker. The guns do look a bit weird, almost as if you are using them in a VR mode as they hover in front of the screen with no hands attached or fingers on triggers, they also mostly fire single-shot and there’s not a lot of difference in strength with the exception of the rocket launcher.

The visuals are very simple but charming all the same. The framerate is consistent and the load times are almost non-existant. Having played both versions, I didn’t see any difference between them so nabbing the double-platinum should be a breeze. Sound-effects are basic, as is the soundtrack but they get the job done.

The Verdict

For £3.99 and 10+ minutes, you can get two easy Platinum trophies here. The game is simple in its design and fun in small doses.

Score: 6.0