Fun Games Now has five Halloween games online this autumn: a spooky memory matching game, three Halloween dot-to-dot pictures, a spooky sliding puzzle, a rope-cutting puzzle set on a moonlit night, and a trick-or-treat sequencing game. Every one of them runs in a browser tab with no signup, no download, no ads and no in-app purchases. They are friendly-spooky rather than frightening: pumpkins, ghosts, bats, black cats, owls, candles and sweets, with no gravestones, skeletons, blood or jump scares anywhere.
What counts as a Halloween game here
There are five because only five are honestly Halloween. Plenty of sites pad a seasonal roundup with anything that happens to have a bat in it somewhere. The list below is limited to games that either have Halloween pictures built into them or are set at night with a friendly monster in them, and each entry says exactly what is in the game.
Three things are true of all five:
- Free with no signup. Nothing on Fun Games Now sits behind a login or a paywall, so a link can be handed to a family or dropped into a lesson plan and it will simply open and play.
- No ads and no third-party trackers. Nothing appears mid-round, and nothing links out to somewhere unsupervised.
- Touch first. Four of the five are played entirely by tapping, and Snip! by tapping and swiping. Nothing needs a keyboard and nothing needs two hands at once, which matters on a tablet, a trackpad or a shared whiteboard.
1. Memory Match, Spooky deck
What it is. A flip-and-match pairs game with a Halloween picture deck. This is the closest thing on the site to a straightforward Halloween memory game or matching game.
How to play. Choose a difficulty and a deck, then flip two cards at a time and find the pairs. Three difficulties are built in: Easy is 6 pairs, Medium is 8 pairs and Hard is 12 pairs. Three decks sit alongside each other - Classic emoji, Dinosaurs and Spooky - so the same game can be run seasonally in October and then switched straight back.
The Spooky deck holds fourteen pictures: pumpkin, ghost, bat, cat, spider, spider web, moon, star, owl, candle, candy, lollipop, wizard and autumn leaf. Each round deals a fresh selection from that pool, so a child can play Easy several times without seeing the same six pairs. Every spooky card carries a written name behind the scenes, so a screen reader announces "Pumpkin" or "Bat" rather than the platform's own emoji name.
Why it suits Halloween. The pictures are the season and nothing else changes. There is no countdown, no lives and no sound at all: the game tracks moves and elapsed time and keeps a best record for each deck and difficulty, but nothing ever runs out. A child who is already a bit wound up by the time of year is not being asked to hurry.
Clearing a spooky round earns a sticker in the shared sticker book: Pumpkin Pal for Easy, Ghost Friend for Medium and Moonlight Matcher for Hard.
2. Connect the Dots: pumpkin, ghost and bat
What it is. A number-order dot-to-dot that draws a picture as the child counts. Three of the pictures are Halloween ones.
How to play. Tap the dots in number order. A correct tap draws the next line segment; a tap on the wrong dot flashes that dot red for a fraction of a second and nothing else happens - no progress lost, no lives, no sound telling the child off. That errorless behaviour is the whole point of the game.
The three Halloween pictures sit one per working level:
- KS1 (Years R to 2): pumpkin, 8 dots.
- Lower KS2 (Years 3 and 4): ghost, 12 dots. The count turns round at dot 8 and runs back along a wavy hem, so the numbers stop matching the direction the eye wants to travel.
- Upper KS2 (Years 5 and 6): bat, 18 dots. Wing tip to wing tip over the ears, then back underneath.
The working level is set in the grown-up controls behind the cog button in the bottom-right corner, under "Ability level", and it decides which set of pictures the Next puzzle button cycles through. A level can also be forced for a single visit by adding ?ks=lks2 or ?ks=uks2 to the game's web address, which is the quickest way to jump straight to the ghost or the bat.
Why it suits Halloween. The picture is the reward, and the seasonal one arrives at the end of a genuine counting sequence rather than instead of one. The outlines are drawn in the same plain purple as every other picture in the game, so there is nothing in them that could unsettle a child who finds the season a lot.
The three pictures award Pumpkin Carver, Friendly Ghost and Bat Spotter.
3. Slide Puzzle, Spooky theme
What it is. The classic sliding tile puzzle - one empty space, tiles that shuffle back into order - with a Halloween picture set.
How to play. Tap a tile next to the gap to slide it in, and keep going until the pictures are back in their starting order. Three board sizes are available: 3x3, 4x4 and 5x5. Four picture themes sit in the dropdown, and the Spooky one carries twenty-four images: pumpkins, ghosts, bats, a black cat, a spider and web, moons and stars, an owl, a candle, sweets, a wizard, a wand, a broomstick, a crystal ball and autumn leaves. Twenty-four is exactly enough to fill the largest board, so a 5x5 spooky puzzle shows a picture on every tile rather than falling back to numbers.
Why it suits Halloween. A 3x3 spooky board is a two-minute activity a child can finish; a 5x5 is a genuinely hard puzzle for an older sibling on the same afternoon. The game counts moves and time and stores a personal best for each theme and size, so the challenge is against the child's own last attempt rather than against anyone else.
Solving a spooky board earns Pumpkin Solver (3x3), Ghost Master (4x4) or Midnight Champion (5x5).
4. Snip! - a friendly monster on a moonlit night
What it is. A rope-cutting physics puzzle across 112 levels in seven packs. It was not built as a Halloween game and is not one, but it is set at night and it has a monster in it, which makes it the closest fit on the site for the last week of October.
How to play. Swipe across a rope to cut it. The wrapped sweet swings, falls or flies, and the job is to land it in the mouth of the monster waiting somewhere on the screen. Stars along the way are worth catching, and floating bubbles can be tapped to pop them and release the sweet mid-flight. Levels unlock as they are cleared and progress is saved, so a child can leave and come back to it.
Why it suits Halloween. The scenery is doing the work. The background is a night sky with an aurora, a moon with craters and a halo, a starfield and dark hills of pines, with fireflies drifting across it, and a slow quiet lullaby plays underneath with a mute button if it is not wanted. The monster is a round green creature with small horns, blinking eyes that follow the sweet, and a wide open mouth it is entirely delighted to have sweets dropped into. Monsters, sweets and a dark sky is as Halloween as this one gets - there are no pumpkins, ghosts or costumes in it.
Stars caught add up across every session and earn stickers at 1, 10, 25, 60 and 120.
5. My Day: put Halloween night in order
What it is. A time-sequencing game where a child puts the events of a day into order, earliest first. One of its three scenes is Trick or Treat.
How to play. Pick the Trick or Treat scene and the six events arrive shuffled in a tray: costume on at 4 o'clock, pumpkin at half past 4, dinner at 5, trick or treat at 6, share sweets at 7 and bed at 8. Tap them into the timeline in order. A correct tap snaps the card into place; a wrong tap gives a small red shake and nothing else - no penalty, no score, no timer. Every card shows a clock face with numbers alongside the picture, so putting the evening in order doubles as reading o'clock and half past.
The working level decides how many events appear: KS1 places the earliest three, Lower KS2 the earliest four and Upper KS2 all six. The earliest three still read as a sensible evening on their own.
Why it suits Halloween. This is the most useful entry on the list rather than the most fun one. Halloween is the night of the year that breaks a child's routine hardest: dinner moves, the house fills with visitors, bedtime slips, and a child who relies on knowing what comes next is expected to improvise. Sequencing the evening as a game, days before it happens, turns it into something rehearsed. It is the same idea as a visual timetable, with the child doing the ordering.
Finishing the scene awards the Trick or Treat sticker.
When Halloween is the problem, not the game
Not every child enjoys this time of year. For a child who is sensory-sensitive, anxious, or simply attached to a routine, late October is a run of unpredictable evenings: costumes that feel wrong on the skin, a doorbell going repeatedly, decorations appearing in familiar rooms, strangers at the door in masks, and a school day full of noise about all of it. A seasonal game is only a good idea if the child is enjoying the season.
Some practical ways to use these games without adding to the load:
- Play the season before it arrives. A pumpkin dot-to-dot in the middle of October, with no doorbell involved, lets a child meet the imagery at a volume they control. Meeting it first on a screen, in silence, is a much smaller ask than meeting it first on a doorstep.
- Rehearse the evening rather than describing it. The Trick or Treat scene in My Day puts the sequence in the child's hands. Knowing that dinner comes before the knocking, and that bed still comes at the end, removes a large part of what makes the night unsettling.
- Turn the volume down, literally. Memory Match, Connect the Dots and Slide Puzzle make no sound at all. My Day has a sound switch that starts off. Snip! plays music and has a mute button. The grown-up controls behind the cog button also carry a "Calm mode (reduce motion)" toggle, a high-contrast toggle and a sound-effects switch, and those apply across the site.
- Have an exit that is not a telling-off. If the game stops being fun, having somewhere else to go matters more than finishing the round. The calm tools are the obvious next stop: Breathing Buddy paces a breath with a growing and shrinking circle and offers Box (4·4·4·4), 4·7·8 Relax and a shorter Kid-size (3·3·3·0) pattern; the Feelings check is a gentle "how are you today?" picker; and the Comm Board is an AAC-style picture grid where tapping symbols builds a sentence the browser then speaks aloud, with Space to speak, Backspace to undo and Escape to clear.
- Let the child skip the season entirely. Every one of these games has a non-seasonal version sitting next to it: Memory Match has Classic and Dinosaur decks, Slide Puzzle has Animals, Fruit and Sports, Connect the Dots has twelve other pictures, and My Day has an ordinary day and a weekend. Nothing is lost by staying with those.
None of the calm tools have been given a Halloween coat of paint, and that is deliberate. A breathing pacer with a pumpkin on it is not a calmer breathing pacer.
Frequently asked questions
Are these Halloween games free to play online?
Yes. All five run in a browser with no signup, no download and no in-app purchases, and there are no ads or third-party trackers. They work the same way on a tablet, a laptop, a phone or a classroom whiteboard.
Is there a Halloween memory game?
Yes. Memory Match has a Spooky deck of fourteen pictures - pumpkin, ghost, bat, cat, spider, web, moon, star, owl, candle, sweets, lollipop, wizard and autumn leaf - playable at 6, 8 or 12 pairs. It sits alongside the Classic and Dinosaur decks rather than replacing them.
Are the games scary?
No. The picture set is limited to pumpkins, ghosts, bats, black cats, spiders and webs, moons, stars, owls, candles, sweets, wizards and autumn leaves. There are no skeletons, gravestones, zombies or blood, no jump scares and no sudden loud sounds. Memory Match, Connect the Dots and Slide Puzzle are completely silent, My Day only speaks if its sound switch is turned on, and Snip! plays a quiet lullaby with a mute button.
Which one suits the youngest children?
The 8-dot pumpkin in Connect the Dots and Easy (6 pairs) in Memory Match. Both are short, both are impossible to fail, and both end in a picture rather than a score.
Can these be used in a speech and language or tutoring session over a screen share?
Yes, and the silence helps. Memory Match, Connect the Dots and Slide Puzzle produce no audio at all, which means nothing competing with the adult's voice on a video call. The spooky sets are also usefully nameable: fourteen labelled Halloween pictures in Memory Match and twenty-four in Slide Puzzle give plenty to name, describe, categorise and compare while the child plays.
How do I change the difficulty level?
Memory Match and Slide Puzzle have their own on-screen choices - difficulty and deck for one, board size and theme for the other. Connect the Dots and My Day follow the site-wide working level instead, set behind the cog button in the bottom-right corner under "Ability level", or overridden for one visit by adding ?ks=ks1, ?ks=lks2 or ?ks=uks2 to the end of the address.
Start playing
Five games, free, in a browser, with nothing to install and nobody to sign up as. Start with the spooky memory game if you want the most straightforward one, the Halloween dot to dot if the child is younger, and the Trick or Treat scene in My Day if the night itself is going to be the hard part. For an older child who wants something to chew on, the 5x5 board in the Slide Puzzle and the later packs of Snip! will both take a while.
The rest of the site does not change in October: the arcade and the learning games are all still there, all still free, and all still quiet.
Fearn Robinson is a UK SEND tutor with Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) who builds the calm, low-arousal learning games on Fun Games Now for children with special educational needs.