You start by choosing a pumpkin from a variety of different shapes, colors, and sizes, then carving it up. Once the pumpkin is ready, you warp into the pumpkin festival to place your pumpkin among hundreds of other pumpkins created by other players, some of which you’ll find floating around as ghosts. That’s where the original game ended — just carving and exploring others’ works. But Robinson-Yu has added so much to do in the years since, like a maze, haunted house, tractor ride, and pin collecting. This year’s big update is a spooky scary manor filled with escape room puzzles; Robinson-Yu said on Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival’s itch.io page that it’s roughly two hours of puzzles, and that players should bring some friends to solve ‘em.
The additions are lovely, and add so many more locations to explore — and thus, so many more pumpkins to look at. That’s really the best part: Wandering around the festival to see what sorts of creations others have made. You’re able to award your favorite pumpkins ribbons, too, so you’ll want to check back in to see how yours are doing. I’ve found myself so impressed by what the Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival community has created each year; while I struggled to accurately carve a PokéBall into my chosen pumpkin, others have created elaborate sculptures fully engaging the simple tools available — a knife and a carver.
As always, Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival is a seasonal game, and Robinson-Yu expects to take the servers offline a couple weeks after Halloween. Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival is a pay-what-you-can game, but people who pay more than $2 get special hats for their ghosts.
