You start by choosing a pumpkin from different shapes, colors and sizes, and then cutting it into pieces. Once the pumpkin is ready, head to the pumpkin festival to place your pumpkin among hundreds of other pumpkins made by other players, some of which you’ll find floating around as ghosts. That’s where the original game ended: just slicing and exploring other people’s work. But Robinson-Yu has added so much to do in the years since, like a maze, a haunted house, a tractor ride and pin collecting. This year’s big update is a creepy creepy mansion full of escape room puzzles; Robinson-Yu further said Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival‘s itch.io page that it’s about two hours of puzzles, and players will need to bring a few friends along to solve them.
The additions are wonderful and add so many more locations to explore – and therefore so many more pumpkins to look at. That’s actually the most fun: wandering around the festival and seeing what creations others have made. You can also award your favorite pumpkin ribbons, so be sure to check back to see how you’re doing. I have been so impressed with what the Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival community has created every year; while I struggled to accurately carve a PokéBall into my chosen pumpkin, others have created elaborate sculptures making full use of the simple tools available: a knife and a sculptor.
As always, Ghost Town Pumpkin Festival is a seasonal game and Robinson-Yu expects to take the servers offline a few 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.