Why play on phones on Halloween
Because everyone has one on them, even under a ghost sheet. Guests install nothing and create no account: the game opens in the browser, and each player keeps their secrets on their own screen. That is what hidden-role games need, the ones where the whole table wonders who is lying, and Halloween is their night.
Nobody has to sit out to run things either. Boxed Werewolf needs someone to read, wake the roles and count the votes. Here the game does it, so the host dressed as Count Dracula plays with everyone else.
One thing to plan for: skeleton gloves and fake witch nails do not always work on a touchscreen. Keep one finger free, or slip the glove off for a game.
As guests arrive: The Assassin, running all night
The Assassin starts early and runs in the background until the party ends. Each player secretly gets a target and a mission. Pull it off without the target noticing, and the target confirms it on their own phone; you then inherit their target and their mission. There is no moderator, and the game never needs everyone in the same place at the same time.
It fits a costume party nicely. A mission like "get your target to take a photo of you" goes unnoticed when everybody is photographing everybody's costume. Another idea: ask each guest to use their costume as their nickname. Your target is no longer Julia but the Mummy, and first you have to find her in the room.
Start the game once most guests are in, since targets are dealt at the start. The Assassin takes up to 30 players, so a big party is no problem.
While people keep arriving: The Spy, Halloween words
While the doorbell keeps ringing, you want short rounds you can restart with one more player. The Spy works well for that. Everyone gets the same secret word except one or more spies, who get a different but very close one. Each player describes their word in turn without saying it, then the table votes to unmask the impostors.
For Halloween, tick the Halloween word universe in The Spy's lobby before starting. It is not part of the default mix, so you have to choose it. Its pairs are written for the theme, like vampire and werewolf, or pumpkin and gourd. Play it alone for a fully themed night, or add it to the other universes.
Everyone has to speak, which helps when not all the guests know each other. The Mister White option adds a player with no word at all, who has to improvise from what they hear.
The main event: Werewolf
Werewolf is a Halloween game by nature: a village, creatures that come out at night, and a table arguing about who is one of them. On PlaySobr, the game is the moderator. It puts the village to sleep, wakes the Werewolves, the Seer and the Witch, then brings back the day. Every phone shows the same screen at night, so nobody can tell who is acting.
In the morning, the victims are revealed with their role, the village argues out loud, then votes. The last side standing wins. You need at least five players, and everyone plays, host included.
For atmosphere, dim the lights and keep the candles. The screens are all you need to play, and a village deliberating in the half-dark is quicker to suspect the person next to it.
Between two villages: Catastrophe on a Halloween theme
Catastrophe changes the pace. A desperate situation appears, everyone has ninety seconds to type an escape plan on their phone, then an AI reads the plans and tells who survives and who does not.
Before each round, the host picks the disaster. It can come from the game's own bank, which includes a zombie horde in a shopping mall, a mummy woken by mistake in a museum, and a haunted house where blood drips from the ceiling. The host can also write one, or give a theme such as "Halloween" or "the costume party that goes wrong" and let the AI write the disaster.
Late night: Stop the Bus and The Lost Sketch
Late in the evening, people sit down and quieter games come back. Stop the Bus needs no pen or paper: a letter comes up, five categories appear, and the first player to fill them all calls stop. Answers are checked out loud, and a word nobody else found scores more than a shared one.
The game has a Halloween category pack, picked in the lobby: a monster, a fear, a candy, a costume. With the letter V, everyone thinks of vampire, so the points go to whoever finds something else.
The Lost Sketch is telephone with drawings. Everyone writes a starting sentence, the next player draws it, the one after guesses what the drawing shows, and so on. Add one simple rule: every starting sentence has to be about monsters. The reveal at the end shows how a witch on her broomstick turned into something else entirely.
Practical tips
Player count first. Each game has its own range, shown on its page and on the cards at the bottom of this one. Werewolf needs at least five players, The Assassin goes up to 30, and the other games in this plan take up to 12. Beyond that, open two rooms.
If you have a TV, the game can show on it: a four-digit code typed into the TV's browser, or a cast from a phone. Secret information stays on the phones. It is the only paid feature, with a 7-day trial, and only the host pays. On Halloween it makes the biggest difference for Werewolf and Catastrophe, whose nights and verdicts are easier to follow on a big screen.
If some guests are new to the games, tick tutorial mode at launch: the explanations show up on each phone at the moment they are needed. None of these games needs alcohol. All 15 games in the catalogue are free, and guests need no account.