Ghoul List

Six o'clock, one front door, and a bowl that has to last until midnight. Every monster in town has a ticket to the party — a proper one, with a stub that says 31st OCT and a dotted line where you tear it — and tonight you are on the door.

Ghoul List is a one-thumb arcade game about reading faces. Anyone holding out a pail gets a treat: tap, the sweet arcs out of the bowl, the stub tears and they're in. Anyone holding an egg, a toilet roll or a fizzing stink bomb gets a trick: swipe across them before they throw it, because if you get it wrong it lands on your screen. Every new guest bends that rule one way. Mumsy wants two treats. Rattles pulls himself back together. Boo is only solid while you can see him, Hazel won't stay at one door, Jack lights up a beat late, Vlad changes his mind, and Wolfgang is perfectly polite until the clouds clear off the moon.

Between hours you take one of three perks — longer fuses, deeper pockets, a spare candle — and golden tickets bring lanterns, garlic and the full-size bars that bribe anyone. Everyone you meet goes on the Ghoul List. At midnight the host arrives and wants his treats counted, exactly, and the Count can count. Three standing errands ride along every night — a double zap, a perfect hour, a streak of forty — and each one you finish moves you up the door, from new on the door to the Count's own butler.