A werewolf, a pumpkin Jack, and a vampire walks into a bar...
"Come on guys! Get on your paws and feet! LET'S PARTY FOREVER!"
— COUNT D.J. DRACULA
Savage Halloween is a supernatural-themed side-scrolling Run-and-Gun action game developed by 2ndBoss Studios.
Each and every Halloween, the hordes of the underworld are allowed to roam the Earth and do anything they want, for just 24 hours, before returning to the underworld. But Count DJ Dracula, rulers of the undead hordes, have decided that a single Halloween night isn't enough and broke the ancient pact of withdrawing his brood the morning after Halloween, resulting in an endless night where legions of ghosts, zombies, and assorted supernatural ghoulies are now running amok.
And now, it's time for three demons on the side of good to put a stop to an otherwise endless Halloween. A trio consisting of a Stingy Jack named James, a vampire named Dominika and a werewolf named Lulu, all of them carrying machine-guns blessed with the ability to hurt the undead, to clean up the minions of DJ Dracula.
The game is made available for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4.
The Playable Characters
- James, the pumpkin-headed Stingy Jack, who's a Jack of All Stats with average ratings in speed, attack and defense;
- Dominika the vampire, a Fragile Speedster faster than the other two (and can even spout bat-like wings allowing her to fly instead of walk) but with low health,
- Lulu the werewolf, the Mighty Glacier and strongest of the trio, but slowest.
Savage Halloween contain examples of:
- Action Bomb: Some of the bat enemies hang on ceilings and drop on players that go near underneath them, exploding upon contact with them or the floor and dealing sizeable amounts of damage.
- Airborne Mooks: Ghosts, flying humanoid demons, bats, and the like.
- Archnemesis Dad: Dominika is Count DJ Dracula's daughter and fights to stop him because he closed the portal, preventing her from going home.
- Asteroids Monster: The Bedsheet Ghost enemies will explode into half a dozen tiny bedsheet ghosts (made from the exact same sprite, but shrunken to a fraction) and continue attacking.
- Bad Santa: You can encounter hostile Santa Clauses armed with gatling guns in the winter stage.
- Big Red Devil: A one-eyed cyclops version of this trope, named Big Daddy, shows up as the second boss. Who can summon infant red demons (smaller than your characters, wearing diapers to boot) as a Weaponized Offspring attack.
- Boss-Arena Idiocy:
- Omacalt can summon fast-moving boulders into the arena, that would be near-impossible to dodge (or at least, very, very difficult because of their speed) if not for the arena having several platforms you can leap on.
- Garlic the Genie can fly and stay well out of your reach, while he drop projectile attacks from above you. But conveniently enough, the area you fought him contains two spring-loaded platforms (one on each side) making it much easier to reach and damage him.
- A number of Count DJ Dracula's projectile attacks would be much harder to avoid if not for the two conveniently placed platforms in the throne room acting as cover against said attacks.
- Diving Kick: Garlic the Genie and the were-Jaguar boxer both have an attack where they fly or leap to the top of the screen, and then bring themselves down in a diving strike targeted at the players. Which deals plenty of damage on a direct hit.
- Evil Witch: Glinda, the boss of the (oddly enough) winter stage, is a giant witch who can cast ice-based attacking spells on you.
- The Executioner: The default, lowest-level enemies are all bare-chested and clad in executioner masks, lacking any ranged attacks and limited to swinging their axes and running around aimlessly. They're as weak and useless as they sound, until the final level where most of them are equipped with machine guns.
- Fish People: One shows up as a Mini-Boss (who's identified in-game as "Fish-Man"), leaping out of a river onto your raft to battle you. It periodically dives in and out of the water to ambush you from random directions.
- Flying Broomstick: The second stage have yopu hitching a ride with a witch, riding shotgun on her broomstick as you went flying around blasting enemies.
- Frankenstein's Monster: They are recurring enemies whom were surprisingly deft on their feet and capable of sprinting really fast (despite classical depictions of Frankenstein's creatures being slow-as-molasses). Shooting them will break them from the waist, only for the upper half to continue crawling around reaching for you.
- Giant Spider: Two different versions. Both hang on ceilings, but the green ones drop webs on the ground that slow you down, while red ones fire a Spread Shot of three fireballs. Occasionally they can also drop from ceilings to attack from up close.
- Indy Escape: The temple stage have an unavoidable area where you trigger a gigantic boulder, which then starts rolling behind you as you flee to escape, destroying everything in it's path (including enemy mooks which you forgot to kill). You finish said level by outrunning the boulder and reaching an exit.
- Monster Clown: Peanut the Clown is a giant clown serving as the Circus' boss, and an Advancing Boss of Doom who chases after you trying to grind you with his fists.
- Monster Mash: One where a Stingy Jack, a vampire and a werewolf teams up to battle Dracula and his minions, with a giant ghost, a wicked witch, a red devil, Dr. Frankenstein and a fishman as the bosses.
- Our Werebeasts Are Different:
- One of the playable characters is a werewolf named Lulu. Who kicks ass with a machine-gun. Oddly enough, their untransformed form is a small dog instead of a human.
- The jungle stage ends with battling a were-jaguar boxer, with the arena inexplicably turning into a boxing ring for the ensuing fight.
- Piranha Problem: Piranhas are a recurring enemy in underwater levels. They only need a single shot to kill, but tends to show up in large schools.
- Plague Doctor: One of the game's most recurring mook-level enemies are cultists dressed like classic plague doctors, who shoots Hand Blasts as an attack.
- Power Floats: Glinda the Witch, Garlic the Genie, and Lord DJ. Dracula travels by floating all over the place.
- Robot Master: Dr. Frankenstein, one of the bosses, will repeatedly drop robotic Frankenstein Waddling Heads capable of shooting electricitiy as an attack.
- Shout-Out:
- The second boss is an Evil Witch named Glinda, for no reason other than just because.
- Lord DJ Dracula's main attacks, raising his cape to summon fireballs and performing a Teleport Spam via Pillar of Light, is practically copied frame-by-frame from another popular video game Dracula, which fans of Castlevania: Bloodlines should find rather familiar... heck, this one's even fought in his throne room.
- Spread Shot:
- One of the classic upgrades you can collect, which spreads your bullets into arcs of three, and can be increased to even wider spreads. It's also among the most recurring power-ups available within the game.
- Three enemies in the game use this on you: the unnamed ghost miniboss of the first level, Skull the robot miniboss with his Arm Cannon, and the red spiders which fire a spread of three fireballs downwards.
- Spring Jump: Spring-loaded platforms will pop up in a few areas, to give you a boost in accessing platforms otherwise too high to reach by normal jumps.
- Stingy Jack: The main protagonist is one of these, appropriately a Jack of All Stats among the three default characters, to boot.
- Super Not-Drowning Skills: Half the level in the jungle is set underwater, and all three of the playable characters can dive in, submerge for long periods of times and shoot their way through underwater enemies. Including Dominika the vampire, despite the classic depictions of vampires being deathly weak against anything wet.
- Two Guys and a Girl: James and Lulu are the guys (yes, Lulu is a werewolf dude, Gender-Blender Name be damned) while Dominika is the girl.
- Witch Doctor: Omagalt the Shaman is a Mayan witch-doctor fought at the end of the temple stage. One armed with a machine-gun, for good measure.
