Our Last Halloween: A Mobile Horror Game With Mini-Games and a Real Hook

Last updated: October 12, 2026

Picture three teenagers at a Halloween house party, each one alone with a different supernatural problem. That is the core pitch of Our Last Halloween, the debut project from Hemdo Games, and the game that won runner-up at the Big Indie Pitch Mobile Edition at Pocket Gamer Connects London 2022, according to an interview on PocketGamer.biz.

The interesting thing here is not the premise on its own. It is the form. A horror visual novel for phones, with mini-games baked in and a lot more custom art than the category usually gets.

At a glance

• Our Last Halloween is a choice-led horror game built by Hemdo Games.
• It placed second at the Big Indie Pitch Mobile Edition at Pocket Gamer Connects London 2022.
• The player cycles through three teens at one house party.
• Each teen faces a separate supernatural event in the same night.
• The package includes short mini-games and a large amount of original artwork.
• The mechanics were designed for touchscreens from day one.

The studio and the people behind it

Hemdo Games is a small group of postgrad students at the National Film and Television School. Farham Sorosian handles development, art, and writing. Jack McKenzie composes the soundtrack, pulling from the likes of John Powell, Hans Zimmer, and Ludwig Goransson. Luke Barnfather designs the sound, with horror and psychological thrillers as his main reference points.

The reference list is a giveaway of the target audience. Resident Evil, Until Dawn, Doki Doki Literature Club, Florence, and Oxenfree sit alongside Scott Pilgrim and Choices: Stories You Play. That is a horror-first design team, with a clear sense of which narrative games they want to be compared to.

How the game actually plays

The structure borrows from Until Dawn, but trimmed for a phone. Three playable characters, one shared location, one night. Each one runs into a different paranormal situation, and the player swaps between them to make choices and play through short mini-games that gate parts of the story. The win condition is to bring all three through to dawn.

Two design choices stand out. First, the mini-games are short on purpose, so the pace does not stall. Second, the art count is unusually high for a mobile visual novel. The team is putting custom illustrations at every meaningful story beat, rather than recycling static backgrounds.

Our analysis

The risk is the audience gap. Mobile players who like choice-based games usually want short, episodic stories with light art. Horror fans who want branching stories usually play on PC or console, where the bigger entries live. A mobile horror visual novel with mini-games is a niche inside a niche, and Hemdo Games is betting that the niche exists.

The reward is the art. A mobile VN with that much custom illustration is the kind of thing that travels well on social media, and that is where the Big Indie Pitch runner-up slot helps. The press pack noticed. The bigger test is whether players stick past the first character, which is where most mobile VNs bleed their audience.

Worked example: say you are a mobile horror fan

Say you play Doki Doki Literature Club on your phone and want the same kind of choice-led horror with a bit more to do. Our Last Halloween is a reasonable first stop. The mini-games are light enough to pick up in a session, the branching paths give you replay, and the art is the strongest reason to stay. If the demo lands, the full game is worth the buy.

What to watch next

Keep an eye on the launch trailer and a release date. The Big Indie Pitch bump should buy Hemdo Games a small wave of attention, and the question is whether the studio can convert that into a player base large enough to justify a second entry.

Key takeaways

• Our Last Halloween is a mobile-first, choice-led horror game with three playable characters.
• The project placed second at the Big Indie Pitch Mobile Edition in London in 2022.
• The team is made up of postgrad students at the National Film and Television School.
• The package leans hard on original art and short mini-games to set itself apart from typical mobile visual novels.