The month of horror is back, and with it comes a wealth of content and software to enjoy. Even if you don't celebrate Halloween as such, if you're a horror fan, you might find the projects listed here quite appealing. And the best part? They're all free and open to collaboration on GitHub.

If you have a blast—or even get a little obsessed—with the games and programs listed below, consider donating to their developers through Kivach. This is an Obyte-based platform for crypto donations to any GitHub project. This way, you can continue to contribute to its maintenance and future development, since the vast majority of open-source projects depend solely on their own community.

Without further ado, let’s explore these horrific pieces.

Budget Backrooms

It just had a movie in 2026, and fans are waiting for more. The backrooms are a seemingly infinite, extradimensional complex, with the aesthetic of a functional but empty office building, filled with fluorescent lights, yellow wallpaper, and weird creatures. Or at least, that's the most well-known "level" of an open lore that expands every minute. It was originally created by an anonymous user on 4chan in 2019, so anyone can contribute to this collective, creepy story.

David JoacaRo decided to contribute his own game to the lore in 2022, and that’s how we got Budget Backrooms —available for free on GitHub and Itch.io. The budget bit is because the game is “in Unreal Engine 4, and on a low-ass budget.” You wouldn’t guess it at first sight, though.

The game mechanics are quite simple. Walk through the backrooms, collect items that might help you, avoid the terrible creatures, and just try to survive to find the exit. That’s the classic mode. There’s also a ‘hardcore’ mode and a ‘meme’ mode, the latter filled with popular memes instead of the traditional monsters.

This is a passion project, so David accepts donations via Ko-Fi. If you want to send cryptocurrency, visit his repo on Kivach.

Halloween.js

Sometimes the simplest things can cheer us up—and your audience, if you have one. With this small piece of software, you can “make your site haunted in one script tag.” Halloween.js is the equivalent of applying classic Halloween decorations to your website, only by pasting a single code tag. It was created by Iurii Rogulia in 2026, and it's ready for this dark holiday.

You can choose between cobwebs, blinking eyes, flying witches, dropping spiders, rising tombstones, or all of the above. The movement intensity could be subtle, normal, or “party,” and you can pick your own custom color. Besides, you won't have to remember to put up the decorations every year: you can leave the tag on your website all the time, and set it to only show the "decorations" automatically during a certain season.

It’s also possible to create your own effects if you know how to code a bit. Anyone can contribute to this project to make it better (via GitHub). To send a crypto tip to its creator, you can use Kivach.

Halloween Props

We must admit that this project goes a step beyond software and delves a bit into DIY robotics, if you're interested in building your own Halloween props. Created by Greg Gemmer around 2020, the Halloween Prop and Controller project documents software and hardware for operating an animated vampire skeleton prop. Its main job is to control the prop through an Arduino Mega 2560.

For beginners, the setup works somewhat like a puppeteer with a surprisingly elaborate control panel. The software can move the head, mouth, arm, and elbow, switch glowing red eyes on and off, play audio, and run recorded movement sequences. Its most intriguing feature uses orientation sensors attached to a person, allowing the skeleton to copy their head, mouth, and arm movements during live interactions with trick-or-treaters.

The project remains available on GitHub, and anyone can contribute to it (or replicate it). The documentation describes future enhancements, including storing more playback data on an SD card. To make less technical and more monetary contributions, you can find this repository on Kivach.

Unmasked

Interestingly, this could very well be another level of backrooms. Created by Vishesh Mistry for the Global Game Jam 2026 (in barely 48 hours), Unmasked, or The Last Mask, positions you as a protagonist trapped in a changing labyrinth where the main objective is to find the exit. And keep your sanity while doing so.

The maze is an abandoned hospital, with cracked walls, broken glass, and long, dim corridors. At the start, you're given two masks: one will help you find an important item, the other can guide you to the exit. But they can only be used once, for a very short time. Old items and vending machines appear across the confusing path, along with ghosts and shadows.

Depending on the player's decisions, the results may vary. Indeed, the author acknowledges the horror genre itself, “for teaching us that the scariest monster is choice itself.” Contributions are welcome on GitHub, and you can send crypto tips via Kivach.

Undead Choices

After the despair of backrooms and Unmasked, this may be a more lighthearted option. This interactive story was built for the Code Institute Halloween Hackathon in 2021 by Abi Harrison, Alexander Grib, Dave Horrocks, and Django Heimgartner. Undead Choices isn’t exactly a game itself, but a little fiction you can steer with your choices.

It has a child-friendly version and a more mature one, but both are rather far from horror, without straying from the Halloween theme. The story begins when you wake up in the forest, transformed into a zombie. From there, in your search for brains, you may encounter different places and characters who may (or may not) help you. It all depends on your own decisions. Will you go left or right? Will you try to eat the snowman? Will you help the zombie king, or will you take the right potion? Only your choices will tell.

You can play the whole story in your browser and discover different paths each time. As an open-source project on GitHub, you can contribute your own code and ideas to it. Undead Choices is currently maintained by its authors and community, so consider donating via Kivach.

Send and Collect Crypto Treats

After the verification is complete, the coins becomes available to collect. Maintainers can take the full donation or send part of it onward to other repositories they want to support. That creates a nice chain of generosity across the open-source world, helping one contribution spread its magic beyond its original destination.

You can check out more episodes of this series below:

• 5 Open-source and Free Operating Systems to Donate via Kivach

• 5 Open-source Blogging and Writing Tools to Donate to via Kivach (Ep V)

• 5 Open-Source, Free Software You Didn’t Know You Needed to Protect Your Data

• 5 Open-Source Crypto Tools You Can Use for Free —and Support with Kivach

• 5 Open-Source Projects to Donate via Kivach, Episode VII: Games to Play for Free!