Welcome victims of the Skeleton War to a completely not arbitrarily spooky edition of Shoestring Gaming. This week marks the beginning of Fall, and by the beginning of Fall, I of course mean the start of the Halloween season. With Halloween comes many sales dedicated to the ever popular horror genre, and some sites have already gotten started. Of course not all of these sales will be necessarily horror themed, unless you think really hard and stretch it a bit. I will spare you the corny joke about how scary the deals are and just jump right into it. Remember, most of these deals are only for a limited time, and TechRaptor may make some change off of a few of these links or your purchases.
Kicking off the Halloween Season most spectacularly is probably Humble Bundle. who has been quite busy this week after releasing their new Monthly Subscription Service. Right now, if you sign up to this service, you can get a copy of Legend of Grimrock 2 instantly. In their new regular Humble Bundle, you can get a collection of excellent indie games, including the popular Skullgirls plus all of their DLC and the survival game Sir, You Are Being Hunted.
None of that is the spooky part. If you go over to the Humble Store, you can enjoy their Dawn of the Deals, which is appropriately zombie themed. You can get titles such as Dying Light (40% off) or The Walking Dead (75% off) plus an assortment of other undead-related titles. Also there is a very special deal on The Escapists: The Walking Dead. You can get a special Humble Deluxe exclusive edition for 10% off as part of this sale. There's always a bunch of other sales in the Humble Store, including 10% off the just released The Beginner's Guide, from the creator of The Stanley Parable. As always, a portion of your purchase will go to the charity of your choice (if you want to keep with the Halloween theme, I highly recommend Scares that Care).
The rest of the Internet has decided to spare us the zombie puns, but still offer many great sales to choose from. At GreenManGaming there is currently a massive sale on games from Deep Silver. Among these deals are Lost Horizon and Metro Redux, but probably the best deal is the Saints Row Ultimate Franchise, which include Saints Row 2, Saints Row: The Third, and Saints Row IV. This sale is likely to celebrate
the release of Lost Horizon 2, which you can also get on sale for 10% off. GreenManGaming isn't completely missing out on the October fun; you can get the entirety of the horror game Doorways on sale right now, or you can buy each chapter individually. Just released this week, you can get the indie game Black and White Bushido for 20% off. As always, the VIP room has big deals on some AAA games, now including Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain and XBox gift cards and Gold Memberships on sale. If you want to save 23% off your order, just use the code 23PERC-AUTUMN-SAVING.
GOG is celebrating all things retro, with numerous sales on some very classic titles. Their premiere deals right now are the Wolfenstein 3D Bundle and the Quake Bundle, part of their Bethesda classics. Also you can get tons of very classic titles from Activision, as far back as 1989 for up to 66% off. Not retro at all is Way of the Samurai 4, which is also on sale at GOG for 40% off.
TechRaptor's GamesRepublic, as usual, has some sharp sales in their Monster Sales section (see? Monsters. Spoooooooky). You can get Dark Souls and Dark Souls II at a massive discount right now. If you're looking for something a bit more sensitive, you can pick up the indie game Shelter, where you play as a mother badger, or Shelter 2, where you play as a mother lynx. There are a bunch of other great games also available for at least 50% off, like Valiant Hearts, Rayman Legends and Rayman Origins, Assassin's Creed IV, Child of Light, South Park: The Stick of Truth, and more.
As always, games at the TechRatpor GameFanShop are always at a small discount. You can get the entire Bioshock Collection for nearly the price of a single new game, plus plenty of other titles. Use the code Raptorean to get an additional discount.
Changing it up a bit, there are some news sites this week that are also holding some decent sales. Nothing is more frightening than the unknown, so here are some other online sites you might try buying games from. Mac users, you may not always get to appreciate the sales, but this one is just for you. You can get Civilization IV from GetGames only on Mac for 75% off. If GOG didn't quite give you enough in terms of classic games, you can get the Jagged Alliance collection from Dotemu for 50% off. And if you're really feeling experimental, there's a huge sale at Itch.io for completely independently made games.
We're not forgetting about Steam of course. This weekend is the Paradox Publisher Sale. You can get some huge deals on fairly new releases like Pillars of Eternity, and there are a few great bundles. You can get the Paradox Indie Bundle, which includes Magicka and The 
Showdown Effect, or the Paradox Strategy Collection. This weekend only you can play the indie game Speedrunners for absolutely free, and if you enjoy it, you can get it for 67% off. This includes a special four-pack deal. As always, check the Steam Specials page for all of their other many, many deals. On console, Xbox users can get Warner Bros. titles for some decent discounts, include Lego, Dying Light, and Shadow of Mordor titles. Playstation this week has some special deals specifically for Playstation Plus subscribers, the most notable being 30% of The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited Premium Edition.