Well, this was a surprise! I was wondering how you pull off a kids' friendly module with Hallowe'en with keeping their interest but I think this will manage it. It is a very atmospheric module with all sorts of spooky characters, witty dialogue that adults might appreciate as well with only the odd moment where I thought "Ouch! Is that okay for kids?" However, it has been pretty expertly built and the author has put a lot of work and thought into it as can be seen from the sheer amount of scripts in the toolset.
To begin at the very beginning as someone famous once said. The atmosphere is here in spades. Well constructed with plenty of fire, light and dark at appropriate times. It has a cast of pretty shady characters but you never feel threatened by them as there is no combat at all. And there are quests . . . . oh boy are there loads of quests! Not gonna lie. I didn't finish even half of them but they were varied and quite well thought out. Enough to keep you and your young'un occupied for quite some time but likewise you can dip in and out.
So when you arrive you meet Master Snog ( yes, I know, it goes on in that vein). He allows us to play as a skeleton, vampire, mummy etc. so after going for vampire I'm sent off. I confess the first scene didn't really grab me - much too busy for my liking. However, when you reappear in Skullington Falls you get serious spooky atmosphere. You meet Vlad Sharp Tooth who tells you it's trick or treat time and encourages you to visit houses for trick or treat. This involves visiting a fair amount of houses. you can't go into most (any?) of them but you receive a sweetie in your inventory.
In fact, a warning here. Don't try to enter the houses. I did and was was stuck in a couple resulting in a restart - the sort of issue where you go in, the house half disappears and the door won't open to let you out again. while we're on the topic of doors, aficionados of doors in NWN ( and you know who you are!) will have a whale of a time door spotting in this module.
Most of the quests are fairly easy to finish. There are match the colour with the correct barrel, collect 10 things for me and fetch and deliver quests available. however, I was disappointed that the one I couldn't get to work was, for me, the most interesting. A swamp tree-like figure was needing swamp gas to restore him to his former self but what really got me going was that he told me I'd need to use a grapple hook across water to achieve it.
By a coincidence, I have been looking at rope climbing scripts/packages in NWN for another project and this motivated me to get the weird sister concerned her ( much needed!) hair appointment in order to get her grapple rope. Not sure what she was doing with one in the first place. Anyway, the excitement fizzled out as I couldn't get it to work. I found the place on the river bank where it should be used but immediately the module glitched and I was teleported back and forward until I left the scene.
Before summing up, one feature I did like was the large map available, already filled in with the map pins I'd need. Because the quests were to some extent reliant on each other and involved a fair amount of running here and there, it was good that I didn't have the additional worry of running about trying to discover where everything was.
Positive - I thoroughly recommend you dig this out at Hallowe'en and give it a whirl. I enjoyed it immensely. It gets you in the mood early and maintains it through quirky Hallowe'en related characters, quests and rewards. I don't know if it has a satisfactory ending as I didn't make it to the end - far too many quests for that - but I'm not sure that matters. The building is consistently good and the dialogue at times brought a smile to my face, as did the skelly's name " Mommy Dearest" which older readers will understand. I can see most kids really enjoying this. It may be a bit too spooky at times for the very young but you'll know that soon enough if it is and most will take it in their stride. Well done to the author for a module that captures Hallowe'en for kids well.
Less so - If I leave out my big disappointment regarding me sailing across the river thanks to my grapple hook, there weren't many things to dislike. I had the odd twitch, age wise, at the sight of a skeleton swinging from a tree and I definitely felt queasy leaving the little boy I'd been charged with delivering to the temple in the somewhat unreliable hands of Lucifer. In fact the latter actually really gave me pause, especially when I reported completion back to the nursery and received the reply that the poor little chap needed more discipline than they could manage! However, if you're not gonna have any combat maybe the odd dark comment is acceptable? You As always, you decide.
Yes, it is definitely a little buggy. Buildings, the rope and even getting the quests out of order all caused me to spend more time on them than I'd have liked but as a package, and especially at Hallowe'en, this definitely works.
It was last updated in 2015 and can be found on the Vault here. Note that it does need CEP to work which, if you don't have it, is a reasonable size of package.