Laura Blackwell

Whether you like your Halloween spooky or silly, you have plenty of time to get in the mood over the weekend. These free and low-cost picks from the PCWorld Downloads library will haunt your desktop and your thoughts. The prices won’t give you nightmares, though: Two of these have free demos, and the rest are free forever. Desktops take on a manic jack-o-lantern grin with Windows 7 theme Halloween Theme. Decorate Your Desktop in Darkness If you’re running Windows 7, install the customizabl…

Glitch walks the balance between naughty and cute, funny and sweet, personal and world-spanning. This hard-to-describe game only briefly left invitation-only beta, and didn’t build the audience it needed to survive. It will close December 9.

Mom’s one smart lady She’s your mom. She’s risen to every challenge, not the least of which was raising you to be the fine, upstanding PC enthusiast you are today. Yet despite all of Mom’s successes, you’re still the go-to techie in the family. With Mother’s Day just around the corner, it’s your tu…

Acclaimed oddball MMO Glitch wasn’t commercially viable, but its art and other assets were too good to leave alone. Tiny Speck has made more than 10,000 pieces of art, animations, and code available under a Creative Commons license.