Cellufun has announced a suite of free ad-supported Halloween-themed games to engage its current users and give its advertisers more opportunities in terms of marketing.

With the rise of virtual game communities, people are starting to celebrate holidays in very different ways. Last year thousands of members trick or treated around virtual houses, collecting candy, dressing avatars up in costumes and handing out tricks as well as treats to friends and family.

"We are trying to do games and various activities around most of the holidays," said Kieth Katz, vice president of marketing at Cellufun, New York. "It helps us keep our existing members interested and engaged with our content.

"It also gives advertisers the opportunity to do seasonal promotions within these games," he said.

The Hellofun games and community experiences allow users to play Halloween-themed games, decorate their homepages, dress up their avatars in costumes and hand out goodies to others within the community.

Whether on a mobile phone or their Facebook page, Cellufun users can now experience Halloween in an interactive game environment where they will be able to collect treats and give out tricks to other users.

Hellofun is being promoted via links right on users' homepages.

Members will also be able to compete in both giving and getting tricks and treats, such as candy corn, a candied apple, or a rusty coin.

Several Halloween-inspired games will be added as well, which are based on several popular Cellufun games.

The game suite includes a pumpkin patch farming game, a pumpkin carving party game in which you need to recruit people to help you carve, and a pumpkin chucking game with a goal of building siege engines to hurl pumpkins for great distances.

Other ghastly member features include the ghost of a long lost pet that might visit you and remind you that you failed to take care of them and a special holiday mobile pet in the form of a black cat.

"Hellofun extends the entertainment experience for our mobile community," Mr. Katz said.

As part of the experience, users can line up at various user homepage "front doors," and a "these homes are happening" list creates trick-or-treating frenzies at the homepages of the most generous givers.

Users must remember to come back home and give out goods as well, or the rumor about their stinginess will quickly spread and they may find only tricks in their bags.

Being generous is not all that easy, though, as users must first purchase the treats that they give out using Cellupoints they've earned.

Users can start the Hellofun experience by visiting http://wap.cellufun.com on their mobile phone, or by adding the Hellofun application to their Facebook page.

So far Cellufun is running the ads of its current advertisers.

"Mobile networking has really changed the way people are interacting with one another," Mr. Katz said. "We have a very social site and a Facebook app.

"We are seeing that people are resorting to virtual holiday cards and gifts as opposed to sending out greeting cards by mail and email," he said.