I took a look at the virtual pumpkin carving sim not too long before Halloween and liked what I saw. So I'm glad to see its done well enough for itself to make the top 10 purchased Indie Games on Xbox Live.

In total, three Halloween-themed games made top slots on the Indie list. Besides Pumpkin Chop, Halloween HD made the cut at number eight and I MAED A GAM3 W1TH Z0MB1ES!!!1 held the number two spot. With a name like that, I can understand how it did so well — I don't even need to play it.

Sadly, though, Halloween is over. So I won't expect to see Pumpkin Chop on anyone's top 10 'til next year at least. But if you've got a copy, I guess you could practice your design skills for next year's Kotaku Pumpkin Patch.

LIVE Activity for week of Oct. 26th [Major Nelson]

Part One
Part Two
Part Three

So the blow-out post will be done in piece work and you're only going to get a spoonful of awesome today to make up for all of the brokenness I just inflicted on Kotaku.

Oh, and I'm really sorry to everybody whose not getting called out by name for your super awesome pumpkins. But rest assured even the fugly one are super awesome in my book.

Thanks for sharing, Dave Brown, Jonathan Barrett, Adam Olson and gyophry (who did both Brütal Legend and Final Fantasy VII).

Master Chief is cute because it's carved from a green pumpkin. Akuma is cute because it's a dad's contribution to his family's pumpkin count, which is about to get bigger by one. And the Spy could potentially be cute, if you ever got that mask off him.

The "mystery game" is actually an iPhone game called Sneezies sent my way by an enterprising iPhone dev who apparently knows how to carve a pumpkin.

Mad pumpkin respect to Jacob Hemphill, Jordan Rubow, Jimmy LeBlanc, Easy Tiger, Joe V. and Gavin Bowman!

The Dragon Age: Origins entry comes from Cameron Vetter's girlfriend (and man has she got some skills). The second Left 4 Dead pumpkin we've seen so far comes our way from Kotaku reader Necrothug. And lastly, we've got a rare white pumpkin entry from Alex Fortuno.

Fortuno says: "This is supposed to be the Bass icon from Beatles Rock Band. It's also carved on a white pumpkin. The idea was much better in my head."

But don't be too hard on him — he had the ingenious idea to keep the whole thing together with toothpicks. I've got to try that on my Bubs pumpkin. My cat sort of ruined his teeth...

The Half-Life pumpkin was carved last year by Gerard "OriginalGman." Ghostbusters comes our way from Cameron Leatham, Joe Greene and his wife contributed Strong Bad pumpkins. Sean Lefebvre handled Mario and Bowser. And Borderlands was done by Dennis Cwik.

Here's how some of the experts got it done:

Ghostbusters:
"I used one of those [store-bought pumpkin carving] sets, and I also have this hobby knife kit that had some useful blades in it. The U-shaped chisel thing (not sure what the actual name is) was particularly useful for removing the skin. I think I'm going to pick up a light bulb base and use that to light it up, though. It has to be completely dark to see the effect, and my camera still had trouble picking it up. I had to crank the brightness up on that picture."

Borderlands:
"Being cheap, I used what I had. Bagsofcrap shows my Masterchef Duracut set going for $10 one day (http://www.bagsofcrap.com/woot.html.php?id=2556), and so I only used one of the steak knifes on the left side of the picture (as that was the sharpest knife I could find in the entire set). The luxurious and ergonomic plastic handle handle did give a nice cracking sound as I tried to remove the top to scoop the guts too, but it held together like a champ.

Some of you keep starting your pumpkin emails with "Mine's terrible, but..." Seriously, guys, it doesn't matter. You want to see how bad my pumpkin skillz are? Check out the last image. It's supposed to be Bubs from Strong Bad's Cool Game for Attractive People (which is really just a Bubs stencil from Homestarrunner.com) — but it kind of looks like a retarded Popple. Or Gary Busey, depending on whether or not it's lit up.

So, don't be shy! Send me your gaming pumpkins!

Five more days of pumpkin-loving left, Kotaku. Get 'em done!

We've got a Ninja Turtle from Neo_X, a PlayStation logo taken with a cell phone cam from Eric Pederson and I can't find the original email that had the Borderlands pumpkin in it, so I apologize to that user for not giving you a proper shout-out.

There's still more gaming pumpkins to post and you can keep 'em coming my way. Enjoy!

"Mainly I've used an x-acto knife and three tiny screwdrivers to do most of the carving," ceemdee said in an email. "I used some wood carving tools to scrap out the bigger areas on a few of the pumpkins and a needle is used to trace the image. They were all carved in the last four weeks. It's actually only four pumpkins (one a week) with three carvings on each. :)"

You can check out unlit views of the pumpkins here.

Got any more? Send pictures of 'em my way!

Update: We got two more submissions. Here's JAS none with his Metal Gear Solid pumpkin.

and Ignited_Impulse, with DMC's Dante and Trish:

Pumpkin Roundup!! [Oct. 31, 2007]

As you can see, my wife and I didn't even attempt gaming pumpkins after seeing your brilliance, but hit the jump for a complete list of our exclusive gaming pumpkin coverage.

And Now, A Megaman Pumpkin

Mario Pumpkin Might "Win"

Day Of The Pumpkin!

Pac-Man, Dots and Clyde

Metroid Pumpkin Glows, Might Eat Your Head

Sonic-o'-lantern

Okami Pumpkin

Pumpkins Go Next-Gen

The Halo-Ween Pumpkin

WoW Pumpkin

Pac-Man Gourds (Not Pumpkins, Which Are Lame)

Mario's Towering Pumpkin Inferno

RRoD Is Truly Frightening

Smashing Xbox 360 Pumpkin Stencils

Another Awesome Zelda Pumpkin

Bad Guys Need Pumpkins Too

Hallow-Wind Waker

Alien Hominid Pumpkin

Probably The Best Mario Pumpkin

Pumpkichu Gives Us Nightmares

Space Invaders Immortalized In Pumpkin

Wario Scares Us

Big Daddy from BioShock

Mario Pumpkin

Cory, you get at least 1up. Maybe so many as 2 or 3.

Hit the link for advice on making your own. But know by clicking it, you are picking a side in a war as important as the fabled "wwwwwwwwww vs. lol" chronicles. Oh yes, this will get messy. Because pumpkins bleed and get all sticky on your hands and stuff.

Easy halloween project: 8-bit gourds! [via playgadgets]