Some of you may remember the indie multiplayer ghost hunting game Phasmophobia when it was in the spotlight around Halloween. You play as a team of ghost hunters trying to find evidence of paranormal activity with the use of ghost hunting tools and the power of deductive investigation to decipher the type of ghost that is haunting the area and how to play around the various behaviors of the different ghosts. The perfect game to play during the spooky season, but with the lasting appeal to be fun on a dark and stormy night just as well as a bright and sunny day. Hunting ghosts with friends and strangers alike is a really fun concept and while the game is a lot of fun it is still in early access which rears its ugly head sometimes with derpy looking character models or other early development things. Many hours of play in and the game becomes an easy dash to solving a ghost hunt before so much as seeing the ghost leaving the hunts unsatisfying and too short to be very scary even on professional difficulty. The problem was finding the ghost room was too easy, and once you find that the dominos start to fall and the other two pieces of evidence can easily be found after that. By using thermometers you could find the ghost room within the first couple of minutes depending on the map size and once that is found the other evidence is easy to find after that.

In the newest update of the game that dropped March, 6th changes were made to how the power works, and how that effects the temperature of the house, as well as improving the ghosts ability to track and find people in the house; two small things that add a lot of depth to the game. Professional difficulty contracts now start with the power in the house off, and with the new update when the power is off the temperature of the house goes down. The first objective no longer is to find the cold room, its to find the power and things can’t even begin until that happens. The pace shift is much more noticeable on larger maps, but the warm up period the house goes through still slows things down on smaller maps where the power is easier to find. On large maps however, the hunt takes awhile to begin allowing for much more spooky time to occur and throwing a wrench into the normal plan creating new refreshing approaches to contracts.

The update also added a new mechanic to hiding: you simply need to hold closet and locker doors closed while hiding in them to keep the ghost from being able to open them when they are looking for you. By forcing the player to do something interactive during the hunt there is another layer tension where previously there was just hiding and waiting. Overall, the ghost has also become a better hunter and with the changes it’s more responsive to sounds and won’t lose players around corners.

I had played the game for around 52 hours before this update and the first few games after the updates were much harder, and took a lot more time and interaction on our part to solve the hauntings. We got party wiped by the ghost which has never happened in all my time of playing, and the investigations felt more satisfying as there was more effort on our part to actually figure things out. Being hunted by the ghost is incredibly more tense and the act of having to hold the door down doubles up on the tension, especially when you hide in a closet alone with two doors but you can only hold one as you hear the ghost open doors and start to get closer. Watching the door across from you start creaking open when you’re all alone is a very special kind of chilling that was not possible before to this extent.

Each update of Phasmophobia has added enough interesting content to make me come back. While new content like maps, ghost types, or new gear is nice, I think these small changes to the mechanics and gameplay are creating excellent foundation to build on moving forward which is more important as building solid foundation to build on would make new content better. I am constantly surprised by the improvements given to the game each update and It’s easy to see the potential as each update rolls in that makes me optimistic that I’ll still be hunting ghosts in the future. This update added much needed pacing to hunts which gives them time to feel substantial now rather than a checklist you can complete within five minutes. Hunts feel more investigative and I’ve have had a much more interesting time playing recently with these new changes.