Phasmophobia (video game)

Phasmophobia is a paranormal horror game by British indie game studio Kinetic Games. It is based primarily on the popular hobby of ghost hunting. The game became available in early access for Microsoft Windows with virtual reality support in September 2020. The game received a large influx of popularity the following month due to many well-known Twitch streamers and YouTubers playing it, mainly for the Halloween season.^[1] On October 15 of the same year, the game was the sixth-most popular game on Twitch.^[2] It was the best selling game on Steam globally for several weeks in October to November 2020.^[3]

Phasmophobia
Cover art
Developer(s)	Kinetic Games
Publisher(s)	Kinetic Games
Engine	Unity
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows PlayStation 5 Xbox Series X/S
Release	Windows 18 September 2020 (early access) PS5 & Xbox Series X/S TBA
Genre(s)	Survival horror, puzzle
Mode(s)	Single-player, multiplayer

Gameplay

Phasmophobia is a horror investigation survival game played from a first-person perspective. The player works solo or in a group with up to three other players to complete a contract in which they must identify the type of ghost haunting the specified site. Players can communicate through voice chat, both locally within a short distance and globally via walkie-talkies. Phasmophobia features speech recognition^[4][5] allowing certain pieces of equipment, Cursed Possessions, and even the ghost to hear players speaking and understand key words and phrases. Gathering evidence to determine the correct ghost type and surviving will net the majority of the cash and XP, but completing objectives and taking photos will augment or even double the rewards. Investigators are encouraged to complete as much as possible to level up and earn money to unlock maps, levels, and item upgrades.

Players create or join a lobby where preparation for the contracts is done. Phasmophobia gives players the option to customize their appearance by picking between eight different paranormal investigators to distinguish between group members. Located at two corkboards in the lobby, a contract location is voted on between players, while the difficulty is set by the host. All equipment is purchased and upgraded at a computer in the lobby and selected to be loaded into a van from which the group will operate upon arriving at the site.

Locations

As of January 2023, there are twelve sites of various sizes: small, medium, and large. The small maps include four suburban-style houses, two farmhouses with reworks planned for the near future, a small campsite, and a restricted variant of the larger asylum map. The medium maps are a campsite, a prison, and the large maps are a high school and a mental institution. Potential future maps located at an apartment building, mansion, and hospital have been hinted at, with a new map that the Kinetic Games developers confirmed to be coming very soon called Point Hope, a unique lighthouse where each room will encompass a full floor.

Gameplay

Phasmophobia features twenty-four different ghosts, each of which behaves differently and provides unique clues. Upon arriving at the site, one of these ghost types will be randomly assigned for the mission. As players attempt to complete the contract, sanity will drain with certain events and circumstances affecting the rate at which it does so. When sanity is low enough, a ghost will begin to hunt and attempt to kill the players (assuming the "Friendly Ghost" custom difficulty setting, which disables hunts, is not enabled). During the hunting phase, all exit doors are locked so players must outrun and/or hide from the ghost until the end of the hunt. Depending on the ghost type's strengths and weaknesses, it may be able to hunt when sanity is higher or lower. A standard hunt can be prevented with a crucifix, but a Cursed hunt, triggered by a Cursed Possession, can only be prevented with a Tier III crucifix.

Players will start in the Van where they will find the equipment they have selected and another corkboard, the Objective Board, listing the objectives they need to complete as well as the name of the ghost and showing all ten of their photos. It also houses the Surveillance Computer, Sanity Monitor, map of the current site, Sound Sensor Screen, and Site Activity Monitor. This set of equipment is permanently located inside the Van and is used to track the status of the players and ghost’s activity, although on Nightmare and Insanity difficulties as well as with two specific Custom Difficulty settings, the Sanity Monitor and Site Activity monitor may be disabled and appear as smashed screens. Players who survive and have completed their objectives (or wish to give up) must return to the Van to leave. Players will also have a journal on hand permanently where information about the ghosts, evidence, and photos can be found. Evidence and ghost identification must be marked in the Journal to receive money and XP that can be used to purchase and upgrade more equipment.

Equipment

Starter equipment includes an aged AM/FM radio, a notebook, a D.O.T.S. pen, an aged electromagnetic field reader, an aged video camera, a glowstick, and an aged flashlight, with more of these available to buy in the store, assuming the player has enough funds to do so. Additional equipment types or upgrades can be unlocked depending on player level and subsequently purchased. Certain types of equipment like Firelights, Igniters, Incense, and Crucifixes may be needed to complete the optional objectives and protect players. Up to seven Cursed Possessions (depending on the Custom Settings and difficulty) will spawn per map and allow the player to interact with the ghost directly, though at the risk of provoking it into a hunt or dying.

Players must utilize the various pieces of equipment to identify the three pieces of evidence unique to the type of ghost they are dealing with, and often to complete optional objectives as well.^[6][7] However, on Nightmare difficulty and higher, the ghost will only show two or lower pieces of evidence, forcing players to use the ghost's special traits and abilities to determine the correct ghost type. As of February 2024, there are seven possible pieces of ghost evidence.

Photo evidence

Additional photo evidence can be taken with a Photo Camera to earn extra money and will give points according to the category, distance, and position in the frame from which the photo was taken (which is denoted by a star rating). A photo of the ghost will net the most money, but other items that count towards photo evidence include bones, dead bodies (of teammates), fingerprints, footprints, disturbed salt, interactions, dirty water, used crucifixes, Ghost Writing, and Cursed Possessions.

Ghost types

As of February 2024, Phasmophobia has 24 different ghost types. Most of these ghost types are based on creatures and entities from various cultures and religions, such as the Banshee from Irish folklore, the Yokai, and Yurei from Japanese folklore, and the Jinn from Islamic folklore. Each ghost type has different abilities it can use, as well as times it can hunt.

Sanity

Sanity is a parameter that determines a number of factors during gameplay. Sanity begins at 100% at the start of a game and decreases passively as the player wanders in dark areas. Active ghost actions such as ghost events will drain sanity faster, and certain ghosts' abilities will drop sanity even faster. The lower the average sanity, the more likely a ghost is to perform certain actions, including ghost events, interactions, and hunts. Sanity drain can be reduced by holding a lit Firelight by different amounts depending on the Tier or standing in lit areas. Sanity can be restored by using Sanity Medication or using Cursed Possessions.

Hunts

The hunt is a gameplay feature designed to add complexity to players' investigation of a specific location. When a hunt occurs, the ghost manifests and wanders throughout the area to eliminate one or more players, depending on the difficulty. Throughout the hunt, the lights near the ghost's current position will intermittently flicker, all exit doors will be locked, and the ghost will disrupt active electronic devices nearby. Some ghosts exhibit abilities during hunts that could make them stronger or weaker, depending on the ghost, and these abilities can be used to determine the ghost type if the investigators know what they're looking for. Hunts will last longer on bigger maps, and on higher difficulties, hunts will be extended if the ghost kills someone, and Cursed Possessions can elongate hunt durations further.

Custom difficulty

In September 2022 an update was released which added the custom difficulty to the game, with a rebalance in February 2023. This custom difficulty makes the player able to change certain settings to the mission. Changing the settings will result in a money and XP multiplier that could be more or less rewarding, depending on the difficulty of the settings.^[8]

Development and release

Release

The game's Steam page was launched in March 2020. An announcement trailer was released three months later, announcing additional VR support and a release date for the early access build. On September 18, the game was released in early access for $14.^[9] After the release, the game received two major updates regarding bug fixes in the following week.^[10] Dknighter, the founder and sole member of Kinetic Games at the time, said that he hoped to release the full game somewhere in 2021, but until that happened, he kept the game's price the same. During game development after the early access release, one of the main goals for the updates was to improve the ghosts' AI, making them smarter and less predictable, and consequently harder for players to deal with.^[11] On June 13, 2023, Kinetic Games announced that console versions of the game would release in August, but due to a fire that occurred at the Kinetic Games office, they were pushed back to October,^[12] however, on October 17, 2023, Kinetic Games announced again that console versions of the game were delayed again due to “Unforeseen challenges” caused by the fire and was yet pushed back again with no confirmed date this time. ^[13]

Popularity

Although first released around mid-September, the game began to pick up steam around the beginning of October for Halloween. This was the game's first time becoming trending and was being played by many notable Twitch streamers and YouTubers.^[14][15] This was likely due to the game becoming early access around the beginning of the Halloween season, as well as being similar in popularity to its inspiration P.T.^[16] It could also be due to the start of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic causing many people to stay at home.^[17] With the influx of players due to the large number of popular streamers playing the game, hackers became widespread during the later weeks of the game's release, mostly by trying to jumpscare players or spawn an infinite amount of items.^[18] One of the more concerning examples of hacking were stream snipers, who changed their player models to a more NSFW one, likely causing said streamers to receive warnings and bans for inappropriate content.^[19][20] The developers then began working on updates to solve the problem.^[21]

On Twitch, the game grew exponentially and even reached the top 5 most viewed games in mid-October, overtaking games such as Among Us, Fortnite Battle Royale, FIFA 21, and Genshin Impact.^[22][23] According to online player tracker GitHyp, the game hit a peak of over 86,000 active players around October 10.^[24][25] The game became a Steam top-seller, and by the end of October 2020, was the best selling game of that week, even beating out Fall Guys and pre-orders for Cyberpunk 2077.^[26][27] It was the highest selling game on Steam for three weeks in a row.^[28]

Reception

Reception

Review score

Publication	Score
Jeuxvideo.com	16/20^[29]

Phasmophobia was well-received by critics. Rich Stanton of PC Gamer called it "the best ghost game ever made", as well as declaring that it was "unlike anything else I've played", and that it "comes up with shit that'll turn you white".^[6] Cass Marshall, writing in Polygon, also gave a positive review, describing it as "a nice, cozy kind of horror and once it gets rolling, it is brilliant", while also finding that the game had numerous bugs which have since been fixed. Jeuxvideo.com described the game as being quite original and imaginative, on top of being creepy. They felt that the maps in the game were well thought out and that the level of progression was well-paced. Whilst the review criticized the game for its animations and certain redundancies, they felt that they would likely be smoothed out with constant updates before the game's release.^[29] A review by CBR described the game as "the perfect game for the Halloween season", praising it for its unique jumpscares, as well as for its sound design.^[17] The game has been compared to many other horror games of a similar nature, such as Friday the 13th: The Game and Dead by Daylight.^[30]

Awards

Award	Date of ceremony	Category	Result	Ref.
The Game Awards 2020	December 10, 2020	Best Debut Game	Won	^[31]
Steam Awards 2020	January 3, 2021	VR Game of the Year	Nominated	^[32]
Game Developers Choice Awards	July 21, 2021	Best Debut Developer	Won	^[33]

References

1. Marshall, Cass (October 14, 2020). "A janky ghost game is blowing up on Twitch". Polygon. from the original on February 2, 2021. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
2. Mercante, Alyssa (October 15, 2020). "Ghost game Phasmophobia is spreading scares all over Steam and Twitch". GamesRadar. from the original on October 19, 2020. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
3. Vaz, Christian (November 9, 2020). "Phasmophobia continues to dominate Steam's top sellers list". PCGamesN. from the original on January 23, 2021. Retrieved December 18, 2020.
4. Morton, Lauren (October 7, 2020). "Phasmophobia has certainly possessed a lot of players". Rock, Paper, Shotgun. from the original on January 16, 2021. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
5. Miller, Chris (October 7, 2020). "Phasmophobia Is Taking Horror To New Levels With Party-Play And Voice Recognition". Happy Gamer. from the original on October 31, 2020. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
6. Stanton, Rich (October 13, 2020). "Phasmophobia is the best ghost game ever made". PC Gamer. from the original on October 22, 2020. Retrieved October 15, 2020.
7. Izaak (October 14, 2020). "Phasmophobia, a new co-op ghost hunting game, becomes an October hit". Sportskeeda. from the original on October 28, 2020. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
8. Moyer, Jordan (2022-09-27). "Phasmophobia: How Custom Difficulties Work". The Nerd Stash. from the original on 2022-10-05. Retrieved October 5, 2022.
9. Ridley, Jacob (October 8, 2020). "Phasmophobia, a terrifying online co-op ghost hunting game, is Twitch's latest surprise hit". PC Gamer. from the original on November 13, 2020. Retrieved October 17, 2020.
10. "Phasmophobia News Hub". Steam. from the original on November 1, 2020. Retrieved October 17, 2020.
11. Jones, Rebecca (October 20, 2020). "Phasmophobia updates will make ghosts smarter and less predictable". PC Gamer. from the original on October 23, 2020. Retrieved October 21, 2020.
12. Lockhart, Cameron (August 25, 2023). "Phasmophobia PS5, Xbox Version Delayed at the Last Minute". Game Rant. Valnet, Inc. Retrieved August 25, 2023.
13. Lockhart, Cameron (2023-10-17). "Phasmophobia Console Version Delayed Yet Again". Game Rant. Retrieved 2023-11-03.
14. Biswas, Souhardya (October 9, 2020). "PewDiePie Returns to Horror Games with Phasmophobia". Essentially Sports. from the original on January 15, 2021. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
15. "What deserves to be the next streaming phenomenon like Among Us or Phasmophobia?". PC Gamer. October 23, 2020. from the original on October 29, 2020. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
16. Grayson, Nathan (October 15, 2020). "Twitch's Latest Horror Sensation, Phasmophobia, Has Streamers Screaming (At Each Other)". Kotaku. from the original on February 13, 2021. Retrieved October 17, 2020.
17. Creswell, Jacob (October 20, 2020). "Phasmophobia Is the BEST Indie Horror Game to Play This Halloween". CBR. from the original on March 21, 2021. Retrieved October 21, 2020.
18. Sharma, Aakrit (October 20, 2020). "Phasmophobia Is Scarier than Ever But Not Because of the Horror". Essentially Sports. from the original on October 23, 2020. Retrieved October 21, 2020.
19. Byrd, Matthew (October 20, 2020). "Phasmophobia Hackers Are Using Jump Scares to Haunt Streamers". Den of Geek. from the original on January 17, 2021. Retrieved October 21, 2020.
20. Williams, Hayley (October 19, 2020). "Phasmophobia Hackers Are Terrorizing Streamers With Jump Scares". GameSpot. from the original on December 4, 2020. Retrieved October 21, 2020.
21. Oloman, Jordan (October 20, 2020). "Phasmophobia Devs Working on Fix for Hackers Spawning in Even More Jump Scares". IGN. from the original on January 18, 2021. Retrieved October 21, 2020.
22. Skrebels, Joe (October 9, 2020). "Phasmophobia Is a New Steam and Twitch Sensation". IGN. from the original on January 18, 2021. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
23. Garst, Aron (October 14, 2020). "Phasmophobia Is Blowing Up On Steam And Twitch". GameSpot. from the original on November 1, 2020. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
24. "Phasmophobia Player Count". GitHyp. from the original on January 19, 2021. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
25. Sledge, Ben (October 12, 2020). "Phasmophobia hit Steam's top five most-played games this weekend". PCGamesN. from the original on January 20, 2021. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
26. Brown, Fraser (October 12, 2020). "Indie ghost hunter Phasmophobia is a Steam top seller". PC Gamer. from the original on October 18, 2020. Retrieved October 16, 2020.
27. Shwetang, Parthsarthy (October 19, 2020). "Phasmophobia Jumps a Spot on Steam Charts to Reach an All-Time High". Essentially Sports. from the original on January 12, 2021. Retrieved October 21, 2020.
28. McGlynn, Anthony (October 26, 2020). "Phasmophobia is out-selling Baldur's Gate 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and The Outer Worlds on Steam". PCGamesN. from the original on December 30, 2020. Retrieved October 26, 2020.
29. "Test: Phasmophobia: une chasse aux fantômes en coop aussi originale que flippante" [Test: Phasmophobia: a co-op ghost hunt as original as it is scary]. Jeux Video (in French). October 16, 2020. from the original on November 25, 2020. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
30. "Games like Phasmophobia: the best ghost games". PCGamesN. October 12, 2020. from the original on March 19, 2021. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
31. Parthsarthy, Shwetang (November 19, 2020). "The Game Awards: Ghost of Tsushima, Animal Crossing, TLOU 2 and More Nominated for GOTY". Essentially Sports. from the original on November 19, 2020. Retrieved November 19, 2020.
32. Izaak (December 20, 2020). "Steam Awards 2020 nominees revealed". Sportskeeda. from the original on February 15, 2021. Retrieved November 19, 2020.
33. Beresford, Trilby (July 21, 2021). "2021 Game Developers Choice Award Winners". The Hollywood Reporter. from the original on July 22, 2021. Retrieved July 21, 2021.

External links

• Official website