Phasmophobia Is Hauntingly Complex Fun
A video game review, written Halloween of 2023.
While most video games concern themselves with cheap jump scares, brutality and gore–”Phasmophobia” is a much more reserved and subtle beast. The game is a remarkable fusion of ghost hunting, detective gameplay, and cooperative multiplayer dynamics complex enough to both keep seasoned players and novice hunters alike coming back continually. Additionally, the game's diverse map selection, combined with randomized elements keep players on their toes and ensures that no two missions feel the same. These elements, meticulously balanced by the developers at Kinetic Games, result in a captivating and unpredictable experience.
“Phasmophobia” is a fantastic game that charges you with the task of finding or intuiting evidence with the help of various gadgets ranging from EMF readers, video/photo cameras, motion sensors and UV lights to determine what kind of specter haunts each of the offered locations. As you solve cases and level up through the ghost hunter ranks you will gain money to upgrade each of these gadgets, providing an essential sense of progression as you improve your skills.
Before each mission you and your group will spawn into a lobby to choose a map, each having very distinct atmospheres and challenges that come with them. Some like the school and asylum are absolutely massive and dark, making tracking down the ghost much more difficult initially but also providing lots of space to run away from them should things go badly. Others like the well lit, suburban homes and rural farmhouses are much more enclosed, forcing you to make a mental map of hiding spots you can run to without being cut off or pieces of furniture you can “loop” the ghost around if it decides to catch you off guard and out of position. The farmhouses are particularly creepy with their generally strange layouts. There are also two outdoor campsites with their own quirks, all of the maps have randomized weather but on these maps the effects are more pronounced. This can make lighting fires to keep your sanity from draining or detecting low temperatures for evidence much more difficult or even impossible. The amount of randomness between object placements, map configurations and weather effects is very impressive and well balanced. There are even randomly selected cursed objects hidden around each map that you can use to force evidence, interactions or “cursed” hunts to try and control the flow of the game in both positive and negative ways. For me these little things add quite a lot to the game because you never know what to expect or feel cheated when it all goes to hell. That’s a pretty hard balance to strike.
Each round once you get into your chosen map sees you and up to 3 others starting inside of a large truck filled with equipment. These various tools will help you gather paranormal evidence and each player can only hold up to 3 items at any time, so you will frequently find yourself dropping what you have in your hands then running back out to the truck for more equipment. In most games this sort of inventory limitation might annoy me, but here it adds to the gameplay loop quite well. It’s always hilarious when your group is all heading outside at the same time for more equipment and the ghost slams the door in the face of the last person in line to begin a hunt…their muffled screams typically adding quite a lot to the experience. If anyone happens to die during one of these hunts they have to rebuy most of their equipment after that round, adding to the tension for the person trapped inside each time this happens.
There are 24 different types of ghosts in the game for you to track down and ID. These ethereal enemies are just as incredibly varied as the maps they reside within and each have their own quirks and unique combinations of evidence. Some ghosts are meek and quiet, making them extremely challenging to locate in the first place while others will assault you from the moment you walk through the door–forcing you to abandon your initial plans and run towards hiding spots that may not even exist depending on how the map has configured itself. These spirits are so diverse that especially advanced and observant players have even worked out ways to determine which are which without using any of the tools that would give them concrete evidence to narrow down the possibilities. This is pretty incredible from a design standpoint and a testament to the competence of the developers.
On the note of competence, one of the best mechanics in Phasmophobia is its sound design. I’ve seen the sounds in this game make grown men scream in terror. From subtle noises like floors creaking and heavy rain slamming against the windows to the horrible circus music that occasionally plays when a ghost turns a radio on-–Kinetic Games have mastered putting people on edge. The ghosts themselves all have a vast array of terrible noises they can make during events and hunts as well, some such as the child-like singing ghosts being genuinely creepy in the context of these things looking to chase you down and rip your face open. But by far the most well implemented sound mechanic is the mic integration. Most co-op games use microphones purely as a means of communication between teammates, but in this game as PCGamer notes:
“...you have to run voice chat through the game itself, and then there's a local chat and a radio chat option. The difference matters because the ghosts can 'hear' you. In fact, some ghosts will speak to you, and even respond to an item called the Spirit Box that allows you to ask questions.” (Stanton)
The developers integrated voice recognition so well into the game that you can even do things like ask the ouija board (one of the aforementioned cursed objects) “how many pickles can you fit in your butt?” and get an appropriate reply. This isn’t typically useful to do, but it is funny. If you’re hiding during a hunt and happen to be breathing into your mic…RIP you. This in turn causes some people to physically hold their breath as the ghost tramples around nearby looking for them, this is absolutely masterful audio implementation and it greatly enhances the experience.
Kinetic Games themselves are a small team of UK indie developers and so far “Phasmophobia” seems to be their only produced title. From what I can tell the game is very much a passion project of theirs, the developers often join fan streams to play and seem like genuinely nice people (if a bit mischievous). The game was released in early access originally September 18th, 2020 and has since seen a steady stream of improvements, features and new content—including a recent Halloween event I decided to complete.
Several times a year for various holidays the developer will add time limited in game events. Completing these will give you rare trophies to add to your lobby as well as unique stickers to show off on your badge in the queue screen before missions. This Halloween was the first of these I have participated in so far and it was quite a lot of fun. It had me going around most of the maps looking for recipe cards to bring back to the truck and it was a good way to get me onto the larger maps that I typically avoid while playing by myself. It wasn’t nice that it made the most aggressive ghost in the game chain-hunt me my entire time on the massive prison map, but it was a good time searching out these recipes overall.
For the event, I needed to gather all of the ingredients from around the newly reworked Maple Lodge map–specified by the recipe cards I’d collected–and drop them into a cauldron. They were all quite well hidden and required me to do a lot of inventory juggling to get it done. When I got everything gathered together I was rewarded with a unique animation and a jump scare on my way out of the map that made me bash my knee into my desk. What more could I ask for from a special event in a game technically not even fully released?
Well, I could ask for the promised console release with crossplay between platforms that was supposed to come with this update, considering I’ve been hyping my brother up for it. But that would actually be unfair seeing as the developers had to delay it due to a fire breaking out in their offices. Fortunately no one was hurt and seeing as I had to reach this far for something to complain about, that only says good things about the state of this game and the people behind it.
Overall, “Phasmophobia” is a great game whether you just want to kill a few minutes by yourself solving a small map, or spend an entire evening with friends in absolute chaos. The depth and variety Kinetic Games have managed with such a simple premise is staggering and their commitment to the game and community of players around it inspires confidence in me that the game will only continue to improve. With as much time as one can spend on the game without the gameplay loop becoming rote–you can certainly do quite a lot worse than this indie gem for the $13.99 price tag. The game is currently only on the Steam platform on PC but will be coming to Playstation 5 and Xbox in the near future.
Works Cited:
Stanton, Rich. “Phasmophobia Is the Best Ghost Game Ever Made.” Pcgamer, PC Gamer, 12 Oct. 2020, www.pcgamer.com/phasmophobia-is-the-best-ghost-game-ever-made/.
Figure 1: “Gathering Photographic Evidence.” Kinetic Games, 2020. Author's screenshot.
Figure 2: “Player Lobby During Halloween.” Kinetic Games, 2020. Author's screenshot.
Figure 3: “Death of the Unobservant.” Kinetic Games, 2020. Author's screenshot.