What if Buzzfeed Unsolved’s Ryan and Shane actually caught a ghost? What if they actually solved the mystery? Look no further. With random players or Co-Op with friends, Kinetic Games’
Phasmophobia
puts you and your friends into the shoes of four ghost hunters looking to make a quick buck. Although the game is currently in its early access stage, it’s hard to believe how a single developer could make such a high-quality horror simulator.
The premise of the game is quite simple. With multiple contracts to choose from, you are dropped off at a location of your choice, inside your ghost hunting van, and tasked to determine what kind of ghost you are dealing with. You are given various optional objectives to earn a couple more dollars you can use to buy better or extra equipment to help you on your next contract. However, unlike the typical ghost hunting, you’d see on your cable television, there might be a chance you will not survive the expedition.
Don’t worry, the game doesn’t leave you stranded quite yet. Players are given a few starter items to help them and can unlock a better set of items later on. Starter items include a flashlight, UV light, photo camera, video camera, EMF reader, spirit box, and ghostwriting book. Unfortunately, it is difficult to finish all the optional objectives with just the starter items. But for you completionists out there, the lack of items gives you an incentive to continue your play to unlock more. Eventually, players are able to unlock motion detectors, thermometers, smudge sticks, crucifixes, etc. Not only will you be able to finish optional objectives, your experience as a ghost hunter will be much easier.
Unlike
Outlast
or
Silent Hill
,
Phasmophobia
doesn’t have a plot or narrative structure to follow. The horror isn’t fostered by lore or intense music, but rather subtle, ambient noises, and the dreadful and noisy silence. The sound design is quite unique, often forcing you to keep your ears peeled for footsteps, items dropping, piano sounds, etc. Entering a house, a high school, prison or asylum gives you instant dread and paranoia. A player could be downstairs, investigating one of the rooms, only to hear footsteps pacing back and forth in the room above. Even worse, a player could hear the piano suddenly playing in the room next door.
Players have to utilize both their equipment and their own intuition to find the ghost’s favorite room, lure the ghost in, and collect enough evidence to figure out what it is. Among the various tools you use, the most important tool of all is communication. The game relies heavily on your microphone and whatever it picks up. Through the voice chat, you can choose to talk to teammates with a radio or a proximity-based global chat. However, by the same token, the ghost is able to hear every single word you say; it’s always listening, even when you’re not on the radio. Make fun of the ghost all you want, laugh about it with your friends on Discord, but know it’s listening and it’ll get angry.
The biggest dread comes when you ask the spirit box where the ghost is and have it reply: “Here.”
Similar to
Alien: Isolation
, there is no true way to defend yourself or get rid of the ghost permanently. You are able to slow it down, scare it away temporarily, but the only true thing you can do is hide. The ghost uses a hunting mode, signaled by a blinking flashlight and varying by the different types of ghosts you encounter. Once the ghost enters hunting mode, you can take the risk of capturing a photo for a bit of extra cash or lock yourself in a room and hide. Your character’s heart will start to race and the ghost will begin to whisper into your ears. Be careful, though. The more encounters you have with the ghost, alongside staying in the dark for frequent periods, the faster your sanity drains. Ghosts love hunting players with low sanity. If I’m going to be quite frank, once the ghost starts hunting, be ready for an adrenaline rush.
Oftentimes, when investigating the ghost, players are going to need to plant video cameras around the ghost’s room or other positions of interest. As a result, a player needs to stay behind in the van on camera duty. If you are the type of player who is scared to have the one-on-one interaction with the ghost, stay in the van and watch the cams.
The game offers various types of ghosts and difficulty levels which ultimately lead to a new experience each time you play it. To name a few, you could encounter a Demon, who attacks without reason, a Banshee, who sets its eyes on one target alone, a Shade, who murders when one wanders away from the team, or a Poltergeist, who likes to throw items, just to name a few. Each ghost has its own attack, its own method of stalking, and tailored evidence used to identify it.
Phasmophobia
’s early access status unfortunately means there will be a lot of bugs, and I mean a lot of bugs. Some of your equipment can clip through the floor, putting them out of play for the rest of the contract, certain objectives will fail to spawn, or crucial items will break just when you need them. The character animations are quite poor, sometimes leading to both funny and awkward moments. The death animations are quite hilarious and entertaining to watch, both scaring the player but also giving their teammates a quick laugh. Like the characters, the ghosts’ animations can be a bit awkward. The good news, however, it does not take much of the immersion out of the experience. Despite the poor animation, the ghosts can be just as terrifying.
Overall,
Phasmophobia
has been a promising game and one of a kind experience. If you are bored of
Among Us
or would like to experience what it’s like to be a ghost hunter,
Phasmophobia
is worth checking out. Based on its development status and the rolling updates, I can anticipate that this game will only get better and better. Unfortunately, this game is only available for PC and VR on Steam. I am hopeful
Phasmophobia
will come out on consoles so that all players are able to experience what the game has to offer.
