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From time to time, I enjoy playing horror games. Sometimes, it’s fun to be scared and to see things that unnerve you, unsettle you, show you things that you don’t understand. One big issue that I have with horror games is that a lot of them are either going for the jump scare route or are just not creepy at all. Of course, they have spooky imagery, but I don’t call a game like Five Nights At Freddy’s a horror game. It’s a dark adventure game. Maybe I might be desensitized to horror… games like Corpse Party and the Zero Escape games are scary because they like to pull the rug out from underneath you, making you feel on edge. Now, Phasmophobia gets a lot of praise for being one of the better indie horror games and ghost games out there. But, is it actually? Well, let’s dive right into this investigation, while I invite you to leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on the game and/or the content of this article.

Editorial note: this game is in early access and next month a big new update is going to drop. So keep that in mind while reading this article.

Ghostly Logic Puzzle

As soon as you start playing this game, it’s quite clear that it’s a game meant to be played off and on. There is no real story in this game. The only story in this game is that you are a part of a ghost hunting group going to haunted locations to investigate which ghost is haunting the place. There is no exorcism in this game, so you don’t free the places of the ghost.

Apart from some lore here and there, you shouldn’t play this game if you are looking for an in-depth ghost investigation game. If you want a ghost investigation game with a deep story, I’d steer more towards Conrad Paranormal P.I. This is more of a horror puzzle game. A game that starts as an overwhelming game, but the more you play and study it, the more you learn its unique mechanics, and it becomes a lot more fun.

The main focus of this game is to be a co-op party game. A game you play with up to four friends. If you watch the streams I’m doing with Klamath, you might have heard me drop hints at me streaming this game together with Bluescreen18, the_Kovic & Klamath. We have been playing this game to test our setup and I think you’ll all like it. Bluescreen18 even uploaded a few of our test sessions. Sadly, life got in the way for more sessions, but these sessions were so much fun.

But, why am I having so much fun with this game? What makes this game work, and why is it so addictive? That’s what I’m going to try and explain in this article. Let me firstly talk about what I mean with that this game is a ghostly logic puzzle and that this game starts overwhelming and becomes more fun over time.

In this game, you go to various maps to investigate. The ghost and its behavior are randomized. This means that each round is different and you rarely have similar ghosts. Depending on your difficulty setting, you can get three evidences. As soon as you find any evidence, you can note it down in your journal. With this journal, you can narrow down which ghost you are dealing with. It also gives you an overview of additional objectives, taken pictures, and has a small in-game wiki on the ghosts.

The goal of each round is to survive and guess the right ghost that’s haunting the place. If you do that, you earn money depending on the taken pictures and completed side objectives. Wait, what do I mean with survive? Well, you start with a 100% sanity level at the start of a round. When you stand in the dark or interact with ghost events or cursed items, your sanity drops. When it drops below a certain range, the ghost starts a hunting phase. In this hunting phase, it’s best that you hide and disable all your equipment since when the ghost catches you, you are out of the round. Your reward at the end of the round is also at least halved or worse. Also, during the hunts… The exits are locked so, there is no escaping before the hunt is over.

In the two previous paragraphs, I have explained the bare basics of this game. Yet, there are so many more mechanics in this game that trying to explain them all or most of them like I usually do in my articles is crazy work. This game is overwhelming and if you go into it blind, I highly recommend that you go through the training mode at least twice or maybe even trice. Not that the training mode is bad, but it helps to get you into the rhythm, the loop of this game.

So, why is this game a giant logic puzzle? Well, at the moment of writing, this game has 24 ghost types. All of these ghosts can be identified by a unique combination of 3 out of 7 possible evidences. With the current journal system, it’s easy to see which ghosts are still in the running as soon as you note down or cross off an evidence. So, you don’t have to learn all the 24 sets of 3 evidences.

Now, each ghost also has unique behavior, strengths and weaknesses. Some examples are, a Wraith doesn’t walk into salt piles, the D.O.T.S. can only be seen through a camera for a Goryo and the Obake has a small chance that the left fingerprints have a finger extra.

So, if you combine the knowledge of ghost behavior and evidences, you can find the ghost easier and easier. As soon as you find its favorite room, you can start setting up and try to figure out the ghost you are dealing with. At the start of each round, the ghost chooses its favorite room and that’s where most of the evidences can be obtained. It’s also the place from where it starts hunting if the player or group sanity is low enough.

Evolving game

Since its first release back in 2020, this game has grown quite a lot. From the introduction of new maps, new ghosts and new mechanics… Each update brings something new and unique to this game. And on top of that, this game also has unique events during those special holidays like Easter, Halloween and Christmas.

Now, the best thing that got added in this game is the custom difficulty. The base difficulties are extremely well crafted and nicely balanced, but with the custom difficulty you can set up the game to your liking and the rewards will adjust to that. You can even disable the hunts when you are still learning, but you won’t get any rewards. Since, there is no risk… But, you can challenge yourself by disabling evidences entirely and figuring out the ghost purely from behavior. And yes, that’s totally possible.

The amount of things you can change with these custom difficulties is just insane. From player speed, ghost roaming, amount of evidence, cursed object, hunt duration… It’s just insane. It made a really replayable game even more replayable. This game is currently walking a fine line of having enough challenge and depth… and it’s walking on it like a boss.

After watching so much video’s on this game and playing it for 30 hours, I feel like I still haven’t seen everything that this game has to offer. And each major update changes so many things that it changes the whole meta of the game sometimes. For example, in the recent updates, we got weekly challenges. These are challenges that the developers prepared for you. All of these challenges have a unique set-up, like not being able to use items that require electricity or batteries. They are all on a fixed map, and you lose nothing when you fail a round. But if you beat the challenge three times, you get a huge cash reward (in-game, of course).

Another example is the newest cursed item. In this game, there are several cursed objects that can aid you to find the ghost, but have some dire consequences when used. If you think objects like the Ouija board or a voodoo doll, you are spot on. Earlier this year, we got the Monkey Paw. This paw is basically an evil genie. You get 5 wishes (less on higher difficulties) and these can range from wishing to trap the ghost or have a wrong evidence crossed out. Yet, each wish has a very negative side effect, making you choose your wishes carefully.

And looking at their roadmap for the remainder of this year and next year, we are going to get a total overhaul of the evidence gathering, new equipment, new ghost and player models, new tasks, new locations and much more. It’s quite tricky to find any negatives on this game, to be honest, since a lot of things that I want to see changed are coming in future updates anyway.

In this game, the balance of everything is just perfect. You don’t always get direct confirmation of the evidences and you have really have to use your knowledge of the game and it’s mechanics to the max in order for you to survive. But, if you don’t want to play on the higher difficulties and risk all the stuff you worked so hard for, there is barely any content locked out from the easier difficulties. The main differences are the speed of the sanity drain, the amount of sanity restoration you get from pills, the length of the safe time, if the breaker starts off or on, if you get insurance if you die… and if the ghost can change favorite room or not. But, you can always mix and match via the custom difficulty.

Small team

It still surprises me that the core team for this game is around 4 people. The amount of depth, polish and love that has been put into this game is just insane. Not only does this game have a VR version, it’s also coming to consoles later this year. With cross play.

Sometimes when I see this game and look at other games from small studio’s, I either see overambitious unpolished messes or extremely polished small gems. Yet, this studio manages to create an experience like no other. A polished, large game that can be replayed for hours upon hours.

Also, this game looks perfectly. It doesn’t go for the hyperrealistic look, but it goes for that realistic yet game-y look. And it nails that perfectly. The houses and locations are extremely detailed and actually feel real. Especially the Sunny Meadows map, man… That’s an impressive map. It also has some places where you really can get spooked.

In terms of animations, this game is also very good. It has unique and recognizable animations. Some are just a bit silly, especially the player animations when crouched, but it adds to the charm. The best animations can be seen during the hunts and ghost events/interactions. Seeing a ghost running towards you is scary and tense.

Combine this with extremely strong audio design, this game is just polished. If you play this game online, you can play this game as if you were really investigating those area’s. As soon as you walk away from somebody, their mic gets more and more silent. So, you will have to use walky-talkies. But, what if you don’t have a mic? Well, the things that require a mic for interaction in this game also have a non-mic option. So, you don’t get excluded there.

Now, this game is also quite a lot of fun as a single player game. When I moved houses, I didn’t had great internet access for a while. And I had a lot of fun playing through various rounds of Phasmophobia after work. Currently, it has become one of those games I boot up once in a while to play a match or two and try to better my skills by learning the unique traits of each ghost.

To be honest, it’s quite hard to find things to complain about in this game. There aren’t too many glitches in this game nor are there too many mechanics that feel unfun. For example, you can only see the map in the truck that’s parked at the start. This can be annoying on bigger maps but this encourages team work since that map in the truck works as a sort of radar. Also, it can be annoying that the sprint is a bit weak in this game… But, this way you have to use it wisely and save it for hunts.

You’d argue that it would be helpful that when writing things down in the journal like when an evidence is found should be global…. But then again, this encourages team work and communication. In most cases I felt that everything negative I could say about this game, I could also see a reason why it’s that way. But that doesn’t mean that I do have some constructive criticism to give.

The following might be irrelevant when they rework photo evidence but currently, I feel it’s a bit unclear which pictures give you money and which ones don’t. Also, it’s unclear what you need to do to get a higher rating for the pictures. I’m curious to see what the rework of the pictures is going to bring but that’s indeed one area that needs a rework.

Another area that could use a rework in my opinion is the shop and the load out system. It’s a big improvement from the previous system but currently it’s a bit messy in terms of UI. It especially gets messy when you want to clear out the truck if you have stocked too many items. It’s also a pain to remove just one item after you have stocked the truck. I feel that the UI isn’t intuitive enough. The shop tab should become it’s own menu and the load outs as well. And then you should have “load truck” tab. Where you can more easily load items into the truck.

Other minor things that could improve are for example:

• a way to see all daily and weekly challenges in the journal.
• an overview on how much risk you have for that round. Since, you loose all the items you contributed if you die.
• a way to review the last round stats again after you clicked away from it.
• an easy way to reset some games in the lobby. Like the Jenga tower.

But one of the biggest things that needs a rework is when you die. Apart from being able to pick up items and throw them, there isn’t anything to do. Of course, it’s unclear for the other players if the item is thrown by a dead player or the ghost…Unless you know where the item comes from or where the ghost can throw. When I died during our multiplayer sessions I honestly got a bit bored. But, it’s a tricky thing to rework since what are you going to rework it too. What are you going to allow or have the dead players do? Maybe a bit more activities around the map would be great. Like in the lobby have a basketball and a hoop outside?

Now, some of you might have noticed that I haven’t talked about the music of this game. That’s because apart from the cursed item the music box, there is no music in this game. This can be a turn off for some but on the other hand, I’m glad that there isn’t any music. Since this game is so replayable, I’m afraid that if this game had music, it would become way to repetitive and the sometimes short rounds wouldn’t help there at all.

So, all in all, if you enjoy puzzle and/or horror games… I highly recommend this game. It’s biggest flaw is that it’s quite overwhelming and not everything is documented in the game… but it’s also it’s biggest strength. It’s a game where the more you play, the fun doesn’t come from figuring out the mysteries of the game and starts from coming to use all the knowledge you gained to try and figure everything out. Because of things like the custom difficulties, there is something here for everyone and for every skill level.

The frequent updates that this games gets and the very open way that the developers are listening to the community, it’s a game that I’m happy I discovered. I can’t wait to see how you are going to react on the streams since I can’t wait to play more from this masterfully crafted puzzle horror game together with my friends since it’s one of the best ways to play this game. But, it’s also a lot of fun in single player.

And with that said, I have said everything I want to say about this game for now. I want to thank you for reading this article. I hope you enjoyed reading this one as much as I enjoyed writing it and I hope to be able to welcome you in another one. Have a great rest of your day and take care!