Phasmophobia

It was a ghost. A spooky ghost. This is his ectoplasm! 

Some days it feels like I'm just here covering the big game of the week, which is quite the odd proposition given how rapidly things seem to move in that regard. The game that no one wanted to touch yesterday is the phenomena of today and that hotness of last week is forgotten by the next. I'm not sure if 2020 has been particularly all over the place with this sort of thing or if gaming has always been like this and I just haven't paid enough attention, but either way it would seem that the public consciousness is, as of today, under the ownership of another indie title in Kinetic Games' Phasmophobia. Now of course, this isn't quite to the extent that Genshin Impact, Among us and Fall Guys have exploded, but it's still the game of the hour given the season in which we find ourselves. If people want the spooky games, there's only really one that takes the cake, and it's this curious little title that came out of nowhere.

But what is it about Phasmophobia that sets it apart in so grand a fashion that there's some who call it 'the greatest horror game in years'. Well it certainly isn't in presentation, I'd argue it isn't even really with execution, no I think this comes down to a decent conceived concept. You see, Phasmophobia is an online four-player game about hunting ghosts in various abandoned abodes for minimum wage; so basically living the dream. This is achieved through the use of a proximity mic system which allows players to interact with each other and, supposedly, the ghost. Additionally, there's a finicky radio system for long distance conversations which can be prone to going down for long periods with no explanation at all. What this means is that if everyone is playing ball and communicating exclusively through the mic system, there's this tense environment of realism set in as players need to be close in order to hear each other, so that when you enter the bigger locations it's easy to lose track of one another.

Another huge selling point of the system is actually hidden within what I just said. You see, the voice chat that plays throughout the game is also picked up by the ghosts within the game, although the way in which the game utilises that data is hotly contested. As can only be achieved with an indie game, people debate exactly just how much the game actually listens to characters voices, with some believing that talking can lead to the ghost targeting you and others saying that it's only for directing the ghost into communication, but if there's one thing everyone agrees on it's thus; saying the ghost's name pisses it off. So you have this tense situation wherein at any point someone could accidentally slip up and mention the ghosts name leading to an immediate and possibly deadly reaction; bringing the unpredictability of real life interactions into this gaming space. (Which is incidentally the same thing which made Among Us so popular.)

All these are the backbones that hold up the base game itself, which is essentially just about the act of observing and marking down the supernatural activity around the given locations and using that to determine what the ghost is. Whilst on paper that sounds like a frightfully predictable and easily surmountable time, when human error is thrown into the equation it balloons into an encounter where anything can happen. Characters are only allowed to carry a couple of tools on them at a time, limiting how much they can test the ghosts abilities and forcing cooperation and movement speed is purposefully terrible to ensure that players are forever at the whim of whatever is hunting them. The limits, as much as the features, help make this game as scary as it is. (Something which I've mentioned several times in my coverage of the early Resident Evil games)

I truly believe that the jank which permeates throughout this game creates it's allure, similar in fashion to the ropey quality of old-school video nasties helped people buy into their concept. I say 'similar', because whilst those films made use of their poor quality to make people subconsciously believe in them, I doubt that it has the same effect for a video game. Rather the lack of polish helps bolster this perception in which almost anything can happen, because there's no restraints on a product that isn't made by some big studio. Of course, when you take that away there's nothing quite all that amazing about Phasmophobia in itself, but horror is 90% illusion and smoke anyway; so I'd say that the developers are on the right track with this one.

So people out there hold the belief that video games are at their best when they allow for player dynamism, and whilst that's a gross oversimplification that is really down to preference in the long run, I won't deny that those sorts of games do tend to have some legs to them. Being the framework for ghost hunting really opens up the ability for people to throw themselves into the situation and playing alongside others, which is recommended, encourages this sort of behaviour. Additionally, though this is a little meta, those sorts of games tend to do better with game streamers out there as it allows them to insert their personality, basically opening up the way for a flood of free promotion should your game hit the streamer lottery.

Of course I do think there are limits to the successes that Phasmophobia can expect. For one the gameplay is so barebones that it's sure to get old pretty darn quick, in fact I'd say it's heading there already. Now that isn't really a failure of the game itself, I don't think it was made to become anyone's obsession or anything, it's more of just an observation. That and the gameplay loop is quite similar, the ghosts don't feel all that distinct from each other and there doesn't appear to be that much of a variety in locations for hauntings. (And the locations that are there don't exactly have a variety of activities in them to keep them feeling unique) By my estimation this game's popularity will probably die off a while before Halloween, but even then it'll have made it's mark in the year which I'd imagine is more than these Devs expected to do when they started on this project.

Phasmophobia is another example in a line of games that prove how a concept can trump a heavily funded title with no vision behind it any day of the week. You might even call it an example of a gaming industry underdog story if you are the more 'whimsical' type of observer, but I just think of it as a triumph in genre. As I've stated before, the ultimate goal of horror is to make the audience feel like they are themselves in the scenario, and that is quite literally what every feature in this game works works to achieve. In fact, at the end of the day I wonder if there will be any horror game that has the gall to try and live up it, I mean Resident Evil isn't due for this year, Outlast is still on hiatus, I wouldn't be surprised if this game dominates the public discourse for- huh? Amnesia is coming back on the 20th? As in that Amnesia? Well I guess this is gonna a month of spooks afterall, huh.