Looking at the Horror Game Phasmophobia & the Early Access Model

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Peter Bytes

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Published on September 21, 2021 4:15:00 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IcXxkS_5D3k

Game:

Phasmophobia (2020)

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Vlog

Duration: 6:40

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I share some of my recent experiences with the psychological horror co-op ghost hunting game on PC. I also delve a bit into the Early Access model and discuss it.

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#Phasmo #Phasmopobia #EarlyAccess

I'm not a big fan of early access games in general but I've found one game in particular that the Early Access model surprisingly works really well for, Phasmophobia. This is a psychological horror game you can play with friends and due to the nature of the game it's really enjoyable to experience it as the game and it's AI evolve and change throughout Early Access. Early Access almost adds a new layer of fear with ghosts growing more intelligent over time, sometimes breaking your expectations or strategies for dealing with the ghosts.

So let's start with the question, what are Early Access games? These are games released for sale in a unfinished state for various reasons, developers might need to put their game into early access so that they can make use of critical player feedback, or a game could never be finished and see the light of day without the early funds coming in through Early Access.
I usually prefer to wait for a game to be completed before I purchase it, espically if it's a story focused game. There can also be a bit of stigma with something labelled "Early Access," sometimes you get these shady games companies that exploit the idea of Early Access and will never actually finish the game they're selling, this is one of the problems with Early Access and it can put people off. But despite all this, I've had a really positive Early Access experience with Phasmophobia, it's a really unique situation where the AI of ghosts are constantly changing and evolving and it heightens the horror because you don't always know what to expect.

So Phasmophobia is a PC game where up to 4 players will co-operate to hunt ghosts. You're all paranormal investigators who will need to make use of ghost hunting equipment to search for and record any evidence of the ghosts haunting a certain location. But take too long or accidentally aggravate the ghost and you'll be the ones getting hunted and murdered with no escape because the entire location will lockdown when a ghost is on the hunt.

It's quite an immersive experience, you'll very rarely catch any glimpses of these ghosts but at any point they could be watching you... Or even listening to you, they can react to things you say out loud, which you'll be doing a lot of as you communicate with your team to setup ghost hunting equipment or report disturbances throughout a location. One thing that helps with the immersion is the design choice of a very minimalistic interface and if you really want to get immersed then a VR headset is an option. It's pretty brilliant you can play with a mix of players using a VR headset and with players that are not.

So throughout the course of my time with playing Phasmophobia it's been really fun, and my team will develop strategies for tackling ghosts. The most obvious one was to run and hide in closets with the shutters shut whenever a ghost hunting begins and it worked well, the ghosts couldn't actually reach us. But playing the game after a little patch things changed, we'd adopt our usual strategy, get in a closet, close the shutters, and thanks to the updated AI the ghosts were now able to open the shutters and murder us, it was pretty terrifying and it broke my expectations the first time this happened. But hell it's still pretty psychologically terrifying even now when you're hiding and praying the ghosts won't find you, with them stomping around getting closer and closer.

There's a device called the Spirit Box which you can use to try and communicate with ghosts, only certain ghost types will respond. You can ask the ghost questions like "Where are you?" and it's pretty blood curdling when the ghosts respond with "behind you." They updated the ghosts voices in a recent patch too, so I got a bigger shock when it responded in a creepier voice. In that same patch they added either a new or ghost or adjusted an existing ghost so that it has massive moan sound effects throughout the house when it's hunting you, that was pretty scary.

Sometimes the psychological horror can be a bit too much, and you can opt to hide in the safety of our van. From here you can monitor all the motion trackers and video cameras we've setup to help track the ghosts or find clues, some of which can only be picked up through cameras. Me and my team don't help because we'll take every opportunity to troll each other...

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