Phasmophobia - Yurei phantom

Me and my team ready to hunt some ghosts.

Phasmophobia is a game I’d not heard a lot about. All I knew before playing it was that

• You were in a group of four

• There was a spirit you had to search for

• This spirit would hunt for you and was attracted to electronics

That was it. So when I and some friends booted up Phasmo for the first time I figured “Okay, spooky horror game!”

An example of some of the more ‘cursed’ body animations.

I wasn’t exactly wrong.

BUT, I wasn’t prepared both for how scary and how comedic this game can be. You see, those three points are the game’s core notes, but layered between them are a bunch of things that add to a fairly repetitive but quite enjoyable mess of a game.

• You’re in a group of four

  • Simple on the surface, between one and four players hunt for ghosts on locations ranging from small (think 10 rooms) to massive (think roughly 60), all while a dangerous spirit is roaming the halls

    • You have a local proximity chat that gets quieter the further away you and your friends are from one another, and you have a radio that allows you to communicate from further away (at the cost of tipping the ghost off to your location if it’s close enough)

• There’s a spirit you have to search for

  • Again, simple right? Each ghost (there are quite a few different ones) has a few different kinds of evidence but no two ghosts will have the same list of evidence

    • i.e you’ll only know it’s a Yurei if it has Ghost Orbs, Freezing Temps, and shows up on the D.O.T.S Projector whereas a Revenant needs Ghost Orbs, Freezing Temps, and Ghost Writing as captured evidence

    • Each ghost not only needs specific evidence but has a certain way they like to roam, hunt, and interact with you and your intern friends

• The spirit you’re looking for can hunt you and is attracted to electronics

  • As stated before each ghost varies in how it acts and this includes how a ghost hunts

    • Hunting is how a ghost makes more ghosts out of you and your friends and is one of the freakier gameplay loops you go through and usually involves you running from, looping, or otherwise getting murdered by the chosen spirit

    • The ghost can hear you if your mic is hot, meaning any noise you make on an unmuted mic will alert it if it’s close enough and using the radio will give it a direct line to your location, hiding spot or not

    • Related to that last point, several of the tools you can use to ghost hunt are electronic in nature (not you, Polaroid camera my beloved) so having those electronic devices turned on will also alert the ghost to your position

All of this makes for an enjoyable yet freaky loop of search for ghost room, look for evidence, fulfill extra tasks, get out (assuming the ghost hasn’t strangled those attempts yet.

It’s a great game to play; average matches of Phasmo last between 8 - 16 minutes for me and my friends (though I’ve had some last like 2 minutes and others last 20 or more), so jumping into and out of a game is always easy. Couple that with a decent variety of maps and a lot of funny moments and you have yourself a great party game of sorts.

That’s all from me for now!

Another example: a friend “hiding” from an actively hunting spirit.