Phasmophobia (video game)

As of September 2022, there are twelve sites of various sizes: small, medium, and large. The small maps include four suburban-style houses, two farmhouses, a small campsite, and a restricted variant of the larger asylum map. The medium maps are a campsite, a prison, and the large maps are a high school and a mental institution. Potential future maps located at an apartment building, mansion, lighthouse, and hospital have been hinted at.

Phasmophobia features twenty-four different ghosts, each of which behaves differently and provides unique clues. Upon arriving at the site, one of these ghost types will be randomly assigned for the mission. As players attempt to complete the contract, sanity will drain with certain events and circumstances affecting the rate at which it does so. When sanity is low enough, a ghost will begin to hunt and attempt to kill the players (assuming the "Friendly Ghost" custom difficulty setting, which disables hunts, is not enabled). During the hunting phase, all exit doors are locked so players must outrun and/or hide from the ghost until the end of the hunt. Depending on the ghost type's strengths and weaknesses, it may be able to hunt when sanity is higher or lower. A standard hunt can be prevented with a Crucifix, but a Cursed hunt, triggered by a Cursed Possession, can only be prevented with a Tier III Crucifix.

Players will start in the Van where they will find the equipment they have selected and another corkboard, the Objective Board, listing the objectives they need to complete as well as the name of the ghost and showing all ten of their photos. It also houses the Surveillance Computer, Sanity Monitor, map of the current site, Sound Sensor Screen, and Site Activity Monitor. This set of equipment is permanently located inside the Van and is used to track the status of the players and ghost’s activity, although on Nightmare and Insanity difficulties as well as with two specific Custom Difficulty settings, the Sanity Monitor and Site Activity monitor may be disabled and appear as smashed screens. Players who survive and have completed their objectives (or wish to give up) must return to the Van to leave. Players will also have a journal on hand permanently where information about the ghosts, evidence, and photos can be found. Evidence and ghost identification must be marked in the Journal to receive money and XP that can be used to purchase and upgrade more equipment.

Starter equipment includes an aged AM/FM radio, a notebook, a D.O.T.S. pen, an aged electromagnetic field reader, an aged video camera, a glowstick, and an aged flashlight, with more of these available to buy in the store, assuming the player has enough funds to do so. Additional equipment types or upgrades can be unlocked depending on player level and subsequently purchased. Certain types of equipment like Firelights, Igniters, Incense, and Crucifixes may be needed to complete the optional objectives and protect players. Zero to seven Cursed Possessions (depending on the Custom Settings and difficulty) will spawn per map and allow the player to interact with the ghost directly, though at the risk of provoking it into a hunt or dying: The haunted mirror, Summoning Circle, voodoo doll, music box, Ouija board, Monkey Paw, or deck of tarot cards.

Players must utilize the various pieces of equipment to identify the three pieces of evidence unique to the type of ghost they are dealing with, and often to complete optional objectives as well.[6][7] As of September 2023, there are seven possible pieces of ghost evidence: EMF level 5, fingerprints, freezing temperatures, ghost orbs, ghostwriting, seeing movement on the D.O.T.S. projector, and hearing the ghost speak through the spirit box.

Additional photo evidence can be taken with a Photo Camera to earn extra money and will give points according to the category, distance, and position in the frame from which the photo was taken (which is denoted by a star rating). A photo of the ghost will net the most money, but other items that count towards photo evidence include bones, dead bodies (of teammates), fingerprints, footprints, disturbed salt, interactions, a sink full of dirty water, used crucifixes, writing in the Ghost Writing Book, and Cursed Possessions.

As of December 2022, Phasmophobia has 24 different ghost types. Most of these ghost types are based on creatures and entities from various cultures and religions, such as the Banshee from Irish folklore, the Yokai, and Yurei from Japanese folklore, and the Jinn from Islamic folklore. Each ghost type has different abilities it can use, as well as times it can hunt.

Sanity is a parameter that determines a number of factors during gameplay. Sanity begins at 100% at the start of a game and decreases as it progresses. The lower the average sanity, the more likely a ghost is to perform certain actions, including ghost events, interactions, and hunts. Sanity drain can be reduced by holding a lit Firelight by different amounts depending on the Tier. Sanity can be restored by using Sanity Medication or using Cursed Possessions.

The hunt is a gameplay feature designed to add complexity to the investigation of a specific location by players. When a hunt occurs, the ghost manifests and starts wandering throughout the area to eliminate one or more players. Throughout the duration of the hunt, the lights in the ghost's current room will intermittently flicker, all exit doors will be locked, and the ghost will disrupt active electronic devices nearby. Some ghosts exhibit abilities during hunts that could make them stronger or weaker, depending on the ghost, and these abilities can be used to assist in determining the ghost type if the investigators know what they're looking for.

In September 2022 an update was released which added the custom difficulty to the game, with a rebalance in February 2023. This custom difficulty makes the player able to change certain settings to the mission. Changing the settings will result in a money and XP multiplier that could be more or less rewarding, depending on the difficulty of the settings..[8]

The game's Steam page was launched in March 2020. An announcement trailer was released three months later, announcing additional VR support and a release date for the early access build. On September 18, the game was released in early access for $14.[9] After the release, the game received two major updates regarding bug fixes in the following week.[10] Dknighter, the founder and sole member of Kinetic Games at the time, said that he hoped to release the full game somewhere in 2021, but until that happened, he kept the game's price the same. During game development after the early access release, one of the main goals for the updates was to improve the ghosts' AI, making them smarter and less predictable, and consequently harder for players to deal with.[11] On June 13, 2023, Kinetic Games announced that console versions of the game would release in August. However, due to a fire that occurred at the Kinetic Games office, they were pushed back to October.[12]

Although first released around mid-September, the game began to pick up steam around the beginning of October for Halloween. This was the game's first time becoming trending and was being played by many notable Twitch streamers and YouTubers.[13][14] This was likely due to the game becoming early access around the beginning of the Halloween season, as well as being similar in popularity to its inspiration P.T.[15] It could also be due to the start of the second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic causing many people to stay at home.[16] With the influx of players due to the large number of popular streamers playing the game, hackers became widespread during the later weeks of the game's release, mostly by trying to jumpscare players or spawn an infinite amount of items.[17] One of the more concerning examples of hacking were stream snipers, who changed their player models to a more NSFW one, likely causing said streamers to receive warnings and bans for inappropriate content.[18][19] The developers then began working on updates to solve the problem.[20]

On Twitch, the game grew exponentially and even reached the top 5 most viewed games in mid-October, overtaking games such as Among Us, Fortnite Battle Royale, FIFA 21, and Genshin Impact.[21][22] According to online player tracker GitHyp, the game hit a peak of over 86,000 active players around October 10.[23][24] The game became a Steam top-seller, and by the end of October 2020, was the best selling game of that week, even beating out Fall Guys and pre-orders for Cyberpunk 2077.[25][26] It was the highest selling game on Steam for three weeks in a row.[27]