If you’ve played on the Phasmophobia beta branch, you may have already come face to face with one of the new ghosts, but now they’re both on the game’s main build too. The Yokai (which, in real life, are spirits from Japanese folklore) have a higher chance of attacking you when you talk near them. That’s complicated by the fact you’ll need to talk to it through a spirit box to figure out what it is in the first place. I hope you packed your running shoes. The Hantu (which is the Malay or Indonesian word for spirit) moves faster in cold areas. That doesn’t seem ideal, because I thought areas of paranormal activity were cold because of the ghostly presence. So, uh, I hope you packed a mini-heater? In the patch notes, Kinetic Games detail a few other new additions, such as two new daily challenges. The first is to capture a 3-star ghost photo, and the second is to snap a pic of dirty water. That second one used to be a mission objective but got removed because it was rubbish. Hopefully this time around it’s a little easier to complete, but if not, at least it’s only an optional daily challenge. On top of that, players will now be able to sell items they’ve bought but don’t want for 50% of its original price, there’s a new small map named Will Street House (which has no closets or lockers to hide from ghouls in, terrifying!), and the devs have added a profanity filter for player and server names to catch out the ne’er-do-wells. Then as well as the in-game newness, there’s some outside-of-game newness too. The solo developer of Kinetic Games, “DKnighter”, has hired an artist and a programmer to work with him on Phasmo. They’ll start working on future content “very soon”, plus they’ll be helping DKnighter make improvements to existing stuff too. If you’re interested in the other long-term things the devs are working on, do check out the Phasmophobia development Trello board. Kinetic still want to make a couple of bigger maps - an apartment building and a mansion - as well as add stuff like night vision goggles and smashable items.
