Good news, Phasmophobia fans – the horror game’s just got a pretty hefty news update ushering in a bunch of bug fixes, ghost changes, new features, and more. Kinetic Games says the patch brings “lot of important difficulty changes with the ghost hunting phase that helps move the gameplay towards what it needs to be”, and is the culmination of several months’ testing. But, the studio’s also given us an idea of what’s coming in the future, too, and it includes a lot of nifty new content.
In the latest patch notes on Steam, indie dev Kinetic breaks down the raft of changes into four categories: new, ghost changes, changes, and fixes. The new content is quite limited, adding some new volume controls to the game as well as some hiding places to the Grafton Farmhouse and Bleasdale Farmhouse maps.
However, the ghost changes – which have previously been tested on the game’s beta build – are pretty significant, folding in changes such as stopping ghosts moving during hunts’ kick-off phases, and just generally making them faster and savvier. Though, you can now outwit them by using furniture to break their line of sight, which is handy.
As for more general changes, there are some performance-boosting tweaks for the Prison, School, and Bleasdale maps, while Tanglewood has seen a few adjustments to stamp out a few pesky exploits. Plus, Phasmophobia’s crucifixes will now “cause a five-second delay in between each hunt attempt after it gets used by the ghost”. Here are the patch notes in full (via Kinetic Games on Steam) if you’re keen to see the full rundown:
New
- Added player volume controls to the main menu server screen which will carry over between games.
- Added several new hiding places to Grafton and Bleasdale.
Ghost Changes
- The ghost will no longer move at the start of the hunt in the starting phase which is now 5 seconds instead of 8. This is to prevent confusion as to when the hunt has actually started.
- All ghosts except Revenants will now move increasingly faster over time if they see you during a hunt. The speed will only drop if they can’t see you after they have checked your last known location.
- The ghost now has a chance to slightly open both closet doors at the same time during a hunt.
- The ghost now has a 50% chance to remember where it last saw you during the last hunt and will search that area in the next hunt.
- If you keep talking inside a locker or closet and the ghost knows you are in there it will now fully open both of the closet or locker doors on it’s second attempt even if you are grabbing them.
- Furniture will now block the line of sight between you and the ghost. This means that there are now a lot more places you can hide in all maps rather than just closets and lockers.
Changes
- Asylum: Increased the size of player icons on the truck map.
- Prison and School: Optimisations to significantly improve load times and fps.
- You can no longer click any multiplayer related UI buttons (join, create etc.) on the main menu when you are still connecting to the server or a new region.
- Crucifixes will now cause a 5 second delay in between each hunt attempt after it gets used by the ghost.
- Removed the Garage and Basement keys as they currently have no purpose.
- Bleasdale: Some minor lighting changes to help with performance.
- The Non-VR area light will now light up the equipment in your hand which will allow you to see what you are holding in the dark.
- bHaptics: Removed the footstep haptic effect. More haptics will be added in the future.
- Tanglewood: The Garage room has been slightly changed to prevent some exploits.
Fixes
- Fixed a bug where an Oni wouldn’t throw objects faster than other ghosts including Poltergeists.
- Fixed an issue where the amount of hunts stat would reset if the host disconnected.
- Fixed an issue where you could hear the ghost footsteps from far away.
- Fixed a bug where some rooms wouldn’t start cold on Professional.
- Fixed an issue where you could complete the EMF objective during a hunt.
- Fixed a bug where the farm house outside foliage/ vegetation were being fully lit when any part of them were lit.
- Improved how the equipment, keys and bone get spawned in to help prevent disconnects and crashes at the start of the game.
- Fixed a bug where the equipment wouldn’t spawn in if the host disconnected when loading.
- LIV VR: Fixed a bug where the LIV spectator view could not see other players.
- Fixed a bug where the game wouldn’t end if all players glitched out of the truck when it was closing.
- Fixed a bug where the ghost would keep chasing you after you used a smudge stick during a hunt if you broke line of sight.
- Fixed a bug where the CCTV monitor would freeze if you placed a head mounted camera back on the holder while it was shown on the monitor.
- Fixed a bug where the selected contract would get desynced if the host left and re-joined the lobby.
- Fixed an issue where VR players doors would desync when the ghost or other players would grab the door they were grabbing.
- Fixed a bug where you would sometimes not die when wearing a head mounted camera.
- Fixed a bug where the ghost could see you through some closed lockers and closets.
- Fixed a bug where Banshees wouldn’t set a new target player after they killed their target.
- Fixed several safe spots across all maps.
- Fixed a bug where the ghost would think non hosts were in a different room if they stood against a wall while holding something.
- Fixed a bug where door positions would sometimes desync in multiplayer if they got opened or closed too quickly.
- Fixed a bug where VR players couldn’t grab and take control of doors held by other players.
As for new content coming to the game, Kinetic also says that, “while there are still a lot more needed features that will be added, future updates will include new maps, ghost types, and new equipment” in the notes, linking to a Trello board that fills us in on what the studio’s got cooking up.
Across the ‘backlog’, ‘to-do’, and ‘in-progress [beta]’ lists on the board, we can see some exciting hints at upcoming additions to Phasmophobia – for example, there are plans for “mansion”, “small house”, and “apartment building” maps, as well as new equipment such as night vision goggles and a toy bear that can make noises when ghosts interact with it. There’s no word on when these will come to the game just yet, but you can keep up with progress via the Trello board and the Phasmophobia Twitter channel, where beta build notes get posted.