Phasmophobia review: I have no pockets and I must scream

Phasmophobia is a different game depending on the context you’re playing it in. When you’re playing solo for the first time, it’s a genuinely terrifying horror experience, living up to the phrase “nail-biter” even doing small tasks like opening a door. Multiplayer is pure chaos; whether you’re playing with friends or randos there’s an immersion-breaking element that adds its own tension and challenges to this mix outside of the game’s rules. Add hours and experience to the mix on either side and Phasmophobia becomes more like an escape room, the spooky vibes receding like a shrinking tide and revealing a gold rush of min/maxing and score-chasing. This multifaceted energy is a result of an incredibly intricate foundation that shows there’s more to this game than just easy pickings for streamers.

But this time, the ghosts are real!

The premise here is fun; you and your friends are paranormal investigators, the types who have a show on YouTube or an obscure cable channel where they bumble around spooky locations trying to convince their audience ghosts are real. Usually that involved lots of wacky gadgets and night vision handheld camera footage zoomed up into people's nostrils while they try to ask postbellum confederate ghosts if they’re harboring any frustrations. Here the ghosts are real of course, and it’s up to you to use the tools at your disposal to narrow down which particular variety of paranormal miscreant is stomping around someone’s property. If you aren’t fast enough at coming to a conclusion you can end up very dead, very quickly. If you guess wrong you lose out on big money, but you might still get some spare change for surviving.

What makes Phasmophobia interesting is its intricate ruleset. There are tons of different ghosts, and only one is present during a given haunt. Each ghost has its own personality traits and behaviors, as well as identifying clue sets. If you can gather enough evidence before you become the target of a “hunt,” you can pinpoint the critter, get out, and make some cash. The biggest hurdle in your way is the limits of your own storage space. You can only hold three tools at once, and everything else has to stay behind in the truck. You probably want a flashlight for the sake of your own sanity (and eyesight), knocking that down to two. Those two slots aren’t enough, meaning you’ll lose time running back out to the truck, and from there it’s a game of inventory management, deductive ability, and sometimes pure luck.

And they're pretty scary!

There’s a lot of tension in the core loop, that being grabbing a tool or two and trying to spot a reaction from them while simultaneously trying to find the “Ghost Room,” where most of the action pops off. Even if your chosen tools don’t help, a sharp drop in temperature or random ghost event can still signify you’re in the right spot. From there it’s a race to find the right tools for the job, such as a notebook the ghost might write in, a UV light that can reveal prints, or an EMF reader that might spike a five on its scale. Each tool has a threshold that, if hit, counts as hard evidence for the right answer. Racing to find those, all while knowing the ghost only has so much patience for your meddling, is a natural well for scares.

My frustrations come from Phasmophobia sometimes deciding its own rules aren’t worth following. Perhaps we’re talking about bugs, or some other inconsistency that’s part of progression, or something else. It can be hard to tell. For example, the EMF reader needs to hit a five or higher to count as evidence. I was playing a stage that included making an EMF reading as a bonus objective, leading me to believe it was a guaranteed clue. But even after finding the Ghost Room, staring at the EMF reader did nothing for me besides some blips. This led me to second-guess the objective, pick a different ghost based on something else that wasn’t clear, and I got it wrong. Of course, the EMF was a clue, and I even got the bonus for observing an EMF reaction. But… I never actually experienced said reaction.

Not scary: fumbling with gadgets

Other times, trying to get some of the other tools, like the thermometer, to register the criteria you’re shown in the tutorial, is an excruciating exercise in staring at a thing and watching it almost but not quite reach its mark. When there’s only so much time and you’re backed into a corner with two clues and a third relying on tools refusing to cooperate, the fun spooky vibes seep into frustration. Then you watch other people online who've been playing for years just tossing things around like they’re playing Unreal Tournament and you can start to see where doing well can come at the cost of the immersive side of horror gaming. Multiplayer mitigates this aspect a bit, organically giving you more immediate access to tools by having players share duties. But like I mentioned earlier, there’s a lot of Vibe Math happening that alters the kind of experience you’re having based on factors like group play.

When it comes to the tools and their functionality, of course there’s a grind for better versions. Games like this tend to lean on grinding for progression, and this aspect had me thinking about The Outlast Trials which I played earlier this year. These games want you to play them a lot to get all the stuff, and you’re going to start severely under-equipped and hours upon hours away from solving that issue. So if you aren’t already bought in on the loop enough to enjoy the very basics, the promise of having a better time after dozens of hours is not enticing. I appreciate that there aren’t microtransactions involved at least, so if you are having a good time there won’t be season pass nonsense dangled in front of your face in order to enjoy things like special events or higher-tier tools.

This game isn’t entirely for me. I don’t have the patience to grind out tools, nor do I have a static group of homies to become virtual Syfy (or whatever it is now) Channel ghost-hunting superstars with. But Phasmophobia’s intricacy and malleability that offers both kinds of experiences is super impressive. I love that I can have an intense, singleplayer horror survival game, then invite some friends and have that same game morph into something else within its framework. And then, theoretically, have it turn into another different kind of game once the training wheels are off. It’s fascinating in its ambition and complexity, and even if every aspect of it isn’t perfectly fine-tuned, it’s still compelling to engage with. Since Phasmophobia's in early access despite coming to consoles, I can see that fine-tuning continue to take place over time, as the developers keep hammering their clever systems into shape. With a little more clarity and maintenance, I can see Phasmophobia being the horror game to return to year after year.

Phasmophobia is available on October 29, 2024 for the PlayStation 5 (and PSVR 2) and Xbox Series X|S in early access. The PC version is currently available as well. A PS5 code was provided by the publisher for this review.

Lucas White

Contributing Editor

Lucas plays a lot of videogames. Sometimes he enjoys one. His favorites include Dragon Quest, SaGa, and Mystery Dungeon. He's far too rattled with ADHD to care about world-building lore but will get lost for days in essays about themes and characters. Holds a journalism degree, which makes conversations about Oxford Commas awkward to say the least. Not a trophy hunter but platinumed Sifu out of sheer spite and got 100 percent in Rondo of Blood because it rules. You can find him on Twitter @HokutoNoLucas being curmudgeonly about Square Enix discourse and occasionally saying positive things about Konami.