PHASMOPHOBIA

Rich Stanton: The first thing my team of crack spook-hunters look at in a Phasmophobia mission is whether the ghost responds to everyone, or only people who are alone. When it’s the latter, the mood darkens.

Communication is at the heart of this experience, and even the most hardened don’t enjoy being alone with a ghost. The array of equipment forces the team to work in tandem, necessitating constant chatting, while the ghost ‘listens’ to what’s being said. Rule one: Never admit you’re scared.

The most common sentences in the game begin with “I think I saw…” as one player half-catches something and the team rushes over. When the lights are on and you’re setting up, it’s all bonhomie and wisecracks about the wallpaper. Then stuff starts to happen, the chat gets quieter and, with no real means of protection from the ghost, you’ll see players start to huddle together.

The brilliance of this co-op experience is that it thrives on communication, then builds aspects of the experience on what players are saying, whether deliberately or thoughtlessly. And there’s no thrill quite like being in a room with your pals, asking “where are you?” and, a few seconds later, the silence is broken by the word “here”.

James Davenport: Finally, a game for all mid ’00s teens glued to paranormal message boards, staying up late on school nights to record the newest episode of Ghost Hunters. It’s apt that Amnesia: The Dark Descent released a decade ago, catapulted into the social consciousness by its popularity among early YouTube personalities. Phasmophobia is experiencing a similar explosion on Twitch, but this time the experience is shared among friends.

Because Phasmophobia uses tools straight off the hardware store, ghosts feel like real existential threats rather than thematic provocations to wrap a moral around. Throw in some friends, and Phasmophobia easily replicates that same fear, grounding the supernatural in something a little more real and far less predictable than any scripted horror.