This game could have been much more, sad that it is in the state it is now

[⩥ xenons25 ⩤]

Went from being a very enthusiastic player to not being able to care to even watch someone else play this game. The devs have squandered the potential of this game. It could have been soooo much more, so much better, but alas, it is at such a pitiful state I cant even be bothered anymore.

They have had basically no noticeable change in the game mechanics for more than 1.5 years now. From Ascension, we have had one new map which is such a badly designed map in terms of gameplay, and another reworked map, which is fine I guess. We are able to delete 2 photos now as well. I cant think of any other period of this game's life where it was as stale and non-innovative as it is right now. We have had THREE MAJOR PATCHES after Ascension, and yet, the game has mechanically not been improved or made deeper/nuanced in any way.

The community events have been a very widely known let down, no matter what the discord staff want you to believe. They are adamant about having such unimaginative event progression and rewards. And their roadmap for this year doesnt generate any sort of excitement for veteran players and pales in comparison to what we had in 2021/2022. Major updates meant a massive change to gameplay usually, think Nightmare, think Cursed Items, think Apocalypse (and custom settings).

The current MAJOR PATCH 12.0.1 has barely 10 lines of patch notes and changes to it. The previous MAJOR PATCH 11.0.1 has nothing to show for it, except a 2% blood moon weather and a trophy. I am just completely lacking any faith that these devs could bring this game to a satisfactory release. While the game is still fun for people who are new, they really dropped the ball on considering the opinions of experienced and veteran players who could have helped them make the game a 100x better than whatever state it is in now.

I have no hopes that this game will be better and more exciting to play anytime in the foreseeable future, and hope I am proved wrong

[ Dovahbear ]

At this point, Horror 2.0 will never happen. We'll keep getting a few little features added from it each year, but the actual update won't come.

[Shina1988]

Keep having faith, this game is will be finished soon enough,
Horror2.0 is next on the agenda they are doing their best with a small dev team. so give em some time it's not like they never update. So the game is far from dead

[MekaDovah]

Originally posted by ⩥ xenons25 ⩤:

Major updates meant a massive change to gameplay usually, think Nightmare, think Cursed Items, think Apocalypse (and custom settings).

That's where they should have kept their focus: gameplay. Cursed items change up the gameplay and present risk vs reward. Nightmare adds a greater challenge. Custom settings allows for more unusual challenges. That should have been a godsend, but instead it got bogged down by the pointless level system.

I think it was a huge mistake to try and improve that system instead of scrapping it entirely. It served no purpose and forcing everyone to start with garbage just to discard afterwards anyway and still have nothing meaningfully new to do afterwards shows it's literally just empty, pointless padding. Almost like they're just trying to keep players occupied with busywork instead of focusing on meaningful content.

Yes, a lot of players made a big deal over player level, but from what I could see, their notions were entirely steeped in made up excuses for elitism. In other words: nothing.

Phasmo is a puzzle game. Puzzles are solved and therefore get easier to solve again even when elements are randomized. That's how they work. This isn't some live service RPG where perpetual grinding is the point because later "levels" don't offer anything new here. Currently, "progression" has taken up too much focus and all they have to show for it is something that exists for the sake of existing while contributing nothing to the game itself.

[kbm demon.♡]

Literally the game can be saved with workshop, but devs are against modding so aight.

[Ume Ito]

As someone who also keeps this game on the backburner simply because it's gotten boring from a lack of actual major content, I think you're simply overreacting. If you want to really see a failed ghost hunting game, go look at Obsideo and its history.

Phasmo isn't dead in the water just yet, they're still actively working on it and anyone with any sense of actual game development progress knows this takes time. A lot more time than you think. Just be patient and do something else, keeping an early access project in the forefront of your mind is mental because they're not meant to drop major content updates every six months and release after two years. Back before EA was a thing, games had to spend several years in development before they could even be teased.

tl;dr - The game isn't dead, it's just taking the time a game needs to be made right. Chill.

[Emurinus]

The next major update is bringing an overhaul to the photo system and expanding it to include sound and video recording. I don't know if this is just aimed to diversify current media rewards, but hopefully this comes with some minor (or major) ghost reworks too. It may not be majorly game changing like older updates were, but that tends to happen in the later stages of game development once the gameloop is stabilized.