Phasmophobia may no longer be seeing the surge of players it did after going viral on Twitch last year, but it remains popular. A Steam Early Access game pulling in almost 20,000 concurrent players each day is nothing to scoff at, but Phasmophobia can't trust its future success to continued popularity on Twitch and momentum. Updates will play a key role in Phasmophobia meeting its potential, and today developer Kinetic Games dropped one such update.
In its description, developer Kinetic Games described this as an update focused on bug fixes, balance changes, as well as "new and improved features." In terms of features, the additions and changes are small. Kinetic explains that it has added an option to swap sound from stereo to mono, for example. There's also a new button to select contract difficulty, rather than it being random. Another small but important feature is the ability to change the ports Phasmophobia uses, which should help a lot of players fix some multiplayer issues.
RELATED: Phasmophobia Update Changes How Banshees Act
The bulk of Phasmophobia's changes are improvements and adjustments to gameplay mechanics. A focus in this update is the ghost's AI, as well as temperature mechanic changes, and parabolic microphone changes. The ghost is now much more dangerous and malevolent, opening lockers, going around corners, and listening for players. To improve players' chances, temperature and parabolic microphone mechanics will be easier to use and more effective.
There are also dozens of bug fixes in this Phasmophobia update. To say Phasmophobia has a laundry list of issues would be an understatement, but with this patch hopefully the game will work better. Broken safe spots are now fixed, exploiting the game's physics has been fixed, and many other issues have been solved, which should make for a more polished experience.
Some Phasmophobia players may ask whether these updates were already in the game, as they have been discussed for months. This is just the release patch for Phasmophobia, and most of these fixes and changes have been available in beta versions of the game for some time. Odds are, many daily players have been using the beta version.
Even without major content additions, this update is a major step forward for Phasmophobia. Such an update was required before Kinetic could move forward with additional content. Gameplay and balance will only get more complex from here with further additions. For the time being, Phasmophobia players hoping for new content will have to be patient a little longer.
Phasmophobia is available now on PC.