Nine months after its release, the Phasmophobia development team is finally expanding larger than one person. The indie horror game, developed by founder and sole Kinetic Games member Dknighter, entered early access on Steam in September 2020. Phasmophobia’s unique take on the horror game genre and co-op multiplayer gameplay became one of the year’s surprise hits. It even won the Best Debut Game award at the annual The Game Awards show.
Since then, the game has received quite a number of updates, including the addition of new maps, ghosts, adjustments to some of its mechanics, and much needed bug fixes. One interesting update the game received a few months ago is the addition of support for bHaptics tact suits and face covers. While it seems like a niche feature, as it requires players to actually own one of these tact suits or face covers from bHaptics, it’s a very apt addition to the game and increases the immersion immensely.
In a new blog post on the game’s Steam page, Dknighter announced that due to the growing popularity of the game, as well as his plans for future content, he's decided to expand the Kinetic Games team beyond a one-man show. According to the post, Dknighter is in the process of hiring both an artist and programmer to work on Phasmophobia. The new team members will focus on both future content as well as the improvement and expansion of previously released content.
Dknighter also shared the patch notes of the game’s latest content update, which includes the addition of two new ghost types and a new map. The two new ghosts that players may encounter in the game are the Yokai and Hantu. The former is based on Japanese folklore while the latter comes from Malay and Indonesian mythology. As for the new Willow Street House map, it’s a new small house map that features no closets or lockers to hide inside, forcing players to hide behind furniture instead to avoid the ghost.
While the addition of two new members of the Kinetic Games team seems like a relatively minor development, it's a considerable improvement, given that Dknighter has been working on the game by himself from the beginning. Adding any number of people to help develop the early access is definitely going to make things easier in many respects. Hiring specialists to focus on art and programming will likely not only help these aspects of the game go more smoothly, but they will help Dknighter focus on integrating new content and bringing Phasmophobia to new levels of terror.
Source: Phasmophobia/Steam
