Since I fell into Phasmophobia when it debuted on consoles last Halloween, I’ve likened the game to PUBG–which might seem strange, but if you’ve played them both, I bet you can see it, too. Though Phasmophobia is a cooperative, first-person paranormal investigation game about hunting ghosts and PUBG is a military sim battle royale, they’re both extremely immersive experiences that express their strengths so well that some of the obvious jank they come with winds up feeling more charming than frustrating. There’s a whole culture of online videos dedicated to Phasmophobia’s lovable rough edges.
That’s a rare balance to strike, but it’s also not one that needs to stick around forever. Phasmophobia’s Chronicle update, which launches today on PC and consoles, is the ghost-hunting game’s next step toward deepening and improving its gameplay systems, and the results make it both more immersive and scarier for anyone trying to 100% their investigations.
Previously, players who wanted to go beyond simply identifying the ghost in their investigations to earn a perfect round would need to capture 10 three-star photos that provide evidence of the haunting. These could be pictures of the ghost itself, an item that was just recently moved by the spirit, or footprints in salt, among other things. But this system leaned on the photo camera exclusively, leaving the other evidence-gathering tools to languish–until now.