It's hard to believe it's been five years since Phasmophobia kicked off a whole subgenre of multiplayer horror games, but the team at Kinetic Games isn't lacking when it comes to ideas for new haunts. Nell's Diner—an intricately detailed small map with all the charm of a haunted Waffle House—launched this week and I'm already thinking I'll be a regular.
The diner is a noticeable upgrade from Phasmophobia's early days where you scoured barren spaces for otherworldly clues amongst a room full of stock assets. I recognized very little outside of the intentional tie-in to other maps, but welcomed the unfamiliarity. It's just scarier when you don't recall the same few books or plates hurled at you by an angry spirit.
There's little attention-to-detail items strewn about the restaurant too, like a leaflet reference to Maple Lodge Campsite, spooky arcade machines to interact with, a functional jukebox, and cans of sprayable cream ghosts seem to love. I should know, as just about every haunted tour I went on with the game's developers went straight for fiddling with the cream. You can even hear the haunted hiss over the Parabolic Mic.
The oddly-detailed unfamiliarity is one of the many things I've loved about Phasmophobia's upgrades over the years as Kinetic slowly brings the rest of the game maps up to par with the likes of something as flashy and detailed as Nell's Diner. The fan-favorite haunted house, Tanglewood, has been on the docket for similar-styled renovations for a while, but the makeover is one Phasmophobia's lead social and community manager Tom Dent explained they're carefully constructing.
"Our next map for rework will be Tanglewood, which we know is a strong one for the community," Dent said. "But we're gonna make sure we do it justice. I think one of the things that shows with our reworks of Bleasdale and Grafton, I think folks are like, 'oh, OK.' Obviously, for lack of a better word, we're messing with things they've known and loved for five years, but we're making sure that they still stay true to the original idea."
It's a touchy subject for some of the game's biggest ghost-hunting diehards, and the changes to both the Bleasdale and Grafton farmhouse maps were pretty drastic. But just like with other reworks, Dent says players have "come around to the idea of Tanglewood getting a bit of a spruce up."
I've largely been the exact type of investigator Dent describes, but give me a few rounds and I'll forget I was ever opposed to it. Nell's Diner feels like a step in the right direction, and bringing older maps in line with its more detailed environments seems like the biggest change Phasmophobia can make to its beloved formula. That's not to say that's it, though, as Phasmophobia's marketing lead Asim Tanvir reassured me the character update is still on the way.
"We just want to make sure it's right when it gets out there," Tanvir said. "A lot of players will be upset about the bendy backs probably not being in there, but there's a good reason why they won't be in there."
Count me among those who will miss my character snapping her back to look up, but I'll trade just about anything for a little in-game customization. Asset makeovers were kind to the rest of Phasmophobia, so I have no reason to doubt them now.
