Rich Stanton:The first
thing my team of crack
spook-hunters look at
in a Phasmophobia mission is
whether the ghost responds to
everyone, or only people who
are alone. When it’s the latter,
the mood darkens.
Communication is at the
heart of this experience, and
even the most hardened don’t
enjoy being alone with a ghost.
The array of equipment forces
the team to work in tandem,
necessitating constant chatting,
while the ghost ‘listens’ to
what’s being said. Rule one:
never admit you’re scared.
The most common
sentences in the game begin
with “I think I saw...” as one
player half-catches something
and the team rushes over.
When the lights are on and
you’re setting up, it’s all
bonhomie and wisecracks
about the wallpaper. Then stuff
starts to happen, the chat gets
quieter and, with no real means
of protection from the ghost,
you’ll see players start to
huddle together.
The brilliance of this co-op
experience is that it thrives on
communication, then builds
aspects of the experience on
what players are saying,
whether deliberately or
thoughtlessly. And there’s no
thrill quite like being in a room
with your mates, asking “where
are you?” and, a few seconds
later, the silence is broken by
the word “here”.
James Davenport: Finally, a
game for all mid ’00s teens
glued to paranormal message
boards, staying up late on
school nights to record the
newest episode of Ghost
Hunters. It’s apt that Amnesia:
The Dark Descent released a
decade ago, catapulted into the
social consciousness by its
popularity among early
YouTube personalities.
Phasmophobia is experiencing a
similar explosion on Twitch,
but this time the experience is
shared among friends.
Because Phasmophobia uses
tools straight off the hardware
store, ghosts feel like real
existential threats rather than
thematic provocations to wrap
a moral around. Throw in some
friends and Phasmophobia
easily replicates that same fear,
grounding the supernatural in
something a little more real and
far less predictable than any
scripted horror.PHASMOPHOBIA
PA R A DISE K I L L ER
Andy Kelly: Paradise
Killer came out of
nowhere and single-
handedly reinvented the
detective genre. The first
project from indie studio
Kaizen Gameworks, this is
a detective game that lets
you actually detect. You’re
presented with a crime, a
densely detailed island full of
clues and suspects, and you can
go to court and present your
case whenever you like. This
freeform structure is bold, but
it pays off. A single, well-hidden
clue can transform the version
of events you’ve built up in
your head, and it’s possible to
pin the crime on the wrong
person if you missed a clue.
The game won’t even tell you if
you got it wrong; you just have
to live with it, like a real
detective would.
As well as being a great
detective game, Paradise Killer
is also an audio/visual feast.
The vivid art style, outlandish
character designs, idiosyncratic
writing, and superb soundtrack
combine to create one of the
most visually and aurally
stimulating games I’ve played
in years. It’s also deeply, deeply
weird. This is a mythical
fantasy world of gods anddemons, but also blandly
contemporary, with
convenience stores and
apartment blocks sitting
alongside immense crystal
statues of goat-headed deities.
Like the soundtrack, it’s a
dazzling fusion of styles that
gives the game a completely
unique identity.
The first time I presented
my case to court, I was
convinced I’d hoovered up
every last morsel of evidence
on the island. But the outcome
was far from satisfying, as half a
dozen characters I loved ended
up being executed. I wasn’t
sure, but I felt like something
was wrong, so I loaded an
earlier save and looked for
more clues. Then I found
something that completely
turned my case on its head; the
smoking gun that every
detective dreams of. I returned
to court and watched things
play out in a shockingly
different – and less traumatic- way. Paradise Killer sets a
new bar for detective games,
and does it with a singular,
eccentric style. It’s also one
of a very small number of
videogames whose soundtrack
I’ve bought on vinyl. The music
is just that good.
THE GAME OF THE YEAR AWARDS 2020
BEST
ADVENTURE
BEST
CO-OP