Phasmophobia remains a runaway success for independent developer Kinetic Games, which began as the solo venture of Daniel Knight and has now become a small team of developers.
The game sees a group of paranormal investigators enter a haunted house to identify what type of spirit is possessing the residence. Add in proximity chat and voice recognition, and you get a thrilling experience that's perfect for playing with friends.
However, Phasmophobia didn't always have such a clear identity. In fact, Knight revealed in an interview with Eurogamer that he almost stopped development on the game entirely because he didn't know which direction to take his prototype in.
Originally, players had to investigate whether there was a ghost in the house or not. As you might've guessed, the game wasn't very fun when you found nothing. Then, the game was centred around figuring out who the ghost was in life through interacting with items, but the problem became that the ghosts were ignored in favour of finding information. Knight couldn't crack the code on how to make his game compelling.
"I just stopped. I couldn't really decide where to take it," Knight said. "I almost completely abandoned the game."
Then, inspiration...
