Phasmophobia Nightmare update adds four new ghosts, ‘intense’ difficulty mode, game reworks

The Phasmophobia developer, Kinetic Games, promised some news for today regarding its spooky, ghost-hunting game. Well, the team delivered, and fans should love what Kinetic has been working on. The Phasmophobia Nightmare update is live, bringing four new ghosts, a campsite map, a new “intense” Nightmare difficulty, and reworks around the board. There are also some changes and fixes that should improve your investigations, but probably not your survival.

Phasmophobia Nightmare introduces a new medium-sized map, the Maple Lodge Campsite. As expected, this map takes you to the dark, cold woods. It includes a log cabin, picnic area, and a “haunted lake.” Hopefully no one wearing a hockey mask comes out of it. But it does, obviously, give a nod to classic, teen-slasher horror movies of yore. Maple Lodge includes “more unique objects, higher object density and more visual detail.” The developer warns that players with older rigs might see some frame drops, but you should be fine if you meet the minimum specs. Kinetic promises that other maps will soon get more detail, unique objects, and other changes to get them on par with Maple Lodge.

The update includes a new Nightmare difficulty, which may put Phasmophobia experts to the test. And it does sound tough, judging by the details. Nightmare difficulty allows no set up time, and keeps one piece of evidence a mystery. Also, the ghost you’re hunting will change it preferred room, sanity pills are less effective, the fuse box starts as off, there are “almost no hiding places,” and your monitoring equipment has been damaged by “paranormal interference.” It sounds pretty hardcore. The other difficulty modes have also seen some tweaks.

New spooky friends, reworks, and more

A map and difficulty mode is just the start. The Phasmophobia Nightmare update brings four new ghosts: Onryo, The Twins, Obake, and Raiju. All ghosts can also interfere with electronic equipment, and blow out lighters like they could with candles. When near a ghost, your walkie-talkie will crackle. The base speed and acceleration of ghosts on the hunt has been “slightly increased,” which might remove the advantage you got following the sprint rework.

There have been reworks to some of the game’s mechanics. The Ouija Board, for example, now demands a sacrifice. You now give up a big chunk of sanity as payment for knowing where your target is hiding. But this only happens if the ghost responds to your call, otherwise you lose only a little sanity. Weather has also been changed. Each map will have a random weather effect, ranging from clear skies to fog, strong wind, light snow, or rain. Each different type of weather will affect your hunting ability, like rain and wind making it hard to hear, for example.

The Phasmophobia Nightmare update is hefty, bringing along a bunch of other changes and bug fixes. Check out the full patch notes on its Steam page.