Phasmophobia was one of the breakout multiplayer surprises of 2020, and the ghost-hunting game continues to be a popular title on Steam. At the time of writing, its concurrent player count (via Steam Charts) is comfortably over 6,000, and its all-time high for simultaneous players is an impressive 26,308. Not bad at all for a title that's still in early access.
Now, fans of the game's spooky co-op scares can immerse themselves even deeper, because a new beta update from developers Kinetic Games has added support for bHaptic devices. And if that name doesn't mean anything to you, allow me to explain: they make full-body gaming suits.
You can see where this is going. Launched at CES 2021, bHaptics' first-ever fully haptic gaming suit, the wireless TactSuit X Series, has 40 haptic points for use with gaming, movies, music, social media - anything that can deliver context-sensitive vibration to various parts of your body. It promises to make you feel each shot, each shock, each touch. You can watch a video all about it, here.
How that suit works with Phasmophobia is deadly simple - the ghosts of the game can now touch you. Nope, don't like that at all. And as PCGamesN reports, that's far from the only new feature coming to the game.
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The ghosts of Phasmophobia can now blow out player-held candles - again, big nope - and each player on the game's map will be displayed in a unique colour, which will help teamwork, y'know, work better. Not that it'll make things less panic-stricken, but, every little helps, right?
There are tweaks to VR graphics coming, and crucifixes are going to change appearances, rather than just vanish once used. All told, it's more evidence that this game continues to move in the right direction, and its player base will surely only grow as a result.
If the idea of those TactSuits appeals, the bHaptics range goes from about 300 dollars up to 500. But if you're already loving VR, and have something of an exceptional home set-up, I'm not sure that's a prohibitive price. Not for the treat of shivering with the sensation of a sliming, anyway - which, as Ghostbusters showed us so many years ago, is quite the remarkable thing. Actual, physical contact? Bring it on... I mean, not me, but you go right ahead.
Featured Image Credit: Kinetic Games, Columbia Pictures
