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Midnight Ghost Hunt is a beautifully silly Prop Hunt revivalParanormal pranktivity
Paranormal pranktivity
Midnight Ghost Hunt teaser trailerWatch on YouTube
Midnight Ghost Hunt teaser trailer
In case it isn’t clear, all of this is an absolute riot. The two best things you can do in video games are 1) trick people and 2) run away from them, and the first phase of Midnight Ghost Hunt, which is getting a closed beta at the end of the month, is largely about resorting to the latter once you’ve failed the former. Being either side of the chase feels electric. The ghost gets those familiar tingles of excited desperation, where escape feels possible yet appropriately unlikely, while the hunters get to relish the satisfaction of their hard work paying off.
Those toys bake a healthy degree of variety into the ghost hunting basics, while that ectoplasm mechanic exemplifies the care with which developers Vaulted Sky Games have balanced power between the living and the dead. It means props have to surreptitiously hop about a bit when they think nobody’s looking, which is exactly as tense and as silly as it sounds, and it’s a great example of the kind of clever design decision that might, just might, carry Midnight Ghost Hunt beyond the frivolous initial pull of its premise and into a deeper world of strategy and deception.
Both hunters and hunted can dip into a much bigger bag of tricks than I’ve mentioned so far, though loadout restrictions force them to be selective. A hunter might eschew tracking gadgets in favour of an electrifying trap, for instance, while slapping on a perk that prevents them from being detected through walls. The ghosts, meanwhile, each get to choose an ability that messes with their hunters, and I’m gutted that I spent too long getting to grips with the basics to properly try them out. Ghosts can send out fake apparitions, turn props into explosive traps, or even disguise themselves as fake hunters, like spectral versions of the Spy from TF2.
There’s a question mark hovering (spookily, like) over the number of evenings I’ll actually want to spend ghost hunting - especially seen as there’s a real possibility there won’t be any ghosts to hunt. So many promising multiplayer indie games have found their player bases floundering mere months after launch, though Malone hopes that post-release maps, weapons and game modes will keep people coming back. “We’re also looking at user-generated content”, Malone told me, with player-created maps being the holy grail. “We can’t confirm those will be there, but it’s something we’re looking at, because that would be amazing - and it would fit the prop hunt lineage quite well”.
It’s hard to speak to a game’s staying power when you’ve only played it for less than an hour, and at this point I don’t know whether Midnight Ghost Hunt will grow stale after three or thirty. Even if those high-level mind games fail to manifest, though, there will still be some degree of delight. Simply existing as a pile of books stacked on a table while hunters bustle obliviously past you is a hoot, and it’s encouraging that the team are clearly keen to stretch that sublimely silly tension as far as it will go. At one point, Malone off-handedly pointed out that possessing any taxidermied animal in the museum lets you make an appropriate, mischief-creating noise.
“If a prop seems like it should make a certain sound, it will”, he said, which is frankly one of the most robust and admirable design philosophies I’ve ever come across. Even If I wind up midnight ghost hunting for a silly time and not a long time, I’m confident it will be a great one.
Midnight Ghost Hunt doesn’t have a final release date yet, but you can currentlysign up for the closed betaover on its website.
