Phasmophobia

The first thing you'll notice when you play this game is the classic unity engine jank and confusing controls. The second thing you'll notice is the defeaningly muffled ambience when you enter your first house. You are now at the mercy of whatever's lurking and you might not be able to get away in time.

I like scary games, but usually they feel like they're just following a script as if it's a haunted house ride at a theme park. When you step on this tile, this will happen and so on. Phasmophobia breaks this expectation by playing with your impatience. There's long stretches of silence followed by quick and effective reminders that there's always been something there. The most innocuous sounds become reminders that you're only completely safe when you're outside the house, but the way out always feels distant and unreliable. Even if the door to safety is only 5 seconds away, it'll still feel like you might not make it out in time.

The only problem is that the thrill does dwindle a bit with experience, and the objectives themselves are pretty repetitive. Your rollout will naturally refine itself into a checklist of things to do until you leave and maybe play another game where you do the exact same rollout. Professional difficulty helps amend this problem by making some equipment less reliable and encounters more aggressive, but that issue of learned familiarity is pretty much impossible to completely cure. The game gets updated pretty regularly though, and the thrill is never completely gone thanks to the total unpredictability of events, even if you know the events themselves.

This should go without saying, but always use in-game audio to communicate instead of an external call.

It's a lot of fun for the first few hours, but it gets stale quickly. Playing with friends extends the life a bit.