According to Rich Stanton, "Phasmophobia" is the best ghost game of all time and has tempted many aspiring ghost hunters to become Steam's top seller as the spooky season arrives. However, it is still in Early Access, so Kinetic Games still has time to pack in some horror.

A recent post to the Phasmophobia subreddit explains the latest changes to the game and reveals a Trello board that keeps track of ongoing updates for interested players. various lists of WIPs, to-dos, nice-to-haves A quick perusal reveals that there is a lot going on in this game.

At the same time, the most promising and most alarming trend that emerges from this glimpse into the future of the game is that ghosts seem to be getting smarter. Like an English teacher checking your grammar, the ghosts will begin to refuse to speak to you through the spirit box unless you ask them a direct question. You can see how this affects you by launching the beta branch, but you will need to turn on speech recognition first.

While the ghosts may sound attractively noisy rather than scary, don't worry. Currently, ghosts usually stick close to the room they have chosen as their base of operations. Combined with a powerful thermometer tool that can easily identify a ghost's favorite hangout, this knowledge is quite powerful to tilt the investigation team in its favor. However, among the ongoing updates in Trello is the ability to increase the likelihood that a ghost will wander into another room and prioritize returning to the location where the player was last found. And there are even plans to nerf that handy thermometer (fortunately, it is currently in the idea stage). These are frightening times indeed.

As is usual with Early Access, the direction of the game is subject to change, and there is no telling at this time what Phasmophobia will look like in the finished version. However, these planned updates are likely to take even the most experienced players out of their comfort zone and force them to think on their feet in order to outwit the ghosts, so more spookiness is surely in store. For Phasmophobia, the night is still young.

If you want to test your ghost hunting skills against Phasmophobia's spirits, shades, wraiths, and more, you can pick up the Early Access version on Steam for £11/$14