izigame.me

I want to start off by saying that I love the game itself. However, I DESPISE the developers. And for that reason, out of principle, I cannot recommend the game. If you don't want to read about why, feel free to ignore this review.
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1) Developer Corruption and Favoritism
All you need in order to see what the team of developers of this game are like at their core is to go to YouTube and enter the following into the search bar: "Th3BeardedBaron banned from Phasmophobia." In his video he shows screenshots of conversations between himself and the developers regarding where he confronts them about a weekly challenge exploit and how their lack of action and indifference to the unfairness of its use gave an unfair advantage to those who did know about it. Their responses proved an obvious favoritism towards big creators like Psycho and Insym (both of whom I love, but the truth doesn't play favorites), as well as the total lack of professionalism or any sense of effort from the devs to acknowledge that they were wrong to allow the exploit to continue being used by those creators and other users while at the same time threatening to ban anyone else, like Th3BeardedBaron, if they did it or talked about it openly to the community.
Psycho got a pass for months on end by the CREATOR of the game despite using this exploit, but EVERYONE ELSE is getting threats of getting banned. Let me repeat that. The creator of the f*cking game knew about the use of the exploit by big creators and other users and chose actively to do nothing to address it, and threatened to ban anyone else for using it or even talking about it to the community. And when confronted with the facts and their own indifference they deccided to ban Th3BeardedBaron not because he did anything wrong, but because he called them out and embarrassed them by exposing their hypocrisy and unprofessional approach to dealing with the issue which they even acknowledged was an issue.
Great guys, right?
2) No Mod Support
Everyone knows this by now, but the game has no mod support which is one of the things which helps keeps games like this alive. This game is bare bones right now. 24 ghosts is decent, but even that's starting to get old after only around 40 hours of play. The ghost behavior is the same. There's not many maps to choose from. There's no in-game alternative modes to play except the challenges which isn't really "alternative modes" since you can create them all in your own custom difficulties if you wanted to.
Why not let the modding community run free here? The game is PERFECT for it. New community-created maps, ghosts, equipment, texture swaps, ghost AI adjustments, custom characters, etc? Why has this not been supported for 4 years now? And why are the devs continuing to remain silent about it?
I would rather this game have a healthy modding community than be subjected to a trove of unhealthy toxic, hacker b*tches who infest the public lobbies trolling, griefing, and destroying the experience for other players. Why do they do it? Because right now hacking is the only way enjoy the game in a fresh new light. If we had a healthy modding community this problem wouldn't be nearly as bad as it is. I can guarantee you that.
3) The Charcoal Salamander scandal.
If you know, you know. If you don't know, look it up. I'm sure the Phasmo devs would love everyone to forget about this since it was "handled" in the end, but we never forget.
The issue here is that a Phasmo discord admin was caught making racist comments on numerous occasions, and offering to exchange and share nude photos with and of a community member (also on more than one occasion). Initially the Phasmo devs "investigated" for "about two weeks," great use of affirmative language there to give us assurance you actually did something guys, and ultimately came back and concluded that he "didn't do anything wrong," and they continued to defended him against further accusations. However, this effort was quickly dismantled and the devs were forced to finally act not by their own choice or conscience, but because the undeniable proof was finally put forth where everyone could see it and they had no control over the backlash.
Additionally, the game's lead artist, Corey CJ Dixon (whose name is public), responded to this whole mess in a less than professional manner. His response boiled down to "yeah, he got nudes of a girl and shared them with a friend and I think that's okay." In short, CJ's a sexist piece of sh*t who doesn't care about whether or not the nudes were acquired legally or with consent. The guy had them, so he can share them. F*ck the girl who's being humiliated and shamed.
Classy, CJ.
And the worst part is there was no accountability taken. CJ's "apology" was a nonpology where he claimed he acted and spoke like he did because he received "misinformation." No, CJ. You didn't. You knew full well what was happening. And you weren't man enough to admit that you knew and were acting like a piece of sh*t, and blamed the victim as scum like you so often do.
4) Lack of progress, polish, or replayability.
That last point about replayability is debatable depending on how you interpret what makes a game replayable. But nobody can deny that this game is lacking in significant progress of development, and lacks polish. There are STILL, after 4 years of development, numerous visual glitches, bugs, and exploits.
4 years of development and you can still walk up to a closed door at the start of an investigation and throw all your equipment through it and inside the starting room.
4 years of development and certain spots in each map still have broken lighting which looks like the blocks of floor foundation beneath your feet are just anti-light and create odd, unnatural hard shadows around their edges while the rest of the room around them looks the way it should.
4 years of development and we still have the same boring character designs and can't create our own.
4 years of development and the ghost AI is passable enough to give us an experience, but not advanced enough to give us a genuine challenge once we get used to how they move, their movement speeds, etc. Look at YouTube and all the "looping" videos of just walking around a table or the cards in the garage to keep yourself a live for proof of this one. I mean, it's nice that we have that method of staying alive but it takes a lot of the menace out of the ghosts once you get used to the hunt mechanic and how to loop them around an object and break line of sight to keep their speed down so you don't get killed.
4 years of development and there's still issues with global and local chat and being able to hear each other. Every other couple of matches one of my friends will randomly not be able to hear anyone on the walkie talkie. It's one-way communication where the rest of us can talk back and forth, but the last one basically has to get close enough for proximity chat which, if they get into a sticky situation, isn't exactly fun or good for us as a collective trying to investigate the ghost disturbance.
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I'll reiterate. I love the game itself. But with devs like these who dismiss important concepts like fairness, accountability and self-moderation, and being open to a healthy modding community to keep the game fresh and interesting when their development slows down or grows stale (which it absolutely has, by the way), I can't bring myself to recommend the game to anyone else in its current state.
I honestly hope the devs grow upand start acting like professional game makers instead of manchildren who try to protect themselves from scrutiny rather than face it like adults. And I hope the game gets a true modding community someday. It would go a long way to making this game better and more immersive and variable for those of us who are already getting too used to the mechanics and aren't scared of anything that happens in the game anymore.
Thanks for reading.