Phasmophobia Was Never Meant to Be a Horror Game

When I first booted up Phasmophobia, I expected a few laughs, maybe some cheap jump scares. What I got was a total mess of chaos and screaming with my friends in a haunted high school, fumbling with gear while trying to guess if the ghost hated men or responded to its name. Classic Phasmo. What I didn’t expect to learn later was that the guy who made the game was? He didn’t even want to make a horror game in the first place.

At Summer Game Fest, lead dev Daniel Knight straight up admitted it. He never sat down and said, “Let’s make a game that’s going to scare people into refunding it on Steam.” No, the real plan? A co-op puzzle game. Something where people would huddle together and try to figure things out through teamwork and logic, not through shrieks and ghost hunts. But somehow, that design accidentally created one of the most iconic multiplayer horror titles of the last few years.

“I failed to make a co-op puzzle game,” Knight told PC Gamer. “Or a co-op puzzle horror game. I didn't really set out to make a ghost-hunting game. It just ended up being the kind of perfect fit.”

Looking back, it kind of makes sense. The heart of Phasmo is a puzzle. You're thrown into a space with incomplete information, a bunch of tools that you barely know how to use, and a timer ticking down to your inevitable ghost encounter. You debate with your team, argue about where the spirit box should go, yell at someone for staying in the van too long, and if you're lucky, you leave alive and with the right ghost identified.

Image: PC Gamer

That’s not typical horror. That’s co-op chaos disguised as ghost hunting. Knight said the original idea was to make something social—something where you actually had to stay close to your team and think together. And yeah, maybe the ghosts were just meant to spice things up a little.

In formal terms, Phasmophobia is a psychological co-op horror game developed by Kinetic Games, first launched in early access in 2020. Its impact on the genre was immediate and massive, contributing to the rise of the “social horror” subgenre, where the fear factor comes as much from your own teammates as it does from the enemies. Knight’s design shifted how horror games approach co-op: not just shared scares, but shared decision-making under pressure.

What makes this revelation fascinating is that Knight doesn’t even consider himself a horror fan.

“I don’t actually play horror games,” he said.

When pressed, he admitted to trying Content Warning, a more light-hearted co-op experience that plays with horror mechanics but doesn’t lean into them hard. That admission doesn’t discredit his work—it makes it clearer. Phasmophobia isn’t built around horror tropes because its creator wasn’t following those rules. He just wanted to build a tense, social game with layers of mechanics, and the horror came naturally.

That outsider perspective might explain why Phasmo still feels different years later. Most horror games try to overwhelm you with terror. Knight accidentally created a space where terror sneaks in through failed coordination and mistaken assumptions. It’s not about jump scares—it’s about second-guessing the EMF readings while a teammate locks themselves in a bathroom.

There’s something genius about a horror game that works because its creator wasn’t burdened by the genre. He didn’t worry about pacing jump scares or making a villain iconic. He focused on tension and teamwork, and those elements just happened to flourish in a haunted house setting.

And yeah, I’ve had those moments—the Brownstone High School map will haunt me forever. We were certain the ghost was on the ground floor, arguing over every reading and clue, and then boom — demon child shows up behind us. It wasn’t the ghost that scared me. It was the realization that we were completely wrong after 20 minutes of confident nonsense.

In the broader context of 2025, Knight’s comments also point to something important about game design: genre boundaries can be accidental. The best games sometimes don’t know what they are until players tell them. Phasmophobia is now one of the few indie titles to spawn not just clones, but a full-on genre shift. That includes upcoming movie adaptations and new modes, plus the ongoing 2025 updates and mod support that Kinetic Games is still rolling out.

So when Knight says he didn’t mean to make a horror game, I believe him. But I also think that’s exactly why Phasmophobia works so well. It’s not trying too hard. It’s just trying to be smart, and in doing that, it became terrifying.

And really, what’s scarier than being wrong in front of your friends, right before a ghost shuts the door behind you?