After over 2 and a half years of development, PHANTOM is finally here! (in early access... at least)
If you're here to see content plans, or anything similar, check out the previous post.
I don't have much to talk about, so, I figured go over the history of the game, and why I made it.
May 2023
I was really into ghost hunting games, But I kind of felt like they were losing what made me interested in them in the first place. Feeling more like Haunted Houses than Investigations.
I had an idea for my own, but had zero game dev experience (Besides Dreams over on the PS4)
And... I just downloaded UE5 and tried it out, and Very Slowly made progress over the next few months.
The idea was a Mix of Murder investigation and Ghost Investigation,
Finding an actual cause of death, potential Weapon, Victim Name, etc.
While an interesting idea (and one I'd love to revisit) this was just too big for me to do on my own.
Eventually, this was scrapped. but the ideas of it were a Major influence on the Side Investigation part of the game.
October 2023
The game's original intended release date had passed (lol) and I was pretty burnt out/frustrated with the game. Over the next year and a half, I would go between PHANTOM, which at the time was named SPECTER, and a fan game.
It was also around this time I stopped playing ghost hunting games.
I'm not sure why... I just sort of lost interest in most of them.
March 2025
The first playable build for the game was publicly released, Very rough, but playable.
It contained the first 3 maps, and 5 items.
It was also shortly after the game was renamed from SPECTER to PHANTOM.
While looking online for playthroughs of the game, I saw a game on another platform named SPECTER.
And while I really loved the name & logo... It definitely had to change to avoid confusion.
So... I pretty much just looked at other names for ghosts and settled on PHANTOM.
actually made the current logo same-day, and got it updated on steam within the week.
June 2025 and onward
2025 was a really, really bad year for me. multiple roof leaks, constant infections, and a lot of stress.
Due to how often I was getting infections and sicknesses, I pretty much spent the whole year indoors.
If not, the vast majority of it.
But because of that, I had a lot of free time. I finished up the Fan Game,
And got to work reworking the majority of PHANTOM.
From a new player controller, to much better UI and... pretty much everything.
and In Early July, I started work on The Cave map.
In Mid October, an alpha build was released over on itch.io with all the new improvements.
Since then, I've released the UV Tripod item, School & Arcade maps, and the Hunt System.
As well as Many smaller improvements & changes.
Around November, I started getting back into the ghost hunting genre, And I was honestly really surprised at how many more games have come out, or are about to since I started development.
And now... we're here.
I wanted to share a couple videos showing the game in it's early stages.
In the discord, you can find quite a few old images in "Dev updates and teasers"
There's also old graphical assets you can find on steamdb, if you're interested.
Anyway... Thanks for reading. If you decide to get the game, I hope you like it!
I'm excited to see where it'll be in a few years from now.
I'll be starting Active development on the first major update Very Soon,
I look forward to sharing what I have in the works with y'all!
Until next time,
- Hollow.