NOCLIP Pocket E39 - Bent Over in the Van - Phasmophobia

The podcast’s name is NOCLIP. Saying it’s name will anger it. Welcome back to NOCLIP Pocket. We’re a ways off from Halloween, but today, we’re going to be talking about Phasmophobia, with our regular guests Dan, Janelle and Steven. Phasmophobia is a cooperative ghost hunting game where you and (hopefully) your friends use a variety of tools to determine what kind of spirit is occupying a space in the vein of popular ghost hunting TV shows. The game was released last year in early access and drew in a surprising number of players given its pretty janky state. The game is obviously a horror title, but the aforementioned jank also gives the game an (intentionally or not) outlandishly silly tone at times, meaning that emotionally, you’re usually swinging back and forth from laughing and goofing off to running out of a spot where some spooky audio or visual trick happened. All in all, even being kind of unfinished, the game offers a kind of depth and experimental play pattern that does keep it fun and entertaining, especially when you’re playing it with people you like. We’re going to be talking about how the strength of the audio design pulls more than its weight in making this horror game scary, role playing and teamwork in a slow paced horror title and the enviable but occasionally problematic nature of The Guy in the Van. Thank you for listening to NOCLIP Pocket this week! We decided to talk about this game mostly as an excuse for us to get together online and play games. Is it selfish? Nope, it’s content creation, baby! Did you play this game during its big boom? By how far did we miss the boat on this game? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Next time, we’re going to be talking about Donut County, a game where you play as a hole in the ground, which is a concept too intriguing for us to pass up.