Abandoned schools, old prisons, and creaky barn homes aren’t much of a challenge for me anymore. I have raided countless haunted houses and shrugged off hordes of demons whispering in my ear. That’s all in Phasmophobia—a game I have refused to put down for the last year—and I’m constantly looking for something, anything to recreate that same experience with a new kick. The formula for its success certainly doesn’t seem complicated, but executing it with all of the right ingredients gets tricky. My hunt to find that right combination has led me straight to Forewarned, another 4-player survival co-op horror game, and it’s got me feeling hopeful that all of my w🌳hining for Phasmophobia-li🤪kes to become an actual genre resonates with mꦛore preten🍒d paranormal experts than I thought.
Forewarned has exchanged my investigations into forgotten asylums with ancient tombs, dropping three friends and myself into old ruins as archaeologists. The core loop seems simple: go in, identify the type of Mejai, grab the treasure, and get out. It’s not enough to just report on what kind of creepy spirit is tormenting every location like in Phasmo; you’ve got to secure the t🏅reasure and bring it with you. Collecting these rewards earn you better items to hunt with, and when you’re feeling more confident about🌼 your ability to unearth each tomb’s mystery, you can up the difficulty and map size.
My excavation team’s first experience did not go well. One of us ran up to the door where you’re supposed to make your guess on the type of monster after gathering evidence and just guessed, which apparently spawns the big baddie into a hunt-like phase. We died&𝔉mdash;horribly. The next round, I walked off into a pit of spikes while my friends got snatched up by a mummy. That’s when we hilariously discovered that you could come back as an enemy, too. Forewarned lets dead players choose between returning to the arena as a good or bad entity, so there’s no need to idle around and watch your friends progress.
The first time I came back, I shouted, trying to get my allies’ attention. Forewarned distorts player voices though, so I scared the hell out of them all, and they lit me on fire with a t🥀orch. My life as a mummy was even shorter than my archeological career.
That’s a lot of the fun about these games. They’re often scary, sure, but when I’m with a group of friends, these Phas-likes keep me doing that uneasy, nervous laughter that breaks into sessions of wheezing and crying. I need that balance. I’m not super keen on co-op play in more story-driven games built to frighten, like some Resident Evil ti🅰tles, but these sessions of random frights that are easy to recreate in short loops have me hooked. There’s r🦄eplay value there, and I appreciate it.
It was after a few 🍌excursions into the ruins of Forewarned that made it click. Again, my team pieced together several pieces of evidence: hearing voices, destroyed artifacts, and electronic disturbances. Our guess was correct this time, the door to the main tomb opened, and we snagged the relic waiting inside. We heard an ominous thunder, but things still seemed okay, and I ran off into the dark to search for the lever that unlock൲s the way out.
I regret to inform you though, dear reader, that things were not okay. I innocently toddled right into the path of a terrifying, angry monster who tore off in a sprint after me. I screamed, loudly and to the dismay of everyone I share a house with, trying to find my way to my friends in the dark. Finally, some brave soul f𒐪ound the lever to get out and pulꦕled it, and I found my way to the door faster than anyone else. They all poured out after me, cackling at the way I’d sprinted out the door in front of them.
We all piled into the van waiting outside, and called that mission a wrap. That didn’t mark the end of our time with Forewarned, though. I played for hours with my friends, finding all the small ways it shakes things up just enough to keep me scared. Phasmophobia’s formula is predictable after a while but still charming; straying too far from it isn’t the solution. ꦕInstead, you iterate on it just a bit, keeping some core ideas like identifying spirits, the tools to do so, short sessions, and the feeling of defenselessne♉ss.
Forewarned is ther♔e, and I’m looking forward to the chance to dive back in. It needs some polish, sure, but so did Phasmophobia in its early days—plus they’re both in early access. I want more of these experiences. Phas-likes don’t need to be cheap clones of the original as long as they experiment and build on the original’s best ideas. They’re all survival horror, but instead of fostering paranoid isolation, they delight in embarrassing you to your friends. Phasmophobia and Forewarned are carving out a new niche, one that I hope will haunt us for ages.