Phasmophobia’s biggest update yet is officially in the works

The game-changing update that’s going to completely redesign how Phasmophobia works is officially being developed as of May 21. Horror 2.0 has been teased since 2021, and after quite a lengthy wait, it’s finally happening.

The devs shared how the Horror 2.0 update is being conceptualized in a post on X (formerly Twitter). Before today’s announcement, this massive overhaul was only in the loosely planned category, but it’s now officially being actively developed.

Horror 2.0 is a large overhaul of the “ghost and game mechanics,” according to the official Phasmophobia Trello board. This update was first announced in 2021 and was meant to be released a lot sooner, but has been delayed several times.

This update is officially scheduled for sometime in 2026, according to the latest version of the Phasmophobia roadmap. It was originally supposed to launch alongside the official full release of the game, but it’s currently unknown whether this is still the plan.

There’s a lot to look forward to in the Horror 2.0 update. The main goal of this refresh is to up the scare factor and give the game a more unique feel since many of the current assets are from Unity.

Ghost models, which are the physical appearances of the ghosts you see in contracts, will be overhauled. Most of the current ghost models are from the Zombie collection in the Unity shop, so redesigning them allows the devs to make Phasmophobia’s key antagonists more unique.

Key features like ghost hunts, events, and interactions will also look different. It’s unclear what types of changes the devs plan to make to them, but both are fundamental in shaping your experience in each round, so all changes made to them will drastically alter gameplay. I expect that we might get more unique events like the burning crucifix at Sunny Meadows Mental Institution or the flying airball. Just more little details here and there that make the game feel more special.

Perhaps the biggest part of this update is the addition of a hallucination system. There’s nothing like this in Phasmophobia yet, so it’ll be interesting to see how it works and integrates with the rest of the gameplay. I imagine it’ll tie in quite closely with the sanity system, so we’ll likely see strange occurrences as it drops.

Other details like new death rooms, sound changes, and death animations have also been teased. There’s also likely a lot of important details we don’t know about this update yet and won’t know until it’s further along in development, but it seems like the general vision of this update is to make the game a lot scarier and much more detailed overall.

There’s no official timeframe as to when this update will become available outside of a scheduled 2026 release. The roadmap says this update, along with a few others, will become available as soon as they’re ready, so there’s a decent chance it will be a surprise drop. There’s plenty to do while we wait, though, like completing weekly challenges and tinkering with the Music Box.