Season’s greetings, Ghosts and Hunters!
It’s once again the most wonderful time of the year, and to celebrate the season of giving, we come bearing gifts! A brand new map, new hero props, Hunter and Ghost skins, bot improvements, and a new progression tier system all await you in our latest Midnight Ghost Hunt update. So, let’s open up Santa’s bag and see what’s inside the Christmas Update!
NEW MALL MAP
The new Mall map is a blast from the past, fully decked out in retro 80s style! This formerly sparkling plaza now lies in decay and ruin. The Mall’s days of loitering youths and Christmas-time commerce are long behind it. The once cheerful holiday adornments now add an eerie air to this decrepit plaza, but it’s not without its spooky charms.
The central plaza features a forgotten festive effigy — a Christmas tree with its lights twinkling endlessly into the gloom as announcements echo through the empty halls. But hey, there’s a Clockbuster Video Store, and a lovely little cafe called The Coffee Stain, so really it’s not as depressing as it might seem!
The retro-styled shops also include an Electronics Shop, the Ghosts B Us toy store, the Sus Sounds music shop, and a clothing store with a dressing room, just in case you find something on the dusty racks worth trying on!
This is an incredibly fun map with a fantastically eerie atmosphere, an intriguing multi-story terraced design, and a number of interesting new hero props. You’re going to have a blast with it! But I’d be careful asking Santa for anything during your visit, because he seems a little sus…
2 NEW HERO PROPS
The reason that animatronic Santa seems so sus? That’s because the Spooky Santa is one of our new hero props! When he’s under the ghastly control of a Ghost, ol’ Saint Nick can get a little rough — The Spooky Santa can scoop up Hunters and whisk them away while doing choke damage to them for 5 seconds at a time.
And what’s Santa without his little helpers? We’ve also added an Elf hero prop. These creepy little guys can throw ghoulish gifts at Hunters that can in turn ALSO be possessed! What a thoughtful gift.
2 NEW SKINS
We’ve got two exciting new holiday-themed skins for all of you Ghosts and Hunters.
The Jolly Hunter is kitted out in traditional seasonal garb, including an antlered Santa hat, but he also comes complete with some Christmas light-inspired high-tech ghost-hunting gear. Give it a go to show off your holiday cheer and to ward off Ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, or Yet-To-Come.
When you put on your Ghost hat, you can also don some seasonal apparel! The Krampus Ghost skin is sure to get you into the holiday spirit as you hide from stealthy Hunters. This goat-horned ghoul in his tattered robes takes inspiration from European folklore, and he does so with wicked style.
NEW progression tier SYSTEM
In this update, we’ve also made leveling much more fun. Every 25 levels, players are promoted to a new tier with a unique profile picture border and title to display their hide-and-seek prowess. The tiers are as follows:
Apprentice Hunter
Professional Hunter
Expert Hunter
Ace Hunter
Elite Hunter
Master Hunter
Grandmaster Hunter
Legendary Hunter
Each tier also has its own ranks, so after surpassing Apprentice Hunter I, you’ll become Apprentice Hunter II. After Apprentice Hunter III, you are Professional Hunter I, and so on. This change is purely cosmetic, no gear resets or matchmaking changes here.
This just adds a bit more fun to leveling and, of course, also means you get to flex your Grandmaster status when playing with your Apprentice friends over the holidays. 😏
BOT IMPROVEMENTS
In order to improve the player experience, we’ve taken some time to give some much-needed love to our Hunter and Ghost bots. You’ll notice that now, they navigate maps more effectively, and there have been some improvements to how they fire weapons. This is an area we think could benefit from further improvement, so keep an eye out in 2023 for additional fixes and upgrades.
UPDATED SOUNDTRACK & BOOMBOX
As we work closer and closer to having a fully finished soundtrack, we have a new song for the MGH Soundtrack out today, Scarythingsinthedark.jpeg (with Brick Jones)! The extended version of Where Are You? and The Dark have both been added to the Soundtrack as well!
We wouldn’t want to leave the Boombox out of the fun, so all 3 of these songs have been added/updated in the Boombox in-game as well! 🎶
ALSO, we have updated the Win/Lose sounds, and added some new ambient tracks that play in the background while you are playing, so be sure to check them out!
HOST MIGRATION AND DEDICATED SERVERS ARE IN THE WORKS
As mentioned in previous updates, we’ve been hard at work trying to implement Host Migration functionality, as well as adding Dedicated Servers. These are of course still in the works, but they’re quite a complex undertaking! As such, we’ve recently expanded our programming team to help get these changes out to all of you as quickly as we possibly can and create the best version of MGH we can. Despite growing our team, however, it looks like this work will continue into the start of the year. We appreciate your patience, and hope to have an update on this for you all soon!
UPDATED ROADMAP
We have updated our roadmap to reflect our current projected release time for Dedicated Servers and Host Migration, as well as some hints to what is in store for Q1 for us here at MGH HQ.
50% OFF SALE
In addition to the Christmas Update, we also are now having a 50% off sale! MGH makes a great gift for your squad, so if you want to play with your friends and avoid any last-minute Christmas shopping (specifically at any eerie and potentially haunted malls, for example) now is a great time to get an extra copy for a friend who could use a little extra spooky in their holiday season!
MGH will be on sale from December 22nd to January 5th!
THAT’S ALL, FOLKS! SEE YOU IN 2023!
In addition to the broad strokes above, we’ve also got some more minor changes and improvements in this update. If you’re keen to check out the details, you can find the full list of additions/changes on our Steam page.
And… that’s it for 2022! As we wrap up this incredible year, we want to thank all of you in the MGH community for your continued support, and wish you all a great holiday season! We know that 2023 will have some incredible and exciting things in store for MGH, so keep an eye out for those, and we’ll see you all next year!
👻-Team MGH!