Hey Ghosts and Hunters,
We hope you’ve been enjoying the Midnight Ghost Hunt Early Access thus far. We promised we’d be cooking up some exciting new stuff during EA, and now our first major content update of Early Access is ready for you to check out! We have an eerie new map (Doll Factory) for you to check out, new cosmetics, improvements to the melee gear, new hero props, and more. Check out all the details below.
NEW MAP: Doll Factory
The Doll Factory is now open for business. You can haunt or hunt in an abandoned doll factory in the dead of night! In typical MGH fashion, this eerie doll factory is equal measures charming and terrifying!
Naturally, there are a number of new props strewn around. It features, as its name implies, creepy dolls. Lots of creepy dolls and their accessories. Some might even walk around…
Watch your step: there is dangerous industrial machinery that may flatten you into a pancake! Take a ride around the conveyor belt and act natural amongst the boxes of doll heads and other new props.
Alpha and Beta testers may recognize this map from earlier testing - we decided it needed a little more time in the oven before it was ready for prime time. We decided that a creepy doll theme would give it more personality and allow for stronger tropes to play up.
Weapon Reworks
The two melee weapons available to the Hunters turned out to not be as useful as we would like. In this update, we’ve reworked these weapons in ways that will hopefully make them more appealing choices for our Hunters.
Ghostsmasher - Added a small buckler shield that can be used to block incoming damage. It is not as effective as the full riot shield, but can be useful when dueling a Ghost before or after Midnight. We have also added a chain lightning damage effect that will jump up to 3 times to nearby Ghosts in ghost form with reduced damage each time. Note that it will jump to possessed props as well, but only if they are moving!
Sledgehammer - Added the ability to charge up an attack for added damage; the higher you heft your hammer, the stronger your swing will be! This will do significantly more damage and can destroy large props in one or two hits. This includes player props or unpossessed props. This should make Sledgehammer much more dangerous!
New Hero Props
There’s more than just a new map to play with! We’ve added some other fun toys for you to play with. Literally AND figuratively. Here are the new hero props to be added in Update 1!
(Hero props are props with a unique attack or feature that separates them - think Ghost Ship cannon or Mansion’s suit of armor)
Murder Doll - as if normal dolls aren’t creepy enough, the Dream Dolls factory also comes with this creepy little bugger. The Murder Doll can scuttle around and even pull out a knife from its mouth. Taunting in this prop will also rotate the head just to show off how horrifying it can be. Perhaps Nightmare Dolls would be a more appropriate name for this product line.
Warehouse Gate - Some of you very old testers might remember the guillotine doors…they are back! You can possess and smash Hunters with these warehouse metal gates in a guillotine fashion! They work like door props, they cannot move but can be used to lock Hunters in a room or deal direct damage with a well-timed attack.
Forklift - have you ever wanted to yeet a Hunter high into the sky? Well, we’ve got the prop for you. Simply drive up to a Hunter and send them up in the air. Bonus points if you can juggle a Hunter a few times.
Soda Machine - time for some canned chaos! With the soda machine, you can now lob cans of Midnight Ghost Drink™ at unattentive Hunters. You get a soda! And YOU get a soda! And YOUUUU get a soda! Sodas for everyone! (Side effects may include mild headaches and sudden death).
Speaker - pump up the volume and pump up the jams! This hero prop now goes to 11 and will allow you to use ear-shattering sound waves to knock Hunters around and get those eardrums vibrating.
Cosmetics
If you’re one of the awesome folks who gave a bit of added support to the dev team by snagging the Early Backer Pack, you can look forward to getting your exclusive skins in Update 1! The Lord and Lady Ghost skins (inspired by our cinematic trailer), and The Veteran and The Rookie Hunter skins will be available for our Early Backers with this update! Thanks so much for the support.
As a bonus for patiently waiting for the Early Backer cosmetics, we have also thrown in two new emotes exclusive to Early Backers, the Gentleman and Lady!
We won’t leave the rest of you high and dry, though - we’ve got more skins for the whole lot of ya!
All of you Satisfactory fans will be pleased to see a familiar face. Satisfactory’s Pioneer will be joining the MGH lineup with the addition of an awesome new hunter skin!
Sadly, it seems the Pioneer has also passed beyond the veil and been freed from her mortal coil because there’s a gruesome Pioneer skin for all you ghostly players, as well!
Perceptive Satisfactory fans will also notice another friendly face around the new Doll Factory map… let us know if you find it!
We have also added 7 new victory poses (Pray, Idol, Nirvana, Clown Dance, Confident, Admire the Duck, and Facepalm), 4 new emotes (Clown Dance, Confident, Wipe Sweat, Facepalm), and 2 new titles (Wealthy, Millionaire)!
(Longtime players have been asking for a way to flex their Ghost Shard balance - well, now you can! The Wealthy title costs 100k shards, while the Millionaire costs… well, you know.)
Matchmaking
Recently, we introduced some adjustments to matchmaking to allow newer players to be matched together so that they can better get acquainted with the mechanics before jumping into the deep end. Players level 6 or lower will now have their own matchmaking pool for the first two minutes of searching for a match. After that point, they’ll move into the general matchmaking pool. While we expect new players to prefer to play ONLY other low-level players: We don’t want them to wait too long before they get into a match and get to try things out.
All of this should make the user experience much better for new and returning players alike!
We’ll continue to monitor the performance of the matchmaker and the feedback we get from the community to continuously improve the matchmaker throughout Early Access.
General BuG Fixing Shenanigans
In addition to the content updates, we’ve also been busy making bug fixes and generally improving the user experience however we can. The patch notes will have more specifics in that regard, you can always find all of our past patch notes on Steam!
We hope that you’ll enjoy Update 1, and we look forward to getting in some matches with you all on the Doll Factory soon!
For those of you who haven’t joined us yet on Discord or Twitter, be sure to do so! It’s a great way to give us your thoughts and feedback, and connect with other awesome players in the community! Until next time, happy haunting and hunting!
Tinny