BEHIND THE SCENES: THE SPECTROPHONE

Hey Ghosts and Hunters,

Have you ever wondered how we come up with the concepts for all our weapons, gadgets, maps, and so on? In this series, we’ll dive into this process and how we take things from an initial concept to ready-to-play!

In this first installment of behind the scenes, we'll be taking a look at the Spectrophone! We introduced this new Hunter gadget in our most recent test in August.

The Spectrophone tracks Ghosts by giving you a specific direction to follow - it won’t tell the Hunter how close the Ghosts are, but it lets you know whether or not you’re pointed in the right direction. Your job is to keep an eye on the waveform display and locate them by following their ghostly sounds.

The initial idea for the Spectrophone was to design a gadget that plays up the ghost sound recorder/detector trope in various ghost hunting media.

At this point in the concept phase, we’re still exploring what visual cues and tech we could draw from. Visual cues are often elements that make the design interesting but can also serve to improve readability so players can easily understand what the gadget is and does just by looking at it. 

As you can see above, some of the inspiration used for the Spectrophone included old phones and voice recorders, satellite dishes, and radar speed guns. Our general gadget aesthetic in MGH is very DIY, built at home with whatever was available in the Hunter’s lab. Nothing extremely high-tech, and we try to utilize recognizable pieces of tech from the 1980s and prior.

Once we arrived at some ideas we liked in the concept, we started exploring shapes in 3D. Our 3D & concept artist Felix is an absolute wizard when it comes to this stuff! (We’re super lucky to work with such a talented bunch of individuals - you can get to know some of them by reading one of our older Dev Blogs!)

Once we have it roughed out in 3D, we go through multiple rounds of feedback and discussions as a team. We felt the first concept for the Spectrophone was a bit too cartoony - it looked like some kind of laser or classic sci-fi weaponry instead of a gadget. 

We also needed to keep in mind how the Hunter would actually hold and use the device. We experimented with a few options here. We tried one design where the Spectrophone was held cupped in the Hunter’s hands against their body (a bit like a Rolleiflex camera, for example). 

We also tried a positioning that looked a bit like a Steadicam set-up. Neither felt quite right, so we continued to iterate. The shots above really help illustrate how the ideas evolve and grow.

We felt that the old voice recorder wheel felt out of place, and perhaps a little bit too old-school, 60s style. We decided to bring the Spectrophone tech up to the 80s and 90s by switching the voice recorder wheels for a retro cassette recorder. Starting to sound familiar? 

Around the same time, we also considered the option of making the Spectrophone into a two-handed gadget instead. We were also fiddling with an idea of a neck strap that would allow the left hand to tune the knob and other controls of the Spectrophone. At this point, we felt like we were definitely heading in the right direction, and decided to continue with that design.

In the end, we decided to ditch the idea of the neck strap, and go with two gadget pieces connected by a phone wire. Although the gadget has a sound component, a clear visual read-out on the display was an important element to keep for extra clarity.

Once we were happy with the general look, it was time to animate it, start sound design, and put it in-game!

We were quite happy with the great paranormal vibe Dennis was able to create for the Spectrophone with his clever sound design. This pairs well with the display, and also serves as a nice cue for Ghosts to hear if they are being detected currently.

When the audio & animation elements have been finalized, it’s time to make some final tweaks and get to testing! Before we share the new content with the players, we go through tons of internal testing, and then we balance, balance, balance. Once the gadget has been released into the wild in an alpha test, we pay close attention to how balanced it seems and how it’s used to see if any further tweaks or adjustments are needed to ensure it’s fun and fair.

So, that’s the development process for the Spectrophone gadget in a nutshell! Thanks for reading.

Please let us know if you like this kind of content and would like to see more behind the scenes content. If so, let us know which gadgets, weapons, abilities, or maps you’d like to see most! We’d love to hear your thoughts, so hit us up on Discord & Twitter!

Happy spooky season y’all! 🎃

Tinny 👻
Community Manager

DEV UPDATE: ALPHA LEARNINGS VOL. 3

Hey Ghosts and Hunters,

Another Friday, another Dev Blog coming your way!

This week, we’re conducting an in-depth analysis on the usage of various Hunter and Ghost loadout options during our most recent alpha test!

This data helps us understand how people are playing, and for insight on what adjustments need to be made. Let us know which loadout was your favorite and why on Discord and Twitter!

HUNTER GADGETS

Hunter Gadgets

In Alpha Learnings Vol. 1 we discussed which Hunter weapons were most popular during our most recent alpha. This time, we’re taking a peek at the most popular gadgets.

First place goes to Radar, with 29.5% of players selecting it as their gadget of choice. Being the default gadget, it doesn’t surprise us to see Radar at the top of the list, but it is good to know that everyone still feels Radar is a useful gadget!

Second place goes to Vacuum with 20.9%. The feedback showed that splitting Vacuum away from Spectral Cannon was a good decision! The vast majority of the feedback we saw showed that this change helped add more teamwork to the matches, which is great news! As always, we are super thankful for all the feedback, it helps us make important decisions like this.

Pathfinder earned itself a bronze medal with 17.7% of the players searching for ghostly footsteps through the monitor. We did hear some concerns about the monitor being difficult to look at for extended periods of time - maybe even a bit nauseating - we’re looking into ways to improve this!

Our new Spectrophone gadget came in fourth, being picked 10% of the time! The feedback showed that having a fully directional gadget was very effective at finding ghosts. We were thrilled to find out that the Spectrophone found its place alongside Radar and Pathfinder, and that they could be combined to make finding ghosts even easier!

As seen in the chart above, the rest of the gadgets were selected pretty evenly. Many of them were fairly niche use cases, but there were situations where they came in handy. Of course, your playstyle really determines the gadgets you choose. Grappling hook is great for chasing ghosts once they are found, but you have to find them first!

HUNTER PERKS

Hunter Perks

Lightweight took a landslide victory as the most popular Hunter perk with a whopping 40.1%. Like Radar, Lightweight is the default - so this isn’t entirely surprising. Sprinting after ghosts or running away from danger is always useful!

A pleasant surprise to see that Healing Aura, a brand new perk, was chosen 18.3% of the time! Being able to heal from chip damage, such as Miasma, makes a lot of sense as a Hunter. Healing Aura fills that need nicely!

GHOST PERKS

Ghost Perks

The race for the number one perk slot was close, but Ghostly Reach came out on top with 29.5% of players choosing it. It is our default, of course, and is useful in most situations.

Coming in as a close second was Perception, which was selected 28.7% of the time. We may be looking at ways to make perception feel a little more fair - like adding a range limit, past a certain distance the Hunters visibility would fade off. Let us know what you think of this!

Overall, we’re pleasantly surprised to see more and more players stray from the default loadout and try out different combinations of abilities and perks!

The rest of the Ghost perks were much more evenly split. Ecto-slow and Ghostly Focus were both selected by over 10% of Ghost players, clocking in at 12.3% and 10.4% respectively. Do you swear by one of the lesser-used Ghost perks? We’d love to hear why!

GHOST HAUNTS

Ghost Haunts

All of the haunts were quite evenly split, with the default haunt Chill having a tiny edge at 17.9%. Push Object and Shove Hunter were right around the corner garnering 16.9% and 15.6% respectively.

Side note, have you considered using Shove Hunter to push a hunter off the top of Ghost Ship into the salty depths? It is very fun, ask me how I know 👀

False Trail was among the most popular haunts at 14.3%, and comes in handy if the Hunters are using Pathfinder. Lead the Hunters away from your teammates, and save the day!

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Thanks for reading through all of the analysis, folks! We have at least one more Dev Blog in this series coming your way, where we’ll go through even more interesting data and put on our analyst caps once more. Remember to keep an eye on this space, because we want to keep serving up all the juicy bits of data we can get our hands on!

One final reminder that our Alpha Survey is closing in a few days, so if you haven’t answered it yet, make sure to do it HERE! 💭

Thanks for joining us once again for an exciting deep dive into alpha stats, and have a wonderful weekend! 

Tinny 👻

Community Manager

DEV UPDATE: ALPHA LEARNINGS VOL. 2

Hey Ghosts and Hunters,

We’re back with another helping of interesting stats from our latest alpha! This time, we’re diving deeper into more specifics on win rate and match outcomes. If you didn’t get a chance to check out the latest alpha, be sure to follow along on Discord and Twitter for an opportunity to get in on our next testing rounds!

HUNTERS

Let’s look a little deeper at the Hunter win conditions, and how often they occurred. There are 3 ways Hunters can win a match: destroying all Ghosts before Midnight, destroying all Ghosts after Midnight, and escaping after Midnight has run its course.

Hunter Win Conditions

As you might expect, most Hunter victories occurred before Midnight. This is when the Ghosts are weak and try to hide. During our latest alpha test, 74.8% of all Hunter victories were this type. 

After Midnight strikes, things get a little bit trickier for the Hunters - the Ghost’s onslaught can be brutal. The data points to 23% of all Hunter victories occurring via destroying all Ghosts AFTER midnight, which is a little bit higher than anticipated. It should be a pretty rare occurrence to successfully pull that off, with great teamwork and coordination. As we mentioned in our last blog, C4s/traps/grenade camping strategies ended up being a bit too powerful overall, as well as the instant generator heal every 5 seconds. We think in the next test we’ll find a better balance there.

Lastly, Hunters could also win by just surviving the Midnight duration. This was the rarest victory during this test - coming in at 2.2% of all Hunter victories. Even with various Coldblooded and Grappling Hook strategies, it became more consistent to just fight the Ghosts after Midnight than running away. We’ll be looking into this as we continue to balance and tweak the game to find a good medium.

GHOSTS 

Ghosts have two win condition types: taking out all Hunters before Midnight, or after Midnight.  As you might expect, destroying the Hunters after Midnight is much more common, as that is their attack phase. About 84% of all Ghost victories turned out that way during the last test.

Ghost Win Conditions

Aggressive Ghost play pre-Midnight is possible but can be tricky to pull off. This occurred in about 16% of Ghost victories. It can be punished quite quickly by coordinated Hunter play, and recovered from with timely defibrillators. However, if Ghosts can catch a Hunter out alone by themselves, or the Ghosts wombo combo their abilities together, it makes for a pretty fun and exciting strategy. Lead Developer Kite’s tip: Comboing Death Grip + Poltergeist + Corruption + Miasma coordinated in one room makes for a bit of a meat grinder!

MAPSSACRE

Throughout the alpha weekend, we saw a pretty balanced play rate of each map, which was encouraging to see. Ghost Ship was our most played map at 17.4% of all matches played - which makes sense, it has a very strong theme and was featured in our alpha teaser clip.

Map Play Rates

The rest were fairly evenly split - even School, our other new map, that was mistakenly not included in the quick play rotation on the first day of the alpha.

It seems that we’ve got a fairly solid roster of maps so far - we will continue to incorporate feedback on each map as we continue, and try to make them all equally interesting and balanced going forward. I heard a little birdie mention to me that Factory might be getting another layout/polish pass, but you didn’t hear it from me.

Ghost Ship

According to the data, Ghost Ship was definitely a bit Hunter favored. Hunters took home the win 59.4% of the time on Ghost Ship. The community feedback was fairly clear on this front - too wide open, not enough smaller props, not enough clear good hiding spots. We’re working on this internally. 

Ghost Ship Match Outcome

We, of course, want maps to have different identities and strategies, but we want to ensure the balance is within reason, and we’ve got some ideas to get there. For starters, we’re thinking of breaking up the line of sight a bit more on the beach and tweaking the cave to be a better place to hide. Let us know what you think on Discord - what does Ghost Ship need in your opinion?

School

On the other side of the spectrum, the School map was certainly more Ghost favored. 56.4% of matches in the School resulted in Ghost victories. As the community feedback noted, we’ve got a lot of prop clutter in various areas, and some very tight choke points that favor Ghost escapes and abilities. 

School Match Outcome

We think this adds some cool unique flavor to the map, but we’re thinking of making some adjustments to prop counts and layouts to make it a little closer to that coveted 50/50 ratio. Let us know on Discord your thoughts on this map, of course!

PRECISION CHANGES

Overall, we want to start with relatively small modifications here to even things up a bit without doing anything too drastic that might radically alter the levels. 

We feel like we’re already relatively close, but as they say, the last 10% can take quite some time. We’ll get there, and stay tuned for more updates on that front!

MORE JUICY DATA COMING SOON!

That’s all the analysis we have for you this week! We’ll continue digging through the data and have another blog post for all you curious folks in the coming weeks, so be sure to check back soon.
Let us know if you enjoy this kind of dev blog or if you’d rather see other types of content. We think it’s interesting to dig into data like this and give context and start a discussion, but definitely let us know your thoughts. We appreciate it!

Thanks for reading, and have a great weekend!

Tinny 👻

Community Manager

DEV UPDATE: ALPHA LEARNINGS, VOL. 1

Greetings, Ghosts and Howdy, Hunters!

With MGH’s latest alpha weekend in the books, we’ve started digging into all sorts of statistics and other data to get a sense of how things went. We’ve also been sorting through all the great player feedback we received in places like our Discord and Twitter.

First off, we want to thank everyone for playing and sharing their thoughts. This has been incredibly helpful for the team to identify the game’s biggest priorities going forward. Thanks for helping us make MGH as good as it can be!

A quick aside - we heard the calls for a proper matchmaking system loud and clear during this test. It became very clear that experienced players were grouping up and making the new player experience frustrating. We are looking into potential solutions and will keep everyone posted.

This week, we thought it would be interesting to deep dive into some interesting stats and data from the most recent test. In the coming weeks we will continue to dig into more data, so keep an eye out for that!

GHOSTS VS. HUNTERS

Let’s start with the biggest stat: overall win-rate between our two teams, Ghosts and Hunters! Hunters definitely had the edge this time around, taking home the W in about 53% of matches all weekend long. We’ve already got a pretty good idea of why that is, and what we will look into changing to get closer to that elusive 50/50 split.

Ghosts vs. Hunters

A common strategy we noticed was for Hunters to camp around the generator after Midnight, utilizing traps and C4 to annihilate the red Ghosts. This allowed the Hunters to utilize the generator for an instant heal, making it very frustrating for the Ghosts to confirm any kills during their period of revenge.

Ghosts essentially needed to one-shot Hunters quickly or they didn’t really stand a chance at breaking that healing cycle if the Hunters were coordinated at all. On the Saturday night patch, as a stop-gap measure we increased the generator cooldown from 5 seconds to 10 seconds. But we recognize this is not a solid long term fix, as a longer cooldown makes changing your loadout feel very clunky if a wrong selection was made.

As for a longer term fix, we are investigating a number of options. Our current thinking is to decouple healing from the generator change loadout functionality. More details to come on that front, but please let us know in our Discord or other channels your thoughts on this topic!

C4 and grenade spam was a fairly common strategy, as well. C4 felt very low-risk to just spam it at your feet and hope for the best. As of our Saturday night patch, we added self-damage to C4 in an attempt to add some risk and strategy to the use of the gadget. We also reduced the maximum amount of C4 to 3, down from 6 on the Friday patch (which was a little absurd). We will see if these changes are enough, or if we need additional tweaking.

Grenades seemed less of a problem since the large timer before it detonates, but we are looking at ways to prevent the endless spam of them near the Generator, as that feels a bit unfair of course.

We will keep trying things out internally and will keep everyone posted. As always, let us know your thoughts on our official channels!

YOUR WEAPON OF CHOICE WAS…

You’re probably all dying (haha, 👻) to find out which weapons were community favorites, right? Or perhaps you already know, because approximately 22% of all of you Hunters selected Salt Shotgun as your weapon of choice. The second favorite was the other new weapon, Frostbite, at 20%. We’re hyped to see you testing out the new weapons! Shotguns and SMGs are FPS favorites, so we’re not too surprised about these results seeing as they’re both basically a means to the same end: deal damage quickly (either via one big, strong boom, or a bunch of little ones).

Hunter Weapon Breakdown

We heard the common feedback that Salt Shotgun’s damage falloff is unclear and perhaps too harsh - doing either high damage or very little at all. We are digging into this and would like to find a nice balance going forward.

Frostbite was thought to be a bit overpowered on our Friday patch - a little too easy to freeze props. We made a slight tweak on the Friday night patch to both the damage and the freeze speed, and that seemed to make it feel more reasonable.

AND THE FAVORITE ABILITY GOES TO...

Ghost abilities are very dependent on your playstyle and we didn’t have as clear favorites as the Hunter weapons. The reworked Poltergeist ability was a slight favorite, with almost 15% of Ghosts using this ability. Corruptor and Phantom were closely behind Poltergeist nearing 13% each.

Ghost Ability Breakdown

Poltergeist being redesigned as a floating haunted object trap seemed to resonate with many players, especially with its combo potential with the Corruptor ability. Flying exploding furniture can be very effective!

Overall, it’s nice to see that there is enough balance among our Ghost abilities to get people testing out a bit of everything. We will continue to monitor these and make some changes (such as the Death Grip + Ghostly Focus combo being a little bit absurd), but overall we are pleased at the state of things here.

That’s it for this week - thanks for reading! Next week we will continue digging into interesting stats and data points. Don’t miss it!

Once more, we humbly thank you for joining our latest alpha test and sending great feedback and bug reports. We truly appreciate it!

Until next week, Ghosts & Ghost Hunters!

Tinny

Community Manager

UPCOMING ALPHA TEST - AUGUST 13-15

What’s up, MGH Squad! 👋

I know we’ve kept you Ghosts and Hunters waiting for another chance to play, but fear not! You don’t have to wait much longer - it’s time for our BIGGEST Alpha weekend yet! 

Mark your calendars, because the next Alpha test will start this Friday the 13th: AUGUST 13th - 15th!

Seems like a pretty fitting date, don’t you think?

🗺️NEW MAPS🗺️

(Yep, plural.)

Ghost Ship
It’s a pirate’s life for you! Ghost Ship will take you back to simpler thieving times. Are you ready to explore this haunted ship in a lost pirate cove? Time to get up to pirate shenanigans! Possess all the pirate booty you can get your ghostly hands on. Maybe you can even find some hidden treasures? Watch out for the cannons and mimic chests, though.

School
It looks like someone has been summoning spirits on Prom Night! What happened to all the students and staff? Hunters, gear up & find out what spooky shenanigans took place on that fateful night. Ghosts, never let the hunters leave and bury the secrets with them!

This hellish high school has a quaint 80s charm, and fans of our classic Mansion map are sure to enjoy hiding in these narrow hallways and hidden ledges. 

Oh, and there’s a possessable disco ball. That’s pretty cool, I guess.

💣NEW WEAPONS 💣

Salt Shotgun
Did you know Ghosts don’t like salt? Our latest weapon is a double-barreled shotgun that spews salt shakers! The Salt Shotgun deals some serious close-range, high-sodium carnage, so spray away! 

Frostbite
Freeze! We think Frostbite is the coolest submachine gun weapon out there. The supercooled shards can stop a possessed prop in its tracks like nothing else. 

📱 NEW GADGETS 📱

Spectrophone
The Spectrophone will allow you to detect ghostly sounds in front of you. While the Radar gadget detects how close you are to a Ghost, the Spectrophone only gives you a direction. This pairs well with Radar to “triangulate” those tricky Ghosts.

Vacuum 
Vacuum is now its own gadget! Those pesky ghosts could get revived if you don’t vacuum up their shards - so make sure you have at least one handy on your team. (Spectral Cannon no longer has a vacuum function.)

C4
Bombs away! If you’re surrounded by possessed props, our handy new C4 explosives could save you and your teammates. C4 is sticky and can be placed on walls, props, ghosts, etc.

👻 NEW GHOST ABILITIES 👻

There are five new ghost abilities for you to explore! These new additions make the ghost gameplay a bit more dynamic & versatile, allowing for new gameplay strategies to be uncovered.

We encourage you to try comboing abilities with your spooky teammates for maximum effect. Become the tricky Ghosts that you were born to be, and confuse & mislead the Hunters every chance you get!

Death Grip
Death Grip is a Hunter-trapping ability. If Hunters walk over the trap, ghostly arms will grab them from below and hold them in place until broken. Excellent for losing a tail, or for holding a Hunter in place before hitting them in the head with a lamp.

Apparition
Apparition spawns a fake Ghost that will run in a random direction. This is great for a quick distraction during a getaway.

(Revamped) Poltergeist
Poltergeist has been reworked into an entirely new ability - you can now haunt an object, causing it to float menacingly. If a Hunter approaches the floating object, it will hurl itself at the Hunter automatically. One shot to the floating object will cause it to fall harmless, however. Combos great with Corruptor.

Telekinesis
Old Poltergeist has been renamed Telekinesis. This still lets you remotely charge up props to deal damage, just with some bug fixes and overall aiming improvements.

Trickster
Tricksters can select any prop and move them to a specified location, making it seem as though the moving prop is possessed by a Ghost player. Extremely good for causing a distraction and even blocking incoming shots.

🖥️ NEW FEATURES 🖥️

Experimental Party Support & Team Assignment
We’re trying to make the game easier to play with friends. If you are in a party with friends, you will now stay on the same team as them when joining lobbies. No more being split from your friends! 

We haven't tested this at scale yet, but hey… that's what Alphas are for! 

Expanded Tutorials and Practice Play
We've revamped our tutorial experience to be more in-depth and should help new players get a better grasp of important mechanics. We’ve even got fancy voice acting! (Please give us feedback on this!) After the tutorial, you can also go to the new practice area to give your spooky skills a little sharpening. Target dummies, and a safe location to practice and learn about all your gadgets and abilities.

Visual Polish & Animation Overhaul
We've taken a full polish pass on all animations, giving them a much better feel and fluidity. Weapons should feel more impactful and weighty. Many weapons and abilities have had their visual effects improved as well. 

Experimental Controller Support
In an effort to make the game as accessible as possible, we’ve spent some time to set up basic controller support. Should work for in-game and in most menus. When switching to a controller, all of the key prompts should update immediately with the new gamepad buttons.

This is experimental and probably has lots of issues, please report any bugs or feedback in general in-game!

And that’s not all! There’s a lot more stuff - but we won't be spilling all our secrets quite yet!

We'd prefer you experience them for yourselves. This is our biggest alpha test to date, and we’re super excited for everyone to give it a try.

As usual, we will be giving a large amount of keys out over the course of the alpha. If you already have a key, you can play! Just reinstall Midnight Ghost Hunt - Alpha Test on Steam on Friday.

If you’re so inclined, there are a few ways for you to acquire keys for the upcoming Alpha. Here’s how you can go about it:

• JOIN US ON DISCORD! 
  As usual, we’ll be giving away keys on our Discord, so remember to invite all your friends to join our server!  Keep an eye on your DMs, because our key bot will be hard at work a few days prior to the Alpha.

• FOLLOW US ON TWITTER!
  We’ll be giving away keys on our Twitter leading up to the launch of this test, so follow us there for a chance to snag a key!

• SIGN UP ON THE MAILING LIST!
  Sign up on our newsletter here for a chance for a key! We won’t be sending as many via email due to spam filters causing many lost keys, but always a good way to keep up to date with development!
  

We’re beyond excited to play Midnight Ghost Hunt with all of you again! We’d also love to hear what you are most looking forward to. Let's chat on Discord & Twitter! 

See you on the hunt this weekend!

Tinny 👻🏴‍☠️
Community Manager 

Dev Update: PROGRESS REPORT + NEW CM

Happy Friday, MGH Squad! Time for a little developer update.

🔥 What we’ve been up to 🔥

Things have been a bit quiet for the past couple of months, but behind the scenes the team has been hard at work and making great progress. As we discussed earlier this year, the development team has increased in size significantly and the pace of production has really picked up.

In the coming weeks, we are planning to share more details about what we’ve been working on. The team has been making great progress on new maps, weapons, abilities, and quality of life improvements. We don’t want to spill all of our secrets quite yet, though - so keep an eye on our Discord and Twitter for updates as always!

💥 Meet the new Community Manager 💥

You may have been wondering "Hey, who's writing this Dev Update?!" — that would be me! 

Hello! I'm Tinny, and I'm the newly appointed community manager for Midnight Ghost Hunt. It's super nice to meet you all! 

I’m incredibly excited about MGH, and I’m looking forward to updating everyone with development news going forward. My mind is already buzzing with all the cool things we can do together as a community! The whole Midnight Ghost Hunt team has been working tirelessly throughout the spring & summer, so they've brought me on board to help keep you all up to date about all the cool things coming your way.

I love the MGH concept and as I’ve been playing, I've learned something new every time. I love to play as both hunters and ghosts, but I feel like where I really shine is hiding in plain sight and surprising those unknowing hunters. I make quite a convincing gramophone, I must say. 😏 

👀 The next alpha test 👀

Let’s talk about alpha tests - it’s been awhile, hasn’t it? While we don’t have an exact date nailed down quite yet, I assure you it is coming very soon. Actually soon, this time - and we think it will be the best test yet! We're hoping you'll be thrilled with the progress and additions we've made these past months.

Stay tuned on our Discord and Twitter as usual for updates in the coming weeks.

Can’t wait to play with you all soon, and have a great weekend, Ghosts & Ghost Hunters!

-Tinny 👻

Dev Blog: Balancing

Happy Friday, Ghosts and Hunters! 👻

It’s been a busy few weeks here at MGH HQ! We’ve been hard at work on new content for our next test, as well as bug fixing and adjusting based on feedback. This week, we thought it would be cool to deep dive some alpha stats from our most recent alpha test!

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WIN RATE BALANCING
On Friday, the first day of the alpha, we saw a win rate of 57% for Hunters in our data channels. This was echoed by much of the initial feedback from that day: "Hunters feel too strong"

We took game data, your Discord and Twitter feedback and started working towards a plan to carefully identify which key aspects were causing the balance issues.

We didn’t want to make any massive sweeping changes quickly in an attempt to force balance, instead we tried to focus on nudging certain mechanics a bit to ensure we didn’t go too far and enter into an extremely Ghost-favored meta.

Seemingly small changes can have massive effects on balance overall, so it made sense to start changes softly and observe.

Over two patches, we succeeded in returning to a nearly 50/50 win rate by Sunday evening. Here’s a quick rundown of the main changes we made:

✅ Reduced Ghost footprints from being visible for 25s to 17s to counter the Pathfinder spam meta.

✅ Re-added consume Hunter soul ability to give Ghosts a counter to the Defibrillator again.

✅ Removed sprint from the Cold Blooded perk, made sense to trade mobility for stealth instead of having both.

✅ Lowered Hunter’s sprint speed across the board, was too easy to run away after Midnight forever.

✅ Slightly toned down overall Spectral Cannon and Project X damage.

✅ Slightly increased Ghost’s slingshot attack speed.

✅ Cannon Overload perk removed extra spectral damage, the perk is strong enough with quicker reload speeds.

Alpha Win Rate

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Thank you again for your great feedback and discussions, this is proof how you helped us identify and solve the balance issues very quickly.

We know there is still much more to do to have a balanced game, and as we add new mechanics things will likely shift around. But we feel confident we become a more balanced game during every test!

Let us know what you thought about the balance during our latest test on our Discord or Twitter! Do you feel like the balance felt better on Sunday? Did you think Hunters were clearly OP on friday? Do you have any suggestions going forward? We'd love to hear it!

Over and out!

Kite,
Lead Developer

WISHLIST MIDNIGHT GHOST HUNT ON STEAM

Alpha Feedback Needed!

Hey, Ghosts & Ghost Hunters! 👋

Can you believe it has been a week already since our last test? We are missing you all already!

The whole team wanted to extend their thanks for all the great feedback and bug reports from all of our alpha testers. This was our biggest and most successful one yet!

We’d like to pick your brains and gather some more of your feedback, thoughts, and ideas. Click the button below to share your opinion. Your voice has never been more important to us!

I know some of you are missing the game as much as we are (shout out to the person who spent over 24 hours in an alpha voice chat).

Don’t worry, though! We already have our sights set on the next test.

Everyone here at MGH HQ are currently hard at work on new maps, new content, parties, bug fixes, and other juicy surprises that we’ll be sharing with you soon.

Here’s a FUN FACT from the early data we’ve been looking at:
Our new Museum map has shown early promising signs with of a win:loss ratio of 51% Hunters to 49% Ghosts. I personally loved seeing the creative ways Corruption was used in clutch moments.

We also see you all thoroughly enjoyed the Reaper sniper rifle, but for some players it wasn’t instantly clear that the explosive dart is avoidable when you’re a Ghost. We’ll work on it to make it more clear. Remember to possess away out of the prop before it explodes!

Last but not least, now that we have expanded our team, we will be updating our Twitter, Facebook, Reddit & Discord channels with more content than you can shake a grappling hook at. Stay tuned to these channels to be up to speed with what is going on!

Remember to share your thoughts with us above!

See ya on Discord! 👻
Red

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WISHLIST MIDNIGHT GHOST HUNT ON STEAM