UPDATE 1 IS HERE!

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

ONE MONTH OF EARLY ACCESS

Hey there Ghosts and Hunters!

Can you believe it’s already been over a MONTH since we launched into Early Access?! So much has happened in the short time since we released MGH to the world, so we thought we’d give you an update on what we’ve been working on and the results of our latest community poll!

EARLY ACCESS PATCHES

As you all know, we’ve been keeping plenty busy since the start of Early Access! In the last month alone we’ve put out 5 patches full of improvements, fixes and content. At a glance, the post-Early Access patches included:

• Improvements to our matchmaking system to help make fairer matches and mix players up a bit better

• Major improvements to our anti-cheat system

• Some new emotes and other cosmetics

• 7 new supported in-game languages

• Rebalances to various systems, weapons (lookin’ at you, Harpoon Bazooka!) and abilities based on feedback and data

• Significant fixes to hit detection and inconsistent Ghost damage

• Introduction of the lobby code invite system

• Limits to keep quick play hosts from abusing kicking players or forced team changes

• Invulnerability for the Generator to keep coordinated groups of ghosts from targeting the generator right from the get-go and other dastardly shenanigans

• Tweaked match rewards being granted earlier to prevent host quitting denying progress

• Many, many bug fixes and various quality of life improvements

• The incredibly critical addition of bounciness to basketballs!

That’s about as busy as you can get in a month! It’s been a fantastic whirlwind, and we’re glad you’re all along for the ride! It’s also great to see that our improvements and balance changes are having the desired impact. As of our last check-in, we are incredibly close to the coveted 50/50 win-rate balance! In Early Access, Ghosts have a 50.7% win rate. Conversely, Hunters currently achieve victory in 49.3% of matchups. This of course can fluctuate a bit given party size/player level, and as always we are keeping a close eye on it! 👀

We will, of course, continue to make thoughtful and measured adjustments to attempt to bring this into as perfect alignment as we can.

THINGS ON THE HORIZON

As we move on in Early Access, we will continuously be looking at areas for improvement and additional content for our players. 

We are continuing to work on our matchmaker. Although we have made some significant improvements since launch, we are still working on further streamlining the new player experience. We hope to try some of these changes in the very near future, so stay tuned.

Two other areas we have identified as being critically important are dedicated servers and host migration. As of yet, there are still some open questions around the exact implementation of both, but rest assured we hope to have some news for you on these highly requested features soon.

As far as new content goes, we’ve got some cool new stuff in the pipeline that we can’t wait to share soon. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and Discord where we typically put the news out first!

We’re still refining and tinkering with our upcoming roadmap, so stay tuned for that!

THOUGHTS FROM THE COMMUNITY

In our last blog post during the latter part of April, we put out a poll to collect thoughts and opinions from all of you lovely folks in the community. Quite a few of you responded to give us your opinions on your favorite map types, props, hiding places, and much more. Let’s jump into the thoughts you shared!

MAP MISCHIEF

50.3% of folks who answered our poll said that maps with lots of corridors and narrow spaces (like Mansion, for example) were your favorite map type. It’s easy to see why! Nothing quite beats the frantic pace and excitement of close quarters battles in tight spaces. This is definitely something we’re taking notes on!

In second place with 32.6% of votes, we have maps with lots of different rooms, like Museum. Museum is an example of a map that really brings out an interesting variety of elements and themes. Your thoughts on this definitely give us a few ideas for the future!

Open maps like Ghost Ship had a few less fans. Clocking in at 17.1% of votes, it looks like we may need to consider some changes to make open maps more entertaining. We’re on it!

PROP PANDEMONIUM

Do you prefer hiding in plain sight, or wreaking havoc with functionality-infused hero props? Well, it’s hard to say, seeing as standard small-and-medium-sized props barely edged out hero props with 47.3% of votes, compared to hero props’ 46.9% of responses. It’s good to see that both provide fun and intriguing gameplay.

Understandably, in a game where hiding is the primary goal, large props are least popular. Perhaps there are some tweaks we could make to give them a bigger purpose in the gameplay.

HIDING-PLACE HAVOC

While 47.3% of players said that MGH currently features a good mix of obvious and cheeky hiding places (a very good sign!), some 49.1% of you said you’d like to see more snug fits to hide in that require close examination. We’ll have to inspect our options for exciting new hiding places in tight spaces!

MAP VARIETY

Another question asked in our latest survey was about map variety, and what additions you all would like to see to make existing maps more intriguing. A vast majority of you (88.2%!) answered that conditional map variations (like a wine cellar on Mansion that opens when the attic closes) were the most intriguing way to introduce map variety. Additionally, more than half of folks would also like to see more environmental hazards like the salt water on Ghost Ship.

This info gives us a really good starting point for making intriguing map variations. Who knows — perhaps we can even add conditional variations with their own environmental hazards!

TELL US MORE

In our endless thirst for knowledge, we’ve decided to make yet another poll! We want to hear from all of you in the community about your favorite maps. We collected these ideas from our discord suggestion channel - so we grabbed the most popular ones and decided to narrow it down a bit further!

If you’d be so kind as to let us know which of these map ideas are the most appealing to you, we’d really appreciate it! You can answer the poll here.

ONE OF US!

In other exciting news, the community’s old pal Skedog has a new role. Skedog will be officially joining me as a Community Manager for Midnight Ghost Hunt! I’m very happy to be working alongside such a talented and knowledgeable pro who really loves and understands our community. 

Many of you may know that Skedog has a keen eye for detail, so lately he has been working hard on things like writing patch notes, managing things on Steam and ModMail, and his favorite task — conducting technical wizardry over on Discord! If you see him tinkering around over there on Discord, be sure to congratulate him on the new role. 🤗

That’s ALMOST all for now. Since you all were so kind as to immediately answer that poll I mentioned *ahem* ☝️ - we’ve decided to give you a little taste of what’s to come! Perhaps this gif will excite your thirst for more.

And on that exciting note, we’ll wrap this up and remind you to join us over on Discord to hang out, discuss, and play together - as well as on Twitter to keep up to date with all the latest big news, screenshots, and delicious memes!

Stay Golden, Ghosts and Hunters!
Tinny

KEEP CALM AND HAUNT ON

How’re you doing, Ghosts & Hunters? 👋

Another week of MGH Early Access is in the books so we wanted to check in with you all! Let’s hop right in and check out what’s been going on behind the scenes.

REGULAR PATCHES

Since our last blog post, we’ve put out two patches. We go through the feedback all of you fantastic people so kindly provide for us on our official Discord server, as well as the Steam forums & our social channels, and work on fixes and/or new additions to the game.

Here’s a quick run-through of some of the biggest things we’ve been fixing up and/or adjusting since the last patch. 

Matchmaking

We have deployed a number of matchmaking adjustments in the most recent patch, and we’re already seeing some promising data showing more fair matches being made. These might result in slightly longer wait times, but so far it seems to be working better.

We will continue to make adjustments as feedback and data comes in. Thank you for all the feedback and ongoing discussions!

Changes to the Generator

The Generator is where Hunters can change their loadout during a match. We’ve seen the feedback and understand the frustration of having a coordinated group of ghosts targeting the generator right from the get-go, and leaving your team vulnerable for the remainder of the match. This is why we’ve decided to make the Generator invulnerable for the first 10 seconds after a match starts. Eventually, we’ll be incorporating salt circle visual effects around the generator to better illustrate this.

If you’re keen on checking out all the details, you can check the full patch notes HERE.

If you missed patch #2’s patch notes, you can check them HERE.

POLL RESULTS & NEW POLL

A couple of weeks ago, we asked you what kind of content you would like to see us add to the game next. Almost 900 of you answered the poll, so we want to thank you all for participating - it really means a lot to us!  Out of the options (see below), maps was the clear winner with over 46% of all voters choosing said option. 

Game modes and gear/abilities were neck and neck with a bit over 25% and 22% of the answers respectively.

Your answers really help us as we move forward and plan our first update. While we can’t reveal just what we’ve got in store quite yet, we think you’ll like it! That being said, it’s also important to manage expectations - maps take a great deal of time, work, and deep consideration. So, while we definitely intend to add more maps, it’s important to keep in mind that these take more time than any other content, so they may not always come as fast as you might hope.

We’d love to hear more from you so we put together a second poll! We’re still keeping things fast and easy to answer, so worry not. This time we’d like to hear a little more about your map and prop preferences. You can answer the questions here:

NEW DISCORD CHANNEL

You might’ve noticed that we’ve put together a new Discord channel for you all. The point of #update-suggestions is quite self-explanatory, it’s for you to make suggestions for our upcoming updates (not patches). Updates are (generally speaking) much larger than patches and, in addition to bug fixes, they’ll contain new MGH game content.

Please note that the #update-suggestions channel differs from #game-feedback. We’ll prompt you to give us suggestions about specific subjects and hope to receive these suggestions during the decision-making period.

In keeping with the theme of our survey, this time around we would love to hear specifically about MAPS! What’s your dream MGH map? Let us know your best, craziest concepts, and vote on the ones others suggest. We can’t wait to read through all of your ideas! 

WELCOME TO MY CRIB 😏

The team has been hard at work behind the scenes. In addition to fixing known issues and tackling the bugs you’ve reported (thank you! 🙏) we’ve been putting together something spooky that we think you will really like. It’s spooky season at MGH HQ year-round, after all. 👻

As we work on the upcoming update, we’ve also been putting together an Early Access roadmap so you can get a clearer picture of what we’ve got planned. We’ll have more news to share with you soon! 

LET’S CHAT!

As a quick reminder, we’d like to let you know that if you’d like to give us feedback, report a pesky bug, chat about MGH, or find a group to play with, we have a very active Discord full of lovely folks, where you can do all that.

In addition to our Discord, we also have a fantastic community over on Twitter, and we often post updates and other fun stuff there. We’re also not opposed to retweeting a juicy meme when we see one!

Our Steam page is the right place to go if you want to find the latest patch notes or chat about the game in our Community Hub. It also has a great place for sharing screenshots and fan art!

See you on the hunt, Ghosts & Hunters! 👻

Tinny
Community Manager

ONE WEEK OF EARLY ACCESS!

What’s up, Ghosts & Hunters!

It has been a bit over a week since we launched into Early Access. We’re overwhelmed with the support and extremely thankful for all the feedback you’ve given us. It’s been fun to play MGH with all of you. If you ever catch any devs in a match, don’t be a stranger! 

TAKING A LOOK AT THE NUMBERS

Win rate: Hunters vs. Ghosts

We’ve been digging through the data from the first week of Early Access, and wanted to share some of our findings with you all.

When it comes to the overall win rate over the past week in total, it appears the Hunters have been winning 52.6% of all the matches compared to the Ghosts’ 47.4%. In the first few days, it was much closer to 50/50, but as the days have gone on and people learn the game, the Hunters started shining more.

In our first patch, deployed on Thursday, we made some changes to the Harpoon Bazooka & the Reaper, as well as a slight bump to prop health and Ghost speed. We’re hoping these changes will continue moving us closer to the coveted 50/50 split.

Game balance is a living breathing thing, so we will continue to make adjustments as needed to keep things playing in a way that's fun and fair. Keep the feedback coming!

We’ve already seen some changes to the win rates after deploying the first patch - things are trending towards the Ghosts a little bit now. We’re monitoring data regularly to make sure the balance doesn’t tip too far one way or the other, and we’ll continue to make tweaks if needed.

EARLY ACCESS PATCH #1

As mentioned above, our first patch has been released into the wild! We attempted to go through as many of the feedback and bug reports you all sent in as we could. Thank you for those! They're incredibly helpful. Let's go through some of the main things we fixed or added!

Small changes to Quick Play

By default, Quick Play-created games now end after 2 matches and put everyone back into the queue. This should help mix up the matches a bit and improve our matchmaking pool significantly. Server browser-created games are not affected. If you’re playing with a group of friends or you find yourself in an awesome group while Quick Playing, you can vote for a rematch to continue the rounds with the same group of people.

We’re still looking at how this is affecting actual results.

Granting XP & Shards

Both XP and Shards are now granted as soon as the game is over, rather than waiting until after the MVP screen. This will ideally improve situations where the host quits to deny other players progress. 

We’re looking into a way for XP and Shards to be granted as the events take place in a match, but this type of change may still take some time to implement and test properly.

4 new language options

We are happy to tell you that we’ve added French, Spanish, Polish, and Brazilian Portuguese language options to the game. We’re already working on bringing Korean and Italian to MGH, as well, and will add more languages if we have enough demand for them. 

Harpoon Bazooka nerf

Harpoon Bazooka now has a reload/cooldown animation to make it less spammable, and the duration of Harpoon attachment has been reduced. 

We got quite a bit of feedback from people facing teams stacking two or even three harpoons and this choice led to very frustrating matches. After testing the changes internally, we feel that the Harpoon Bazooka is in a much better place balance-wise. 

These were some of the highlights of Patch 1! You can check the full list of patch notes on our Steam Page. 

WHAT’S NEXT?

Anti-cheat

We’re currently looking at improvements to our anti-cheat system that will improve the player experience. Naturally, we don’t want to give away too much here. 😉

However, we take all player reports seriously and are taking action to make sure cheaters are banned from MGH.

Prop hit detection / low damage bug

We have gotten some reports regarding the prop damage and hit registration issue, and are in the process of tracking the issue down. Internally we’ve solved a few of these issues already, and we’re hoping to have an update for you by the time the next patch rolls around. 

Matchmaking

Matchmaking is a tricky beast! We hope that the changes made to Quick Play in the first patch will result in the matchmaking pool having a larger player base to choose from when creating matches. We’re surely keeping a close eye on this.

Generally, I think we are seeing an issue where some players may be marked in the default region of North America due to localization not coming into effect when initially selecting a region on first game startup. We’re looking at ways we can potentially improve this and have a more accurate region selected.

Performance

As we go throughout early access, we will be continuing to improve overall performance, both on CPU and GPU. We have noticed some reports of performance being a bit worse after Patch #1, and we are investigating this as well. We’ve got some things we’re trying internally that is having some promising results on GPU performance on some of our maps. Stay tuned on that!

POLL

We’re interested to see what type of content you’d like to see us add to Midnight Ghost Hunt next! Let us know by answering this one-question poll!

LET’S CHAT!

If you’d like to give us feedback, report a pesky bug, chat about MGH, or find a group to play with, we have a very active Discord full of lovely folks, where you can do all that.

In addition to our Discord, we also have a fantastic community over on Twitter, and we often post updates and other fun stuff there, as well as share the latest screenshots and teasers. Our Steam page is the right place if you want to find the latest patch notes or chat about the game in our Community Hub.

We look forward to playing more with you all, see you on the hunt! 👻

Tinny
Community Manager

REVIEW OF EARLY ACCESS DAY 1

Greeting Ghosts, and Hello Hunters! 👋

We launched into Early Access yesterday! The entire team here would like to express our most heartfelt thank you to all of you who’ve already purchased the game, the Early Backer Pack/Bundle, or soundtrack. We appreciate the support immensely and will continue to improve upon the game as we continue through Early Access!

It’s been an absolute joy to play with you all, chat about the game, and check all of your wonderful MGH creations - whether they were memes, screenshots, YouTube videos, or live streams. We love to see that, and hope to see them coming! 😊

WHERE TO FIND US

There are a couple of things we wanted to point out to make sure that you can access all the information that’s out there. We have a wonderful, active Discord community where you can discuss the game, look for a group to play with, give us valuable feedback, post memes, and screenshots, and promote your stream or channel.

If you come across any pesky bugs while playing, you can report them over at https://midnightghosthunt.featureupvote.com/ As a quick reminder, we want to point out that our board at Feature Upvote is solely for bug reporting. Feedback and suggestions can be discussed over on our Discord.

You can also join us on Twitter or Reddit!

INCOMING UPDATES

We have a long list of languages on their way to MGH:

• French

• Spanish

• Polish

• Brazilian Portuguese

• Korean

• Italian

These will be added to the ones already in-game:

• English

• German

• Russian

• Chinese (simplified)

We’ve also gone through your feedback and are keeping a close eye on the matchmaking concerns, as well as Harpoon Bazooka balance.

Matchmaking is something we’re continuing to look at, and it appears related to how many players often find one good lobby and play there for awhile, instead of being thrown back into the matchmaking queue after a few games. So the amount of open slots available tend to be reduced at any given time. We’re looking into ways to reduce the chance of being put into very high ping lobbies as much as we can.

Teams of Hunters stacking the Harpoon Bazooka is also something we’re looking into. There’s a few potential routes we could take here, be sure to let us know your thoughts on our Discord. We’ll try some things internally and keep you all posted.

We’ve also heard about hosts leaving before XP and shards are granted. This will be improved in an upcoming update, with XP/shards being granted immediately on game over instead of when the top players screen appears a bit later.

Eventually, we will set up a way for shards/XP to be granted as you go in a match, though that may take some time to implement and test properly.

We’ve seen the discussion about dedicated servers - this is something the team is working on with high priority. We were hoping to have them in for launch, though we hit some technical hurdles. We’ll continue to work on them and hope to have them ready in a future update. Stay tuned for news on that.

On a lighter note, a little bird told me there are some cool new emotes in the works, too, so remember to keep an eye out! 👀

See you on the hunt!

Tinny

Community Manager

WELCOME TO EARLY ACCESS!

Midnight is nigh, Ghosts and Hunters - and it’s time for phantasm pandemonium! 

Midnight Ghost Hunt is now available on Steam Early Access. It’s been a long and exciting road as we ramp up to this Early Access release, but now we’re ready to show MGH to the world! Here’s all the packages you can now get in your ghostly grasp:

Midnight Ghost Hunt - $19.99

This is the base game that gets you in the action.

Early Backer Pack - $39.99

Even buying and playing the base game is more than we could ever ask for! But if you’re keen on showing your support as we march onward toward full release and you’d like to get your hands on some spooky extras, then this is the perfect pack for you. The Early Backer Pack is a means for those who wish to support development to be able to do so. 

As a heartfelt thank you, you'll get a couple of treats included in this pack, some of which are in production and will be available in-game very soon. You’ll get: 

• A fancy in-game title that identifies you proudly as an “Early Backer” (if you choose!)

• Ghost Skin: The Lord, as seen in our Cinematic Trailer (TO BE ADDED SOON)

• Ghost Skin: The Lady, famous for her appearance in the same Cinematic Trailer (TO BE ADDED SOON)

• Hunter Skin: The Veteran, who's been around the haunted block and is definitely getting too old for these shenanigans (TO BE ADDED SOON)

• Hunter Skin: The Rookie, who's new to the game but makes up for it with ambition and spunk (TO BE ADDED SOON)

Early Backer Bundle - $49.30

This package will get you the base game, Early Backer Pack, and the soundtrack bundled up with a discount!

This is the package for you if you want it all! If you want to support the team, snag all the content, and jam out to sweet MGH tunes, you’re in luck! The Early Backer Bundle includes all of the stuff from the Early Backer Pack, as well as the official Midnight Ghost Hunt soundtrack (which will be updated with more songs as they’re released!)

Midnight Ghost Hunt Soundtrack - $4.99

If you’re more excited by ethereal audio or don’t want the added skins and in-game title, the MGH soundtrack can be picked up on its own, as well.

So there you have it! MGH is out now, and we’re thrilled to welcome you to Early Access!

As a small thank you for those of you who helped us test in the past, we will have 2 exclusive skins for you in game, as well as the "Alpha/Beta Tester" title. We are still working out the details, but we are fairly certain it will just work. 🤞

For all the new players joining us, we also invite you to join our community of players and devs!

We have a very active Discord full of lovely folks, where you can discuss strategies or find other players to team up with. You can also share feedback directly with our development team there.

In addition to our Discord, we also have a fantastic community over on Twitter, and we often post updates and other fun stuff there, as well as share the latest screenshots and teasers, and we plan on posting quite a bit on our Steam page as well if you want to follow us there!

We look forward to playing with you all, and we’ll catch you around midnight! 😉

- Tinny
Community Manager

EARLY ACCESS LAUNCHES MARCH 31ST & THE LAST EVER BETA STARTS MARCH 28TH

Hey Ghosts and Hunters,

Another week with more exciting news! This time around, we’ve got a release date for you, as well as an awesome new cinematic trailer. 

THE BIG ANNOUNCEMENT
Today at the Future Games Show, we announced that we are releasing into Steam Early Access on March 31st, at a price of $19.99! This is wildly exciting for our team, as we’ve been working for years to develop Midnight Ghost Hunt, and now we’re finally closing in on the day it’s available to everyone.

THE TRAILER
As mentioned, we also released an incredible new cinematic trailer today. We’re excited to share this with all of you, as we’ve been working on it for quite some time. It definitely evokes the spirit of MGH, and it’s awesome (if we do say so ourselves). Be sure to check it out!

ONWARD TO EARLY ACCESS!
Now that you’ve watched the cinematic trailer and you’re all pumped for Early Access (...you DID watch it, right?) we can let you in on a little secret. Before we get to Early Access, we’ve got one last hurrah planned. On March 28th, we’ll kick off a two-day closed beta!

All of you long-time players have one more chance to sharpen your hiding and hunting skills! This is also a fantastic opportunity for some of you who have never had the chance to play to get another crack at experiencing MGH before it kicks off worldwide.

While we won’t be able to grant access to everyone, new players can still request access to this Beta on Steam for a chance to get to play during the Beta period. We’re planning to really open the flood gates for this final test, so we’ll do our best to give access to as many folks as we can manage.

Also, this beta will NOT BE UNDER NDA! Content creators rejoice, it’s finally time! 🙏

Here’s some of what’s new for our final beta:

CUSTOM GAME OPTIONS
This is by far the biggest feature we’ve added since our last test. With custom game options, you can take even more control of server settings to randomize loadouts, choose which weapons to allow and which to ban, and even do things like adjust movement speeds or give everyone a mystery loadout! This should make for all sorts of fun scenarios (who doesn’t like 5x movement speed and only weapons that make for big booms?!), and we can’t wait to see what crazy game modes you all come up with!

NEW HERO PROPS
We’ve also added two new hero props to MGH! The new hero props are… T-Rex Head and the Skeleton! We’ll leave it up to you to figure out where you can find them, what they do, and how they work. Suffice it to say T-Rex Head has more than a little bite to it!

FIRE, FURY, AND BALANCE
As we’ve had the balancing of the Flamethrower on our minds for quite some time, we’ve decided to make it a heavy weapon from now on, similar to Project-X. Gone are the days of rapidly razing every prop in sight to the ground - now you’ll need to employ a more measured pace when using the Flamethrower, as your movement speed will be reduced while it’s equipped.

COOKING WITH A BANG
Grenades can now be cooked and will cause self-damage if cooked too long (just like mom’s macaroni recipe) or if standing too close to their explosion radius, similarly to C4.

LIFE TRACKING
In order to prevent players from quitting games and rejoining to be alive again, we’ve implemented a new life tracking system. Now players won’t be able to game the system by hopping in and out of servers.

ACCESSIBILITY - COLOR VISION DEFICIENCY OPTIONS
We want as many people as possible to be able to play and enjoy MGH. To make that easier for our friends with color vision deficiency, we’ve added a first pass feature aimed at easing the difficulties of play they experience. We intend to continue improving this feature for the future, so if you experience color vision deficiency, be sure to let us know how this works for you!

SHOW ‘EM HOW YOU FEEL
There will be FIVE new emotes to try out with this beta!

• Admire the Duck

• Kung-Fu

• So Scary

• Nirvana

• Peek-a-boo

NEW VICTORY POSES
We’ve added 13 new unlockable options for victory poses! Of course, you’ll need to win to use them yourself, so… best of luck!

NEW HUNTER SKINS
We have added several new Hunter skins and have reworked a couple of the existing ones as well! Let us know which one is your favorite!

TITLES AND ACHIEVEMENTS
In addition to victory poses and emotes, we’ve also added 29 Titles, and 42 Achievements for you to unlock!

RECENT PLAYERS LIST
In order to make it easier for you to add new friends and connect with awesome players (and report ones the less awesome ones who left before you had a chance to report them), we’ve added a recent players list. You can find it in the add to party panel.

NEW VAN AND RIDE-INS
Last but not least, we’ve hooked you all up with a new whip. The van has been totally redone, and vehicle ride-ins are much more realistic now! There’s stuff to look at, the vehicles turn and maneuver, and the experience is overall more dynamic and enjoyable. And before you ask… yes, you can still spray your profile picture in the van - don’t worry!

And much much more - we will publish a full changelog as usual on Discord when the closed Beta goes live!

That about wraps it up this time around, Ghosts and Hunters. We really hope you’ve enjoyed the cinematic trailer, and we look forward to playing with you all in the upcoming Beta and then Early Access. If you haven’t yet, be sure to wishlist MGH on Steam ahead of the Early Access launch to be notified when MGH is finally available for everyone. We’d love to hear all your thoughts regarding the last Beta, Early Access, and all things MGH so let’s chat over on Discord and Twitter! 

Tinny
Community Manager

STEAM EARLY ACCESS HERE WE COME!

Greetings Ghosts and Hunters,

Exciting news! We’ve just been featured at the SXSW (South by Southwest) Gaming Awards with a new in-depth gameplay trailer, voiced by our very own lead developer Kite!

The trailer serves as a good introduction to the basics of MGH - feel free to check it out!

We’re also very, very excited to reveal that we are headed to Steam Early Access THIS SPRING!

(Exact date to come later, stay tuned for more info!)

So why Early Access?

We’re absurdly proud of Midnight Ghost Hunt in its current state. We’ve been playing with all of you in closed alpha and beta tests over the last few years of development, and we think those of you who have played extensively will agree that we’ve laid out a brilliant foundation - and that’s how we view it. We’ve built a strong foundation, and now we’re ready to build something incredible on top of it with the help of our community.

We believe the best game mechanics, the coolest gear and maps, and the most stable balance will emerge during the Early Access period when players truly start to get their hands on the game and we get a better feel for how things play out when we have a bigger scale of players.

We’ve built up a good amount of content over the last few years and we want players to experience that, but we also want to keep adding more and hearing about how players feel before we get to a full release. We want players to be able to play continuously now, so that we can get an even sense of what balance changes might need to happen.

As we go into the Early Access release, MGH will have a pretty robust set of features. These include:

• 4v4 hide n seek mode with matchmaking

• 7 maps inspired by spooky tropes

• 10 Hunter weapons, 10 Hunter gadgets, 9 Hunter perks

• 10 Ghost abilities, 10 Ghost Perks, 8 Ghost Haunts

• Bots: can fill in for players, but are also able to play pure bot matches with you

• +40 skins, emotes, and taunts

• Custom game rules editor

• Voice chat integrated into the game

For all of you who have been here with us from the beginning, thank you for your support and help in making MGH the game it is today! This Early Access phase is truly just the beginning.

For those of you who are new around these parts or those of you who haven’t managed to find us on the official Midnight Ghost Hunt Discord server yet, please do join us there! We actively chat with the community on a daily basis, so come and join us! We’d love to hear your feedback and thoughts so that we can make MGH even better together. 

We encourage you all to tell us what you’d like to see more of, what you’d like to see less of, and what your feelings on the overall balance are. Our Lead Developer Kite has been known to queue up for some late-night matches to get a better understanding of our players’ impressions, so keep an eye out and don’t be afraid to say hi to Kite or any of the other devs! We love to chat and talk about strategy and our favorite wombo combos! 😉

We’re really excited to head into Early Access and play more Midnight Ghost Hunt with you all! See you on the hunt, actually SOON™️! 👻

Tinny
Community Manager