UPDATE 4 (THE THANKSGIVING UPDATE) AND A 50% SALE!

Hey Ghosts and Hunters,

We’re back with another exciting and festive update to help you kick off the holiday season. Update 4 (Thanksgiving Update) includes a new boombox, new hero props, festive decorations, and even a brand new Hunter Gadget. 

Update 4 will be the perfect way to shake off that post-turkey lethargy this Thanksgiving, so let’s dive on into the meat of what you can expect!

New Feature: Boombox

This is a fun new feature that I think a lot of you are going to love. We’ve added the Boombox - a sweet retro-style boombox (familiar to all you Satisfactory fans) that you can use to play your favorite Coffee Stain game music in MGH. You can collect music cassettes found spread out across the various maps to unlock tracks to play on the boombox. You can find a boombox in the van, at the generator, and across the maps. If you’re a Hunter, you can use it to DJ your van ride, and Ghosts can even possess a boombox and play their favorite tunes while chasing you!

The cassettes you find will include music from Deep Rock Galactic, Satisfactory, Huntdown, Songs of Conquest, Sanctum, and Goat Sim, so you’ll have tons of tunes to choose from.

2 new soundtrack songs

To go along side the release of the boombox, we are also releasing 2 new songs on our official soundtrack, Something is Happening, But I Can’t See It and Don’t Leave Me Now - be sure to check them out!

New Hunter Gadget: Camcorder

This new gadget is great because it mixes fun and useful functionality with a bit of tactical mischief. The new Camcorder gadget can be deployed by Hunters to watch over a given area, meaning that Ghosts running past will be tagged and made visible to Hunters for 10 seconds. Ghosts, however, are free to possess it to move it around, so it makes for a fun high-value possession target! Give this gadget a go and be sure to share your thoughts, because we’re dying to hear your opinions!

Thanksgiving Decorations

It wouldn’t be a MGH holiday without a little fun flair! Naturally, we’ve taken the opportunity to spruce up the maps and the van with a few festive Thanksgiving frills to help you feel the holiday vibe. Let us know what you think of the new digs on Discord!

Turkey-tastic Hero Props

There’s no way to discuss this new Hero Prop that doesn’t sound absolutely absurd in the best way possible… You can possess a tasty, juicy turkey. You can run around frantically like a chicken with its head cut off, while inhabiting the tasty form of a (beautifully animated!) seasonal entree. You will strike fear in the hearts of Hunters as you stalk them succulently. It is everything I never knew I wanted in MGH. It’s also a little creepy, conceptually, and I am here for it.

In addition to the crispy-fleshed fowl, you can also hop inside Pumpkin Pies and use their delightful Fall flavors to make Hunters wish they were never born. Hunters will have their field of view splatted for a short while if you land a headshot! Do yourself a favor and splat some Hunters in the face this Thanksgiving.

50% Off Sale

In addition to the Thanksgiving Update, we’ll also be kicking off the start of the winter holiday season with a 50% off sale! If your friends are looking for something fun to play during their winter break be sure to recommend MGH while it’s on sale! It also makes a great gift for your squad. MGH will be on sale from November 22nd to the 29th!

That’s all for this time, Ghosts and Hunters. We’re wishing you a tremendous Turkey Day, and we hope you enjoy Update 4! As always, we look forward to hearing your thoughts on the update, so hop on over to Discord or give us a shout on Twitter with your thoughts!

👻-Team MGH!

UPDATE 3, A 50% SALE, AND DOUBLE SHARDS!

Hey Ghosts and Hunters,

We have a spooky surprise for you today! Update 3 (The Halloween Update) brings a bunch of new stuff to MGH! Just a quick note before we get started though, we are shifting our Update strategy a bit to have somewhat smaller, but more frequent updates.

We hope by doing this, we can bring you new content faster, even if that means the updates don't always contain a new map. Our plan currently is for any additional content to be an update, and of course we will continue to do the smaller patches we have been doing for small additions and bug fixes. So while this update doesn't contain a big new map like our other updates, we still have some really cool stuff to share!

50% SALE AND DOUBLE SHARD WEEK

I can hardly think of a more appropriate way to get ready for Halloween than playing some sweet, spooky games. For those of you who have been haunting the Steam page waiting for a sale, you’re in luck! MGH is now 50% off as part of Steam’s Scream Fest sale. To welcome all our new players aboard our ghostly little carnival ride, we’ll also be granting double the normal amount of Ghost Shards throughout this whole week for all players.

Halloween Decorations and New Hero Props

In the spirit of the season, we’ve got a spooky surprise! We’ve decorated all the maps and the van, so you can better appreciate this spooktacular time of year. We’ve also added three new Hero Props for you all to enjoy.

Chomping Pumpkin - Much like our mimic chest friend, this pumpkin will have no problem taking a bite or two out of you

Pumpkin Jack-in-the-box - Is the hammer from our regular Jack-in-the-box too aggressive for you? How about launching pumpkin guts at them instead?

Witch Doll - Who needs a knife when you have a broom? Zoom across the maps and bonk the hunters to your hearts content

NEW EXPERIMENTAL GAME mode - Darkness

Darkness is our brand new experimental darker and slower-paced MGH experience. You have 15 minutes to midnight, and the lights are greatly reduced, which makes flashlights a requirement. Hunters have limited ammo and a slower overall movement speed as well, which forces less of a run-and-gun play style.

You all have been asking for something like this for a while, and we finally have something we feel is a good enough start so you all can start giving us your thoughts. We will be keeping a very close eye on feedback for this new game-mode in a dedicated channel on our Discord, and adjusting as needed. Please keep in mind this is very experimental, so things might break or not look as good on some maps, we will be improving it over time.

You can checkout this game-mode by setting up a custom server and selecting darkness from the drop-down, or join an existing darkness game via the server browser. This will not be accessible via quick-play for now, but that may change in the future.

RANDOM LEVEL VARIATION

Another highly requested feature has been random maps variations. When you boot up Mansion now, you have a random chance for the attic to be closed off, and instead a new path opens to the all new Wine Cellar. This will add a more dynamic element to matches that will add a bit of excitement and variation as players need to adjust their tactics. We are trying this out with just this one variation first to see how you all feel about it before we ramp up and do more, so please let us know what you think on Discord and Twitter!

NEW SKINS

Spooky season brings two new fantastic skins to the MGH lineup:

Pumpkin Head Ghost Skin - For all you ghosts and ghouls out there, we’ve also got a wicked new skin for you! Pumpkin Head is a ghastly spectral skin that once donned will find yourself shrouded in a tattered cloak with a Jack-o’-Lantern for a head.

Duck Hunter Skin - If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it probably is…a brand-new Hunter skin. The Duck Hunter skin is a honking cool skin. We definitely recommend you take a quack at it with this one. 🦆

NEW UNLOCKABLE TITLES

We’ve added two new titles for you to strut your stuff with:

Consumed - What spooky season would be complete without some soul consumption? Time to equip Glutton and get to work consuming 250 Hunter souls to unlock this title

Multi-Millionaire - When we added the Millionaire title we thought we were safe for a while...turns out some of you have a lot of Ghost shards sitting around. If you happen to have 10 million of them sitting around, this title is for you! And if not, time to start that grind 😉

That’s it for this time, Ghosts and Hunters! We hope you have a happy Halloween, and we can't wait to show you more of what we are working on with our more frequent updates! Have a great spooky season Ghosts and Hunters, and look out for more updates actually truly soon!

👻-Team MGH!

BEHIND THE SCENES: Carnival

It’s been about a month since we rolled out Update 2, so since you’ve had plenty of time to explore Mr. Giggles’ Happyland, a.k.a. Carnival, we figured you were ripe and ready for another behind-the-scenes look at how our levels are made!

We have had Carnival at the back of our minds since early 2021. The haunted Carnival setting is absolutely iconic from its depictions in legendary horror media, so we were hardly surprised (though very pleased) to see that the idea resonated strongly with the community in the earlier community polls we ran during the first few months of Early Access.

As with all of our maps, we started Carnival with block-outs - essentially just a work-in-progress map with placeholder assets that let us get an idea of where we’ll put key elements. Once we’ve got a good idea of the broad strokes, we iterate.

Some early ideas for Carnival included a fully-accessible funhouse, a tunnel of love, and even a ball pit! For one reason or another, as we test internally and iterate, some ideas get cut for the sake of quality. Our initial ideas made the map absolutely massive, so we had to scale it back a bit to keep gameplay tight and focused on the map.

When making an MGH map, It’s gotta have that special MGH feel, so we need to make sure we get things like the size and scope juuuuust right - and we’re pretty sure we hit the nail on the head with this one. The vibe and theme shine through strongly, and it blends an homage to horror classics with our quirky and fun MGH style seamlessly. (As a brief aside, we’re always keen to get feedback, so if you have any, please don’t hesitate to send it to us on Discord or Twitter!)

After we’ve decided on the nuts and bolts of a level and gotten things more or less where we want ‘em (like the awesome merry-go-round, for example), we polish to get that authentic MGH feel. This is when we add neat stuff like these awesome posters to dial in on the vibe we’re after. I mean… these are pretty sweet, huh? My personal favorite is the Fortune Teller.🔮

The Carnival map also has some pretty cool hero props, like the Jack-In-The-Box and the Carnival cannon (an absolute must if you’re aiming for iconic imagery) similar to the cannon aboard the Ghost Ship. In addition to hero props, we’ve also added some animatronics, which aren’t just visual flair, but also add gameplay impact such as giving you a scare or even doing damage if you’re not careful!

All things considered, the Carnival map is an exciting new addition to MGH, and we hope all of you are enjoying playing on it. If you have thoughts you want to share regarding improvements or just general feedback, we’d love to hear them. We hope you enjoy Mr. Giggle’s Happyland, and we hope you enjoyed this peek behind the scenes!

One final note in-case you missed it in our last post, we recently announced our updated roadmap for the near future of MGH, check it out below!

Keep your eyes peeled for some spooky season news very, very soon as well! 🎃

Until next time, stay spooky ghosts and hunters!

Tinny

UPDATE 2, FREE WEEKEND, AND 50% SALE!

Hey Ghosts and Hunters,

We’ve just rolled out a hot and fresh new update for all you fearsome ghouls and ghastly hunters! Update 2 comes with a brand new map, a new ghost ability, new hunter skins, new titles, an exciting new hero prop, and a weekend full of fresh blood due to a free weekend and a half off sale! Let’s dive on into the juicy details and take a peek at what we’ve cooked up now.

NEW MAP: Carnival

The biggest and one of the most exciting things in Update 2 is the Carnival, a.k.a. Mr. Giggle’s Happyland, a quirky carnival of terrors. This theme has long been awaited by many of you in the community, and it’s pretty clear you all have excellent taste! This charming festival of fear has some really great set pieces and areas, including an eerie merry-go-round, the Alien Arcade, a Wild West Saloon with bumper cars, and Mr. Giggle’s very own Haunted Mansion complete with dangerous animatronics.

Mr. Giggle’s Happyland is full of surprises, so be careful running around corners. We think you’re going to have a frightfully great time. After you’ve had a chance to check it out, be sure to drop some feedback to us over on Discord, and send us screenshots and videos on Twitter!

NEW GHOST ABILITY - Deflector

Deflector can summon a wispy shield that will deflect incoming projectiles. The shield lasts for 5 seconds, but is cancelled if you attack just like Phantom does. This gives you the perfect opportunity to get away from danger, revive a teammate, or consume a Hunter’s soul. You can even try to bodyblock incoming fire towards your teammates. Note that the projectiles still hit somewhere, as they deflect off the side of the bubble shield.

The shield won’t defend you from melee attacks, so watch out for those Ghostsmashers and Sledgehammers. In our tests we have found Deflector to be quite effective, and really shake gameplay up a bit in fun ways.

Although the ability is cancelled if you attack, you can still use it to position yourself for a follow-up assault.

NEW HUNTER SKINS

Who’s ready for some new cosmetics? Yeah, me too. We’ve got three brand new Hunter skins for you all:

Paramedic - fully outfitted with PPE, a medical vest, and a nifty stethoscope (it may not be functional, but it looks cool!)

Pilot - a metal-studded fighter pilot with a sick flight suit

Old Hippie - the 60s may be long gone, but they left their mark - the Old Hippie has some sweet and colorful duds with a pretty rad flower patch (y’know, the kind of patch you put on clothes)

NEW UNLOCKABLE TITLES

In this update, we’ve made some improvements to Challenges - now when you complete a Challenge, it will display the Challenge you’ve completed to make it easier to keep up with those you’ve completed and move on to the next one. In addition to this improvement, we’ve got four new titles that you can now unlock by completing in-match Challenges. You can now unlock and use the following titles to show off your skills:

• Apprentice

• Master

• Grandmaster

• Legend

New Hero Prop

If you caught the trailer for Update 2, you’ve probably seen some fun new hero props! If I were a Hunter, I’d be careful of the Jack-in-the-boxes or you might get bonked. There might also be some bumper cars that are exceedingly good at bumping away Hunters.

NEW SONG

Ghostwood Empire has done it again! This new tune with a late 80s-inspired feel will most definitely give the Hunters a boost while they listen to it in the van on their way to hunt ghosts. The song “Flight of the Kite” is a tribute to nobody else but our favorite cat in a tophat (and lead dev 😉), Kite. The song has also been added to the Midnight Ghost Hunt Soundtrack.

FREE WEEKEND AND 50% SALE

It’s always exciting for us when new people discover MGH. Even though we’re still in the early days of MGH and there’s a lot more coming, we want more folks to experience the magic with us. To support that discovery and to celebrate Update 2, this weekend we’ll be having a free weekend on Steam! The free weekend will run from September 22nd to 26th.

Those of you who are checking out this post because you’ve newly fallen in love with MGH over the free weekend, you’re in luck! MGH is also now 50% off, so there’s no better time to snag a copy. If you’re a new player concerned about carrying over your progress from the free weekend, worry not! All of your progress from throughout the free weekend will carry over if you decide to give it a test run first and purchase it on the last day of the deal.

In addition to the base game being on sale, you can also get 50% off the Early Backer Bundle, Early Backer Pack, and the Soundtrack if you’d like to show a bit of extra support during our Early Access period.

SICK FITS - MGH MERCH IS NOW AVAILABLE

If you want to rep your favorite prop hunt game, you can snag some sick fits over on our brand new merch shop. We’ve got hoodies and shirts for that ectoplasmic drip, and you can get them both now. The collection includes backpacks, mousepads, and posters, too. We’ve also got mugs, so you can enjoy your favorite drinks, but we can’t promise they come 100% unpossessed, so you may find yourself periodically wondering if it’s going to hop off the desk and attack you. It probably won’t, but might as well buy one now and find out!

DEDICATED SERVERS AND HOST MIGRATION COMING VERY SOON

We have been working extremely hard on dedicated servers and host migration, and while we were striving to get them included in this update, they still need some final touches and more testing before we can roll it out to everyone. We expect these to be wrapped up very soon though, and we will be releasing them as soon as we feel they are ready. We know both of these features are very highly requested, and it is a number 1 priority for us to get them done. Thanks for being patient, and we should have some news to share on these very, very soon.

That’s all, folks! At least for now. 😏 The spooky season is approaching, though, so keep your eyes peeled for even more updates! We just might surprise you with something special. A great place to get your news and updates is our Discord server, where players and our team hang out on the daily. We’ve also got a really great Twitter, so go give it a follow for the memes! Have a great weekend Ghosts and Hunters, and look out for more updates soon!

👻-Tinny, Skedog, and the rest of Team MGH!

ROADMAP REVEAL, 30% SALE, AND A PATCH OH MY!

Hey Ghosts and Hunters,

It’s been a few weeks since our last blog post, but this one is well worth the wait! After our first few months of Early Access, we’ve done quite a bit of learning, thinking, and planning for the future, so we thought now would be a great opportunity to recap as well as to roll out more details on our upcoming roadmap! But first…a quick announcement:

👻MIDNIGHT GHOST HUNT IS CURRENTLY 30% OFF ON STEAM!👻

Now is the perfect time to snag a copy of our 4v4 ghostly prophunt game if you haven’t already!

It’s been quite a journey getting through our first few months of Early Access, and it has been incredibly exciting and heartening to see the community’s (and the world’s!) reactions to Midnight Ghost Hunt. Those of you who have been with us a while might already know that prior to our Early Access launch, we did a number of Alpha and Beta tests. Those were awesome and gave us some early insight into the thoughts of all you players, but Early Access has been on a whole other level!

As a side note, one of the reasons it has been so fascinating isn’t just the excitement of hitting a big milestone - it has to do with the scale of feedback and telemetry we get. With an Alpha or Beta test pool, things are naturally a bit more closed off, but after entering into Early Access, the amount of players and the amount of feedback has been absolutely tremendous. We’ve received thousands of reviews on Steam, and all of you in the community are absolutely buzzing with excellent feedback. This is exactly what we were hoping for, and we hope we can continue to rely on all of you to continue sharing your thoughts with us in the future so that we can make MGH the best it can possibly be.

In a short time, we’ve really managed to cover a lot of ground! We couldn’t have done it without you all here to encourage us and provide feedback, so while we look back with pride at all the stuff we’ve managed to tackle, the community definitely deserves a pat on the back as well.

That being said, there’s lots of ground still left to cover! Which brings us to… THE SUMMER PATCH!

THE SUMMER PATCH

Before we start looking further afield in regards to our roadmap, it’s important to mention that we have quite a juicy patch incoming! Hot off the heels of Patch 10 comes… THE SUMMER PATCH! Alright, maybe the naming convention could use some work, but this is somewhere between a patch and an update.

Here’s what you can expect when you next hop in:

In-Match Challenges - In the Summer Patch, we’ll roll out a fun new way to get shards (which can, of course, be used to unlock gear, emotes, skins, and other fun stuff). When you’re in a match, you’ll now get (totally optional) prompts to perform specific tasks, like “wreck a ghost using the Salt Shotgun”, or “get a headshot using a prop”. If you complete the challenge, you’ll get some extra shards! This is a fun thing we are trying out and plan on expanding it more in the future to include more advanced tasks/strategies.

New Cosmetics & Emotes - All you fashion divas and divos (no, I did not have to look up that word!) who have been clamoring for some new cosmetics, emotes, and victory poses will be pleased to know that your calls have been answered! In the Summer Patch, we’ll be adding the following Hunter skins:

• Birthday - Alpha and beta testers may remember this one! New and improved, you can now sport some sweet swim shorts just in time for the summer season.

• Jock - a pretty snazzy new football uniform for you to wear. The helmet might not protect you from Ghosts, but you’ll look sporty and intimidating!

We’ll also be adding these neat emotes:

• Disco Dance - Ah, ah, ah, ahhhhh!!! Stayin’ alive 🤞 (Doubles as a Victory Pose!)

• Bully Dance - look… There’s no easy way to describe this. You’ll get it when you see it. (Doubles as a Victory Pose!)

• Hyperventilate - When used ironically, you’re basically telling everyone you ain’t shook (they’ll probably believe you, specifically because this one also doubles as a Victory Pose!)

• Satisfactory Clap - Perfectly pairs with the recently added Pioneer skin from Satisfactory!

A New Hero Prop - Little brothers of the world, rejoice! Now you can possess the TV! The latest hero prop will allow you to smack hunters in glorious full HD when you possess the TV. You can find it on School, Museum, and Asylum!

THE ROADMAP

After a great deal of thinking and planning, we’ve put together a look at what we hope to accomplish in the remainder of the year!

Behold, the MGH Roadmap for the second half of 2022!

There’s lots of exciting stuff on here, but let’s start at the beginning! Quarter 3 is the period from the start of July until the end of September. This year, there’s a bit more to look forward to in Q3 than just two awesome months of summer and the start of the changing of the leaves, though. We’ve got big plans!

One of the biggest upcoming features, as you can see in the image above, is the addition of dedicated servers as an option. We’ve started the process of working on this, and hope to have it completed sometime in Q3! Alongside this, we are also working on host migration in P2P hosted sessions. This is a large undertaking from a technical perspective, but both of these features should result in much smoother gameplay and improved stability overall.

Q3 will also have a lot of new content, including a new map, more hero props, more cosmetics like skins, emotes, and victory poses, and of course an updated roadmap to keep you in the loop of future plans and to ensure our timelines are still on track with the realities of development. All things considered, Q3 is looking excellent!

Q4 (the period from October 1st-December 31st) will take us through peak spooky season in the fall, and right to the season of giving. And we’ll be giving all of you some tricks and treats between now and then to be sure! In Q4, we'll be looking to add additional content such as a new map, additional hero props, cosmetics, and... new gear and abilities! We've got some great ideas cooking up, so be sure to keep your eyes on our roadmap moving forward to stay in the loop of when those will drop!

THE Early Access WISHLIST

Looking far out to the horizon, we see in the distance the end of Early Access. That’s a ways off, as there’s still a lot we’d like to accomplish while in Early Access. As you can see from the roadmap above, we want to add several new maps and map variations, lots of great props, new things to do in the game, loads of new cosmetics, gear, and abilities, and maybe even a new game mode that'll keep you having fun with MGH for a long time to come.

As this is still a ways off, we can’t say too much about it just yet, but we wanted to keep you all on the same page with our vision for what’s to come!

One final note, you might see things slow down a bit during July as far as new content/features are concerned. A lot of our lovely dev team is based in Sweden, and it is pretty common that around July/August, basically everyone in Sweden goes on vacation for a few weeks. So while we will still be fixing bugs and making changes, things will slow down for a few weeks while some of the team takes a well deserved break.

If you’ve seen anything here that has you excited, or if you have ideas, thoughts, or feedback to share, there are a few great places for it! We’re always quite active on Discord, and there are great places there for you to send feedback to the team. Additionally, you can shoot us short-form thoughts on Twitter, or just come and hang out for the memes! If your curiosity isn’t yet peaked, worry not!

There will, of course, be more details on all of this in the future. For now, however, I believe it’s time for you to rest your Ghostly or Hunterly peepers and me to rest my weary fingers until the next dev blog! 

Until next time Ghosts and Hunters!

Tinny

BEHIND THE SCENES: The Doll Factory

Hey Ghosts and Hunters,

Today we have a neat behind-the-scenes for you!

Let’s deep dive the history and process behind the creation of our newest map released in Update 1, the Doll Factory.

As some early alpha testers may remember, the map started out a very long time ago as “Warehouse”. It did not yet have any factory attached to it, and literally was just a bunch of boxes and palettes stored inside a warehouse.

Despite the fact that the original iteration of this level worked well enough for prop hunt gameplay, it didn't have much of a theme or as much of the charm and character you all have come to expect from an MGH map. It was a bit sterile, and we felt that Warehouse needed a bit more life to it. A strong theme and vibe!

That's how the first iteration of Factory was born. Alpha and beta testers may remember this version a bit better - its rough layout was similar to what we have now but a lot more overgrown and with mannequins everywhere.

We introduced an early version of the conveyor belt and map hazards/traps like the big hammer/smashers at this stage.

This was a clear improvement from the original Warehouse concept, but still seemed like the weakest map in our rotation. It had too many dead ends and not enough cover for escaping Ghosts. This led to a very high Hunter win rate in comparison to other maps, and a lower overall rating and map selection rates.

It also had perhaps too much grunge/overgrowth that made traversable areas harder to read, and areas that were out of bounds were not very clearly defined.

We decided to pull the Factory from rotation and consider our options. We knew the map needed some changes to its base layout to help the balance issues, as well as an even more creepy theme that can give the map a stronger identity.

In terms of layout, we added a few new loops and connections between areas so that no specific section is a complete dead end - there’s always a second way out. Specifically, we added some connections to the back of the factory floor, as well as a way to come in through the side of the warehouse. We also added more line-of-sight breaks so it would be easier to get away as a Ghost than before.

As for the theme… creepy dolls. Yep, that certainly seems to have done the trick! We reworked massive sections of the map, added some fun yet eerie set dressing, and placed a whole slew of intriguing props - and thus was born the newest iteration of the Doll Factory!

One notable difference is that this map has the largest amount of unique hero props of any map. Considering most maps have one or two hero props, the concentration on The Doll Factory is quite high—it has FIVE. We discussed these props in our previous blog post, but the short version is that The Doll Factory features:

• Murder Doll — a creepy little bugger that can scuttle around and pull a knife from its mouth

• Warehouse Gate — a guillotine-style door that can be used to lock Hunters in a room, or deal damage with a well-timed smackeroo

• Forklift — heavy machinery that allows you to juggle hunters with ease (much to the chagrin of occupational health and safety organizations worldwide)

• Soda Machine — which obviously shoots cans at your face at wicked high speeds (technically we have this on School too, though)

• Speaker — a prop that allows you to push around Hunters and damage them using sweet, sweet sonic waves (this one is on School as well)

If you’ve tried these awesome hero props and have a favorite, there’s still a few days to vote in our Twitter poll, and let us know what kind of hero props you’d like to see more of!

Early indicators are we hit the nail on the head considering our goal of making this feel much more “MGH”! The map is fun, visually quirky, and mechanically satisfying. At least that’s how we feel about it — and it seems to be picking up steam with all of you playing. But we want to hear your thoughts on our latest addition, as well! If you have feedback on the Doll Factory map, we’d love to hear it! If you have ideas about how to make it even cooler, you should most definitely share them with us on Discord or Twitter!

Until next time, stay spooky ghosts and hunters!

Tinny

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