Phasmophobia devs want to fix broken “bendy” animations, but fans love them way too much

Ghost-hunting horror game Phasmophobia is now out on console, bringing the asymmetric multiplayer game to PS5 and Xbox Series. With the developers still working hard on future updates for the beloved title, they’re also keen to not fix issues that fans love, as much as they annoy the devs.

In an interview with VideoGamer, Phasmophobia senior developer Ben Lavender explained that there are some bugs that have become core to the game’s identity. Due to the love shown for certain bugs, the team will likely keep some “nostalgic” technical quirks in the game for the fans.

Phasmophobia will keep bendy backs for you

Speaking to VideoGamer for an upcoming episode of the New VideoGamer Podcast, Lavender explained that there is a desire to fix issues such as the game’s “bendy backs” but they know fixing them will upset longtime fans.

“I think, kinda, balancing player feedback alongside our vision for the game is kind of what makes us decide how much change to make,” Lavender explained. “There are some things that people love about the game that we want to change, that feel janky, but it’s also part of the nostalgia, right? There’s like the “bendy backs” that we currently have in the game, the animations, people love that, but we do kind of want to make it look and feel a lot better.”

The “bendy backs” issue is a bug that the Phasmophobia team knows exactly how to fix. In the game’s early development, there were issues with clues showing up for two players at once. To fix this, the game’s original solo developer, Daniel Knight, tied characters’ body movements to the movements of the first person camera, creating the weird animations we see today.

“We do have a way to fix it,” Lavender said. “But I think, because we’ve got our character customization and character model overhaul coming in the near future, I think we’ve just kind of thought we’d wait to do it in line with that.”

The team won’t always listen to fans

Despite the team’s willingness to make fans happy, the Phasmophobia developers aren’t listening to every fan request. One fix the team really wanted to make came in the form of its beloved Asylum map, an early arena that has changed massively from its original incarnation. In a 2022 update, Kinetic Games added New Asylum to the game, ditching its initial map layout.

“The original asylum map that we had in the game, people absolutely loved that,” Lavender said. “But an entry point into that map, especially if you’re a new player, like every single room feels the same. Every room just had like a room number. It was like asylum dormitory 1 to 96 or something silly. So it was very copy-pasty. Every room felt the same. So we wanted to make, you know, make it feel unique.”

With the console launch now in the background, Kinectic Games is still working on years of updates for Phasmophobia until the eventual release of 1.0, and likely even after.