UPDATE 11: 2ND HUNTER GADGET SLOT, MAIN MENU UI OVERHAUL, SEPARATE EMOTES/VICTORY POSES FOR GHOSTS, AND MORE!

Season’s greetings, Ghosts and Hunters!

As the holiday season blankets the world in warmth and cheer, our ghostly game is no exception to the festive magic. 'Tis the season for festive spirits, so grab your gear and get ready for a hauntingly delightful Christmas hunt!

❄️2ND HUNTER GADGET SLOT ❄️

Previously, Hunters had only one gadget slot that would force a player to pick either a tracking gadget or something else. Internally, we’ve experimented with adding a second gadget slot to Hunters that gave lesser-used gadgets a time to shine without needing to give up the ability to track Ghosts. The results were promising, so we are rolling this change out in this update!

Hunters now have the choice of a weapon, a regular gadget, a utility gadget, and a perk. We have currently split the gadgets in a way that we think makes the most sense to prevent a solo Hunter from being overly strong, but please note this is experimental, and we would love to hear your feedback!

The “regular” gadgets are Radar, Vacuum, Camcorder, Spectrophone, Pathfinder, and Trap. While the “utility” gadget options are Defibrillator, Medic Kit, Grenade, Grappling Hook, and C4.

Our goal with this change is to allow the Hunters to use more of the niche gadgets while still retaining a tracking gadget. We can’t wait to see what new crazy builds you come up with!

In an attempt to balance out this change, we have decreased Hunter movement speed by about 10% to compensate for the extra power that Hunters gain to hopefully prevent a major swing in balance. We will be keeping a close eye on the analytics and your feedback, and we will adjust as needed!

💻 MAIN MENU UI OVERHAUL💻

The first thing you will notice when booting up Update 11 will be the newly overhauled main menu! This new main menu allows for easier navigation through the various menus, brings the style up to date, and adds a widely-requested new feature: you can now toggle between Ghost and Hunter skins for your party in the main menu!

💃 SEPARATE EMOTES & VICTORY POSES FOR HUNTERS & GHOSTS💃

You may also spot a new feature in the new main menu, separate emote and victory pose selections for Hunters and Ghosts! You know you have always wanted to Praise the Duck as a Hunter and do the Forbidden Gesture as a Ghost, right? RIGHT? Well, now you can!

🎄SEASONAL DECORATIONS 🎄

What would the holiday season be without some seasonal decorations? We’ve once again covered all the maps and the van with decorations galore. You might even find Santa or his elves across the maps as well 👀

💵UPDATE 11 SALE💵

To celebrate our eleventh Early Access update, we’re also celebrating with a discount. If you haven’t had a try at hunting and haunting quite yet, now is a perfect time to do so! MGH is 66% off right now on Steam for the Steam Winter Sale and 66% off on the Epic Games Store as well! Gather your crew and hop on in. The sale runs until January 10th on EGS and January 4th on Steam!

🤑DOUBLE GHOST SHARDS🤑

We’ll also be granting double the normal amount of Ghost Shards throughout this whole week to celebrate the Holiday season!

👀AND MORE… 👀

This update also includes:

• Prevent full-screen “Logging into your Epic Account” popup from happening mid-match

• Fix weapon projectiles sometimes stopping and instantly breaking flinging props

• Many smaller bug fixes as well
  

That’s all for now, Ghosts and Hunters! We wish you a great holiday season, and a wonderful start to your New Year! As always, thanks for your unwavering support and we can’t wait to see you back on the h(a)unt soon! 😊

👻 -Team MGH 

UPDATE 10: SCARY SEASON, ECTOPLASM & MIDNIGHT BALANCE CHANGES, UI REFRESH, AND MORE!

Hey there, Ghosts and Hunters!

As the crisp, cool breeze of autumn fills the air, it can mean only one thing: Halloween season is here! So don your favorite duck costume, and join us in the excitement as we delve into Update 10!

🎃SCARY SEASON DECORATIONS 🎃

What would scary season be without some seasonal decorations? We’ve once again decorated all the maps and the van with ghostly adornments galore. The three Halloween hero props are back once again for you 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 heart’s content

🕸️ ECTOPLASM BUILDUP/Radar CHANGEs 🕸️

With this update we have also made some pretty serious balance changes, and that starts with how Ectoplasm buildup works.

We have heard from the community that Radar detecting Ghosts with 0 Ectoplasm buildup didn’t make much sense, so we changed it! Our intention is for Radar to be much more accurate, while also making Ectoplasm buildup more clear for Ghosts.

• 0 Ectoplasm buildup now means 0 reading on Radar/Spectrophone

• Moving in a small circle as a Ghost will no longer reduce Ectoplasm buildup

• Radar will no longer get confused between different floors

  • Before, Radar could show a high reading if a Ghost with high Ectoplasm buildup was on the floor above you, that is no longer the case

• Radar will no longer get confused if you have a low Ectoplasm ghost directly in front of you, and a high Ectoplasm ghost slightly further away

  • Before, this would cause Radar to show almost no signal, even though you have a high Ectoplasm ghost nearby

• Taunting still lowers Ectoplasm buildup, however we have increased the volume to make this more risky in revealing your location

• The Ectoplasm buildup bar now will show a shaking Radar icon the higher your Ectoplasm buildup gets to clarify what having high Ectoplasm actually means: High Ectoplasm = High Radar reading

🕷️ MIDNIGHT BALANCE CHANGES🕷️

We’ve focused this update on improving balance and how Midnight plays out during matches. Hunters missing even a single Ghost previously meant that all Ghosts come back at full health, or they could easily heal any damage they took pre-midnight.

This new system is designed to still allow Ghosts to feel powerful at Midnight, while assuring Hunters that the last 5 minutes weren’t for nothing. Destroying 3 out of the 4 ghosts before Midnight will now make a drastic difference to the possible outcome for Hunters at Midnight.

• At midnight, all health orbs will despawn, and they will not respawn for the rest of the match

• If you die as a Ghost before midnight, you will come back with less health

  • If you were not vacuumed, you will come back with 60hp

  • If you were vacuumed, you will come back with 35hp

• There are only two ways to heal as a ghost after Midnight

  • Consuming a Hunter soul will do one of the following:

    • If you are <100% HP, you will heal some damage

    • If you are 100% HP, a health orb will spawn at this location for a teammate

  • Destroying the Generator will drop 2 health orbs, allowing you/your team to heal

• UI will indicate how much health you will have when you respawn at Midnight

• Ghosts will look less saturated at lower health after Midnight, making it easier to choose which Ghosts to target

We hope that these Midnight changes will reward Hunters for any success they do have before Midnight, while still allowing the Midnight Ghosts to feel powerful. Do give it a shot and let us know what you think over on our Discord!

💻 UI CHANGES💻

Alongside our Midnight balance and Ectoplasm/Radar changes, we have also made some UI changes to add additional clarity:

• Health bars are now segmented into ~25HP chunks - this should allow you to roughly determine how much health you have in various props or Hunter perks

• The health bar now animates more clearly and with more polish when taking damage or healing

• When you are low health, you now have a more intense red outline on the outside of the screen so can more clearly understand you are low health

🥳 DEDICATED SERVER PROPS FIXED 🥳

A major issue that we noticed over the past few months was related to unpossessed props stuttering after a dedicated server had been online for an extended period of time. This was causing lots of other issues as well, such as Hunters teleporting around when getting hit by these specific props, as well as Ghosts being able to occasionally teleport outside of the maps when attempting to possess these props.

I am happy to report that this should be completely fixed now! So go forth and enjoy the nice, stable dedicated servers once more, and if you run into any issues please let us know on our Discord! 🥳

💵UPDATE 10 SALE💵

To celebrate our tenth Early Access update, we’re also celebrating with a discount. If you haven’t had a try at hunting and haunting quite yet, now is a perfect time to do so! MGH is 66% off right now on Steam for the Steam Scream Fest and 66% off on the Epic Games Store as well! Gather your crew and hop on in. The sale runs until November 1st on EGS and November 2nd on Steam!

🎵SEVERAL NEW GHOST TAUNTS🎵

We also added several new Ghost taunts for you to unlock and enjoy! Taunt the Hunters to your hearts content!

🤑DOUBLE GHOST SHARDS🤑

Trick or treat! We’ll be granting double the normal amount of Ghost Shards throughout this whole week to celebrate the Halloween season!

👀AND MORE… 👀

This update also includes:

• Activating voice chat should no longer cause FPS drops

• Join friends match in progress button from the Social menu should work again

• Players from all platforms (Epic/Steam) should now show in the Social menu, regardless of what platform you are playing on

• Implemented improved experimental bot pathing

• Many smaller bug fixes as well
  

That’s all for now, Ghosts and Hunters! As always, thanks for your unwavering support and we can’t wait to see you back on the h(a)unt soon! 😊

👻 -Team MGH 

UPDATE 9: VAN RIDE ENTERTAINMENT, CONTROLLER SUPPORT, STEAM TRADING CARDS, AND MORE!

Hey there, Ghosts and Hunters!

The summer season is over, and we have been hard at work on some of the things we called out in our July blog post. We’ve got a new update for you today, so let’s get into it!

🚗New Van Ride Entertainment 🚗

One of the suggestions we have heard from a ton of players is that the Hunters seem a little bored and need something to do (other than the spray 😉) while they are heading to their next haunted destination on those van rides.

Hunters will be idle no more! Introducing: the GhostMaster handheld gaming console! You can play “Ghost Invaders” and pass the time on your next ride. You can also customize the handheld with multiple color choices (including transparent purple ✨)!

🎮 Full Controller Support 🎮

Full controller support is another highly anticipated feature. Although we’ve had experimental controller support since our Early Access launch, we’ve been working hard to perfect the experience of playing with a controller. We’re thrilled with the results and can’t wait for you to try it out! Whether you prefer using a mouse and keyboard or a controller, we’re confident that you’ll have a fantastic experience. As always, we welcome your feedback on Discord or Twitter (X) about this new feature!

🎉Steam Trading Cards🎉

We’ve added Steam Trading Cards to the game! Now, as you play MGH, you’ll have the chance to collect wicked virtual cards featuring artwork from the MGH world. Once you’ve collected a full set of cards, you can turn them into game badges and tradable Steam community items. The sooner you collect ‘em all, the sooner you can flex on your friends. 😉

🕹️QUICKPLAY IMPROVEMENTS🕹️

After observing the quickplay data, and of course listening to your feedback, we have made more adjustments to the quickplay algorithm that should now result in finding better, faster matches! Specifically, quickplay will look for a “perfect” match, and then fallback to a “good” match faster, which should result in finding a match faster, and ending up in your own match with bots less often. Please give it a shot, and let us know what you think over on our Discord!

💵UPDATE 9 STEAM SALE💵

To celebrate our ninth Early Access update, we’re also celebrating with a discount. If you haven’t had a try at hunting and haunting quite yet, now is a perfect time to do so! MGH is 66% off right now on Steam! Gather your crew and hop on in. The sale runs until the 26th of September.

👀AND MORE… 👀

This update also includes:

• Fix Extra Gear not working with Camcorder and bumped default ammo count from 1 to 2

• Female skins now have female voice callouts for both Hunter and Ghosts

• Deflector can no longer be activated while charging a slingshot

• Ghost Health Orb pickup radius increased

• Hunters now have a unique running sound instead of a sped-up walking sound

• Improvements to Buckler Shield with Ghostsmasher not always blocking hits (even more improvements for this coming soon)

• Doppelganger will appear with the other player’s actual gadget/weapon, no longer just Spectral Cannon

• Code refactor of most Hunter weapons and gadgets, leading to improved performance with bots and weapon projectiles, such as Frostbite and Project-X

• Map exploit fixes (looking at you…Carnival 🎪)

• Many other smaller bug fixes as well

Although that’s all the news we have for now, rest assured that our team is hard at work behind the scenes to bring you even more exciting updates! From enhancing performance and fine-tuning bots to improving matchmaking and beyond, we’ve got plenty of tricks up our sleeves. So keep your eyes peeled for future announcements!

That’s all for now, Ghosts and Hunters! We’re grateful for your unwavering support and can’t wait to see you back on the h(a)unt soon! 😊

👻 -Team MGH 

EXCITING MILESTONES AND AN UPDATED ROADMAP, OVER 1 MILLION NEW PLAYERS!

Hey, Ghosts and Hunters!

In our last update, we released Midnight Ghost Hunt on the Epic Games Store with full crossplay compatibility and we were absolutely blown away by the support. We saw over 1 million new players join us on the hunt, a million! This is a remarkable achievement that fills us with gratitude and excitement for what's next. Speaking of what's next...how about an updated roadmap? 😉

Our Q3 (July - September) roadmap lays out our plans for the near future, but here are some key highlights:

🎮 Full Controller Support 🎮

We are planning to improve our overall controller support over the next few months to provide an equally excellent experience for all players, regardless if you are playing on mouse & keyboard or using a controller.

🚗New Van Ride Entertainment 🚗

One of the big suggestions we hear from players is the Hunters need more to do during the van ride, so we are cooking up something special for this...be on the lookout for more info soon.

✨HUD / UI Improvements✨

Over the next few months we will be working on sleeker menus, better tooltips, and enhanced visual cues to hopefully provide more clarity and convenience.

🎉Steam Trading Cards🎉

With the introduction of Steam Trading Cards, you'll have the opportunity to collect, trade, and craft cards featuring stunning artwork inspired by the game's universe.

📅July Vacations📅

Almost all of our dev team is based in Sweden, and July typically marks the start of a few weeks off for vacations in Sweden! What this means for us is a bit of a slowdown in updates during this time, as we will be working as an even smaller team for the month. However once the vacations are over, you can expect everyone to be back at it 100%, and we have some big things planned!

💵STEAM SUMMER SALE💵

If you haven’t joined us on the hunt quite yet, now is a great time to hop in as MGH is 66% off as part of Steam Summer Sale! The sale runs until the 13th of July, so be sure to tell your friends!

👀AND MORE… 👀

While that is all we have to share right now, we are certainly working on other things as well; such as performance improvements, bot improvements, matchmaking improvements, and more, so be sure to keep an eye out for future announcements.

That’s all for this time, Ghosts and Hunters! Thank you again for your continued support, and we look forward to seeing you back on the h(a)unt soon!

👻 -Team MGH 

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

UPCOMING JANUARY CLOSED BETA TEST!

Hey, MGH Squad! 👋

If you’ve been keeping an eye out, you might have seen our hint about another test this month! Well, today we have more information to share.

Our next closed beta test will start on Friday, January 28th, and will run through the weekend! The test is currently planned to conclude at 3 AM EST Monday, January 31st.

This is our second closed beta, and our NDA/no streaming rules will still stand. This is still in effect due to some experimental new features that need stress testing before we go loud on streaming.

We’ve been hard at work improving the balance, polish, and overall quality of the game since our last test. Before allowing content creation at a larger scale, we want to make sure everything runs smoothly and the game feels fun and fair for all participants! Thank you for understanding, we’ll make sure to keep you updated on all the news about content creation soon™.

Now, let’s take a closer look at what’s new in this closed beta!

🖥️ NEW FEATURES 🖥️

Map Polishing/REWORK

Our most iconic map, Mansion, has gone through quite a visual transformation! We’ve made it feel closer to the haunted Victorian mansion concept that inspired it. Take a peek at the above video to get an idea of how it looks now.

Museum has also seen a visual polishing pass, cleaning up meshes and improving the lighting.

Factory has seen some layout tweaks in an effort to make the map more balanced - internally these changes have made a big difference, we are looking forward to seeing how it turns out!

A few other maps have had some polishing as well, we can’t wait to hear what you think!

Progression (v2)

Last test, we introduced progression to unlock gear and abilities based on player level. We received great feedback on this topic and we’ve decided to try a different approach.

Now, you can unlock gear and abilities with your Ghost Shards, just like the cosmetics. This game is all about counters and switching your loadout to best suit the situation - so it makes sense to let players pick what they want to unlock first instead of an arbitrary level requirement.

The costs to unlock gear are relatively low, so you can quickly gear up without overwhelming new players immediately with all of the choices available. Simply earning XP and completing matches will give you Ghost Shards.

Bots

Our AI-controlled bots are now ready for testing! By default, they will fill empty player slots until players join and replace them. This ensures a 4v4 match at all times. The host of the match can disable this if needed in the Server Tools interface.

Keep in mind they are very much a work in progress, but definitely give us feedback! The easiest way to do this is by joining us on Discord.

Anti-cheat

We’ve implemented a new anti-cheat system to ensure all MGH matches are as fair as possible! Please note this is also an experimental new feature that needs testing on a large scale.

Matchmaking IMPROVEMENTS

We introduced matchmaking in our previous beta and received great feedback on how it worked out. We’ve taken that into consideration and made various tweaks and bug fixes that should ideally make more balanced matches going forward if the players queue through the quick play system.

As always, this is a work in progress, so let us know what you think after playing some rounds.

Server browser improvements

Server browsing is better than ever! We’ve included some new filters in the server browser, including regions, friends only, and by map! If any of your Steam friends are playing on a server, that server will appear at the top of your server list and be denoted with an icon to make playing with them even easier.

Vaulting

Vaulting is here! Now Hunters can climb up and over any obstacles in the way. From what we have seen internally, this has helped the Hunters feel much more nimble and mobile, but be sure to let us know what you think!

VAN RIDE IMPROVEMENTS

The iconic van ride (or the boat ride if you’re heading to the Ghost Ship) has been fine-tuned, making the ride feel better with realistic bumps, camera tweaks, and new sitting animations.

TRAP REWORK

In an effort to make Anti-Ghost Traps more consistent, they now pull you out of your prop into Ghost form when you are caught in it. You simply need to punch the trap a few times to break loose, but you are vulnerable in this state.

There’s also new visual polish and animation tweaks for the trap - including a range indicator that gives you a sense of how close you can get to it.

The Untrappable perk for Ghosts makes it so you are not pulled out or slowed very much.

Cosmetics

Ghost skins are finally here! We have 9 new ghost skins for you to choose from. We also have a few new hunter skins, and they are now visible in first-person! Pretty nifty.

NVIDIA DLSS Support

If you happen to be one of the lucky ducks who have an RTX 20 or 30 series graphics card, feel free to test out NVIDIA’s DLSS functionality. You can read more about it in our previous blog post.

🗝️KEYS🗝️

If you have a key from any previous test, you can join the MGH beta by simply reinstalling Midnight Ghost Hunt - Beta Test on Steam to participate.

If you don’t have a key, things have changed a bit this time around. We are now using the Steam playtest feature to manage access!

All that you have to do is go to our Steam store page and click “Request Access” under the Playtest section. If you are chosen you will get notified on email and on Steam directly, and the game will automatically show up in your Steam library! If you want to click that “Add to Wishlist” button while you are there, we sure wouldn’t mind. 😉

There’s many more changes, including many balance tweaks based on feedback (Yes, the Flamethrower got tweaked) - stay tuned closer to the test for a full changelog.

JOIN US ON DISCORD!

To give us feedback on the test, we will still be using our Discord, so make sure to join us! We might throw a few keys in #general still, just for old times sake 👀

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, and we’ll see you on the hunt on the 28th of January!

Tinny 👻
Community Manager