It’s November 2024. An old friend of mine reached out to me and told me to download Phasmophobia so we can play it together. Of course, I had heard about the game beforehand, given that Phasmophobia has been in early access since 2020, but it had recently come to consoles in October. We hadn’t really had a game to play together since the heydays of Apex Legends, so I downloaded the game, and the following weeks saw a reunion of The Boys (not to be confused with the comic series).
My high school friends and I had a new game to play, and because of that, it would easily become my most-played game of 2025. There’s a good chance it stays my most played game for this year (or at least I don’t see it falling out of the top 10). We spent weeks getting good at the game, with most of us having a couple of levels of prestige under our belt. Every co-op Phasmophobia session is filled with incredibly dumb antics. We went from playing every night around dinner for weeks to playing a couple of times a week to now, where we play once a week or so. That’s just natural, given the sheer number of hours we’ve put into the game, and now, Phasmophobia’s 6 Tanglewood Drive rework releases on March 3. I’ve welcomed every map rework it’s pursued recently, but this one hurts.
Why Phasmophobia is Reworking Tanglewood
Developer Kinetic Games has given a few looks at the map and outlined its goals/why it’s even reworking Tanglewood. It wants to bring up the visuals and gameplay of Tanglewood, making it more comparable to recent Phasmophobia maps and reworks, boost the replay value of the map, and align it with the studio’s vision for the game’s future full release. Part of this endeavor is to remove the various stock assets still in the game, which is understandable. On paper, I fully understand why Kinetic Games is reworking Tanglewood, but on paper, Kinetic Games has always known this would upset portions of the fanbase.
Alongside the release date announcement for Tanglewood’s rework, Kinetic Games reiterated that:
“We knew when we announced that 6 Tanglewood Drive would be getting a rework, it would be a hot topic amongst the community due to its popularity and the place it holds in players’ hearts. With the work now done on this new version, we believe we’ve only improved on what makes the map so special.”
This message is directly for me, and players like me, or especially those who have been playing longer than me. And while I understand the desire and need to fix it, I don’t think changing a map can “improve” what makes it special. Tanglewood isn’t special because of its specific framing, but because my friends and I spent weeks on the map improving our skills at the game, because we know that map like the back of our hand, and because it is the warm-up map for any session of Phasmophobia. It might still be and I am trying to reserve judgment, but you can’t manufacture what made Tanglewood special.
If there’s a realm of possibility where players could keep/access Old Tanglewood and New Tanglewood, I think that’s the easiest solution. At the very least, I hope Old Tanglewood comes back a few times throughout the year.
Who’s That Character?
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Identify the silhouettes before time runs out.
Easy (7.5s)Medium (5.0s)Hard (2.5s)Permadeath (2.5s)
Tanglewood’s Rework Looks Fine, But It Doesn’t Look Like Tanglewood
If you told me the images released of New Tanglewood so far were a completely different map, I’d believe you. The front of the house is largely the same, but the hallway looks completely different, the living room looks like it’s from a completely different era, the kitchen’s looping spot is gone, and the van (that has annoyed me for years when the ghost starts honking it) is replaced by a completely different car. I don’t even know about the nursery that has saved me from a Phasmophobia ghost hundreds of times since I first started playing.
At first glance, Phasmophobia‘s changes to Tanglewood just don’t align with me. Maybe when it releases, I will feel different—I was on board with Phasmophobia‘s other map reworks since their announcement—but the changes are much bigger than I expected when it was first mentioned.
Kinetic Games says that it sought to “keep the core design of the house as familiar as possible,” so there aren’t any drastic layout changes (outside the Kitchen), and that “the redesign has given 6 Tanglewood Drive a much richer personality introduced through new interactions and landmarks that players will notice from their first steps inside.”
Kinetic Games has also said that there is a host of new audio features in Phasmophobia for Tanglewood and that there are still “excellent locations” within Tanglewood to loop ghosts. Apparently, there is even a dryer jingle. The expanding audio features make perfect sense to me, as well as adding brand new interactions, but just…the New Tanglewood is not Old Tanglewood.
So, I’m firmly on the side of the fanbase that Kinetic Games knew would be upset by major changes to Tanglewood. I get it, but I don’t like it. But when the Tanglewood rework drops, I have no doubt my friends and I will check it out. I just don’t know if it will capture the same magic. We’ve, of course, talked about it from the teasers that have released so far, and we run the full gamut of opinions. I am, perhaps, on the extreme end of not liking it, while another friend is on the extreme end of being open to it. The others are somewhere in the middle, and if anything, the way our pendulum swings represents how important Phas as a game is to us. We all want what’s best because we love it so much.
Kinetic Games is saying “Trust,” and while I am immediately hesitant about this, I’m choosing to trust that what makes Tanglewood special is not gone. I just know I am going to miss Old Tanglewood, no matter how much I like or dislike New Tanglewood. I can also guarantee I’ll be spending plenty of time in Tanglewood until March 3.
Source: Kinetic Games
- Released
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October 29, 2024
- ESRB
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T For Teen // Blood, Use of Drugs, Violence
- Developer(s)
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Kinetic Games
- Publisher(s)
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Kinetic Games
