What's the Game?

Ghost Hunter Simulator is a game that focuses on exploration and simulated management. High level, you take on the role of an Aspiring Ghost Hunter, explore allegedly haunted locations gathering evidence, then you use that evidence to build up a social media empire in the game.

Are the Ghosts real? I don't believe in ghosts!

That's valid! When you start a new save in GHS, you will be asked "Are Ghosts Real?" For that save, your answer is the answer to this question. If you say "Ghosts are Real" then you are correct. They will exist, you will be able to hunt them, and you will get evidence of a full body apparition!

If you answer "Ghosts are Not Real" then you are correct. You will be able to find logical and scientific evidence that proves there are no ghosts, just loose floorboards, drafty houses, and flecks of dust that interact in interesting ways with the light.

So, it's like Phasmophobia?

Sort of but not really. Both games use the theme of ghost hunting, but Phasmophobia is a horror game designed to frighten players. GHS is a ghost hunting game, presenting a more realistic (if simplified and streamlined) experience of being a Ghost Hunter seeking to become a famous Ghost Hunter (or Ghost Debunker). The simulation part is how your story plays out. GHS may at times be spooky or chilling, but will never present true threats to the Ghost Hunter's wellbeing. At its core, GHS is about exploring places that claim to be haunted and getting to experience those places without physical danger.

What does "Cozy Horror" even mean?

GHS is a cozy game that just happens to have spooky theming. The term "cozy" has been muddied in the last couple of years, but we define it as "Cozy: The game is chill and never puts pressure on the player. They can choose their own path without fear of missing something or being inefficient." There is no combat in GHS. There are no fail conditions. There are no jump scares. If the dog starts barking or the baby starts crying, you can set down the controller and walk away without worrying about losing or dying. You can revisit locations as many times as you want and explore deeper as you unlock new tools to better track down the elusive spectres. The focus of the game is on exploring allegedly haunted locations and learning the local lore and the history of the ghosts that call these locations their home.

Think of it as the difference between the Haunted Mansion and the Haunting of Hill House. Both are excellent experiences, but one is decidedly family friendly and laden with bad puns, while the other is true horror, including gore and stressful sequences.

How long is the game? Will there be updates?

At launch, GHS will be a very short game. Potentially only 12-20 hours long (assuming you take the time to find every secret and explore every location we offer.) However, we do plan on continuing support and adding new levels over time. Do not worry though! This isn't a "live" game. There will be no battle passes, no fomo, no limited timed events. Tying back into our definition of Cozy, we want GHS to be a game that you can take as you want. Visiting with us and exploring some new weird places, then going off to play other games for a while. We are not just game devs, but also gamers, so we understand not wanting to be tied to a single game. We are also parents and artists in 2025, so we appreciate a game with a definitive end and limited time commitment.

Why release in Early Access?

A couple of reasons.
We need help testing the game. Often Game Devs become blind to the issues within their own game. They know the answer, so it’s not obvious when the answer isn’t obvious. Also, PC games are notorious for having issues with strange hardware configurations. Getting players in now, helps us learn where our weak spots are so we can shore them up. Ideally, we’d have a QA team to handle this, but we don’t have that kind of funding.
It helps with the design drift as we start to get more feedback and eyes on the project. “No plan survives first contact with the enemy.” and while we don’t consider players our enemy, we will get feedback and we will potentially action on that feedback. By putting the game up for sale, we not only get funding, but also the ability to filter feedback based on who has bought in.
We wanted to go ahead and get the game out there, then continue to polish and update it as we go. As a “Spooky” title though, our release window is limited to October thematically. So we decided to release in Early Access this October (2025) with our 1.0 targeting next October (2026).

Who is “We” (Prime8 Entertainment)?

Prime8 currently consists of a few people, most of whom are working on the game in their spare time.

First, Ryan Steiner is the primary designer and implementor of the game. He's been working on it full time since March of 2024 when he was laid off from his dreadful Android development job.

Kim Steiner (waves Hi!) is the secondary game designer and level designer. She works a day job to support Prime8 and GHS. (Feel free to check that game out here! ) On weekends she streams her level design work and answers questions about Skylanders, getting into games, and what a Level Designer does.

Kim and Ryan met while working on the Skylanders series at Toys for Bob.

Matt Fossen, who also has a day job as an environmental scientist, has been working on our UI and Art, learning Unreal in the process. We met Matt in World of Warcraft, pugging him out of Trade Chat to join our raiding guild. Here we are, 17 years later, still friends and working together to do crazy things.

Ross Sigworth has been helping with audio and other support.

John Barnes, who was also a designer at Toys for Bob, has been doing some level design work for us. His levels include the Gold Mine Ghost Town and the Wavy Gravy Sanitorium. (Fun Fact, Kim and Ryan were married at John’s house!)

These levels sound familiar but aren't quite right.

Yep! Many of the places we have recreated in the game are inspired by real locations. We've made changes - not just to the layouts but also the stories - with a couple of goals in mind. First, most real world spaces aren't actually very fun to play in a game. Further, some of the stories we wanted to tell are more salacious and exciting, as opposed to the often dark and disturbing reality. So to make it work as a game, we had to make adjustments. While it's not currently planned, there is a possible future where we do collaborations with specific locations - in which case they will be more accurate to real life than our current levels are.

Some of this art looks familiar.

Ah! You've also played House Flipper I see. Most of our art comes from Asset Packs we purchased either from Humble Bundle or the Unreal Marketplace/FAB. GHS is being made by very few developers and none of us happen to be artists. We can do simple textures and meshes, but creating the art would be extremely time intensive and would have meant fewer levels, less systems, and honestly, not a game we could commercially sell. With having real world locations as our inspiration, we require a large range of assets, which increases the time and cost to make the game. By using asset packs, we can still pay for our art, but at a price we can afford. Remember, this whole thing is being bootstrapped by Kim's day job and the generosity of some very talented people. Everyone is donating their free time and expertise. There's no funding, no publisher, no corporation carrying the financial burden.

Ideally, GHS will do well enough to allow us to not only pay the people who have already been working on the game, but also hire more developers to help us expand it. I'm sure our future art director will be excited about replacing all our asset pack assets when that time comes. (She was also recently laid off from her job, so if we are successful, we have an AD ready to hit the ground running.)

What's the future plan if the game does well? What if it does poorly?

There's no end to locations that could be haunted. We have plans for some of the more expansive and interesting locations to be added to the game. We can currently sustain production at its current rate for about a year after launch. Meaning - we'd have Ryan working full time on systems, performance, and bug fixes. We'll still have Kim making new locations and stories. And we'd probably still have minor UI support from Matt. If the game sells well enough to continue sustaining the team we have, we will keep adding levels and updating the game as long as we can. We really like this game and Kim loves building levels for it.

But at the same time, we're game devs. We understand that even large games, with large teams, and large marketing budgets can still fail. And we're also very aware of the rate of success among indies. If that should happen, GHS returns to its origins as a hobby project. Something we work on in our spare time and over long weekends. There would still be updates, they would just have more time between them and less content to them overall.

Does Prime8 use AI?

NOPE. We're creatives. We write, draw, paint, and design in many different ways. We understand that making art is a human endeavor. We also do not agree with the wholesale theft of art to make GenAI work.

This is a game made by humans, for humans. We believe that art is part of what makes us human and art is important. Especially art that reflects the real world and it's many horror stories. If we didn't make it (we made a lot of it) it was from Epic or the asset packs on the FAB store (formerly the Marketplace). If you see AI, please contact us immediately.

We strongly believe if it's not worth the time for a human to make it, it's not worth wasting your time to engage with it.

Ryan wants me to ask you to ask all of you if any of you can help him get the AI off his phone? It's an Android Samsung Fold. Help. The AI is invading! Our email is on the website.

What does the Roadmap look like?

For starters, bug fixes, performance updates, and additional levels to explore. Assuming nothing changes, we will add 6-8 more levels before 1.0. Additionally we plan on adding more tools (we have several prototyped, but not ready for ship yet). We will also continue to add and expand upon the Ghosts’ behaviors, the social media options in the Medium Mixer, and the things going on in the Player’s Headquarters.