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Image via Escapist / Kinetic Games.
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Over the last year, Kinetic Games promised that the reworks for the farmhouses and family homes would get a much needed spruce up. The maps, largely sharing the same assets, were mainly just picked for their layouts. Sure, some felt different, but over the years, it led to a homogenisation, and that’s where the map reworks come in.
We are now on our fourth rework, with 13 Willow Street the latest of Phasmophobia’s map reworks through its roadmap. We got a chance to play it a little early on a dev build, and so far, 13 Willow Street got a much needed renovation.
Image via Escapist / Kinetic Games.
Entering the map, you’ll be immediately greeted with a change in the front space. There’s a wider open plan entrance, with the car on the path and a walkway to the door. Upon entering, you’ll recognize the living room, albeit with a much needed glow up. The house has a cat obsession. There’s cat furniture on the left wall, little bell balls, cat carriers near the TV and small details that make the room recognizable, yet different.
Further along, you’ll enter the kitchen area as you once did. It does have a new walk-in cat pantry though, which might be okay to hide in. But if the ghost opens the door, you are dead – just saying. The kitchen area itself remains largely the same, albeit with new interactions like an oven, microwave, air fryer and more. There are plenty of cupboards you can now open too. If there’s a ghost in that room, it will have a whale of a time interacting with doors, electronics and other features.
To the left is the garage, which is now a large gym, with the back room now a shower room compared to the laundry room before. The gym area is quite nice too. Again, it’s largely the same layout, but the ghost-kiting spot is rather nice, moving around a Pilates and yoga area rather than a clunky car in the dark. It’s something that they also did with the Tanglewood Drive rework to great effect.
Moving down from the kitchen, the two rooms at the back exist, with the small bathroom to the right. The bathroom is again the same size but with better details. Where things get interesting are the other rooms. To the right is an art room, replacing the small bedroom that was there originally. Here you get lots of pictures of cats, some paintings and hiding spots around the canvases.
The left room is the main bedroom again. You’ll recognize some of the hiding spots, but there’s also a walk-in wardrobe to hide in too. There are Easter eggs of cats in both of these rooms too. I’ll let you discover them for yourself.
The basement is where things get interesting
Image via Escapist / Kinetic Games.
Previously, you’d walk down the stairs into the basement, turn left and have an asymmetrical L shape to walk down. On the bend there’d be two storage and DIY rooms that were often cramped. At the end you’d maybe have a tunnel to a breaker and a potential hiding spot. Well, all that’s gone.
Instead, you get a rectangle. The main area is now a basement games room with a bar, pool table and a seated gaming space towards the front. That’s way more interactions and room to play in.
Considering ghosts were often in the basement, it gives way more room to actually conduct investigations without the ghost spawning on you and killing you immediately. The only tactic isn’t to smudge and run. Now you can kite around the games coffee table, around the pool table, hide behind the bar, hide under the stairs and more. Throw in electronics, cat balls to throw and pool table cues and balls, and there’s again far more interactivity than just having tools and paint chucked around in a small space.
The new, thin, basement utility room if you wanted some nostalgic chaos too. Image via Escapist / Kinetic Games.
In addition, there’s an entirely new space. If you go right from the stairs, you’ll get some American Football posters on the wall with a new table at the end. There’s also a door that takes you right, down a thin utility corridor, like what the old rooms used to be, albeit L shaped. That’s a nod to the old design. The good news is there are still doors leading to the stairs and the pool room. The doors have quite an weary interaction too, which is quite nice for the minor horror elements creeping into the game again. So if you need to kite, those are options. It’s also a way to escape to a kiting spot, or a quick getaway to the stairs if you need line of sight through a door during a hunt.
Overall, it feels like the new map takes away some of the pain points of an enclosed, easy to die ghost hunting experience. It adds new elements of interaction, a distinctive new flair, and makes the map a bit more accessible for kiting spots. It feels like the map remake hit all the core rebalance notes it needed to. Hopefully, you gel with it much more this time than the old design.
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