Phasmophobia just got a lot darker with Alan Wake crossover

You remember Phasmophobia, right? The co-op ghost hunting game all your friends were really into right before they moved onto Lethal Company, the next designated co-op obsession? I was just as surprised as you likely are right now to hear it's still going strong: apparently stronger than ever, given that it just announced a collaboration with iconic horror game Alan Wake, which is the half of this crossover that I'm entering from.

To be clear, I absolutely love Remedy's Alan Wake series, even more than the Max Payne games that put the developer on the map. The 2010 original was a stylish if at times repetitive action-horror that wore its Twin Peaks inspiration on its sleeve, but likely would have languished in relative obscurity if not for its sequel. In my humble opinion, 2023's Alan Wake 2 is one of the best games ever made, taking a hard left turn into pure survival horror and finally matching its intricate, reality-bending story with gameplay that's worthy of it. If the first game was Twin Peaks, the second is The Return, going deeper and getting weirder in all the best ways.

Which is, unfortunately, why I'm going to be reinstalling Phasmophobia. Alan has popped up in Fortnite and Dead by Daylight before this, but I don't begrudge Remedy the synergy; they're a relatively small, niche studio and Control: Resonant isn't going to pay for itself.

Phasmophobia, though, looks like a better fit than most. This isn't your typical investigation — it seems you're going to be put smack in the middle of one of Alan's living stories, tasked to escape the boundaries of the narrative or lose yourself in the darkness. Given how many times I died in my first playthrough of Alan Wake 2, it'll probably be the latter.