Anyone who has watched at least one paranormal reality television show, such as MTV’s Ghost Hunters, knows the drill: enter a voice over detailing the background of the episode’s focus location, followed by witness descriptions entailing the horrific paranormal encounters that have occured there, often accompanied by dramatic reenactments and flashy imagery of haunted possessions and newspaper clippings. The witnesses will list all they’ve experienced over the years before resorting to calling the Ghost Hunters’ team to investigate: slamming doors, vivid apparitions, objects going missing or being rearranged, electronics turning on by themselves, and even people at the location being attacked by entities – coming up with mysterious scratches and bruises. We’ll be gripping our seats with anticipation as the Ghost Hunters crew bravely gears up to investigate with their assortment of equipment.
Of course, the witness descriptions that have just been unveiled are events that have occurred over several months or years. When the Ghost Hunters’ team spend the night at the location to record evidence of these paranormal happenings so the witnesses can tell their friends and family that they’re not, in fact, insane (or not, depending on what’s found), the episode usually consists of half an hour of them pointing out cold spots in the room or showing recordings of faint lights floating about on camera. Conrad Stevenson’s Paranormal P.I., developed by D&A Studios, perfectly captures this feeling… for better or for worse.
Conrad Stevenson’s Paranormal P.I. clearly draws inspiration from the popular Phasmophobia by Kinetic Games. However, I would also say it bears similarities to DarkStone Digital’s The Mortuary Assistant from the way it handles spooky events and exorcisms.
This horror game opens with an introduction to Conrad Stevenson and the future of his paranormal investigation business plans. After this enthralling tale of how Conrad plans to turn his HQ into a paranormal museum, we can get stuck right into our first assignment… or not, because first we have to read the tutorials. After this, you’ll check your emails for invites to investigate certain locations that have experienced paranormal activity. You have various tools to record evidence, and each piece collected rewards you with XP. You will receive more invites to other locations the more XP you receive and you can also use this to purchase new equipment.
Your basic equipment is a torch, a digital camera which has night vision, an audio recorder which you can also use to host EVP sessions, an EMF metre, and a thermometre. You’ll need to have these equipped at the right moment in order to record paranormal evidence and earn XP.
Before heading to the location, you’ll need to score over the email that’s been sent to you detailing the paranormal happenings at the location. You can add points of information to your notes to focus on with each trip to the location, taking six with you at a time. Every ghost has a story behind it which can be uncovered by collecting Pickups, which are archival objects detailing the history behind the location of the ghosts inhabiting it. Pickups will be added to your archive, which can be looked over and the relevant information from them also added to your notes. By taking new notes with you to focus on, you can uncover further Pickups to add to the archive.
I found this system to not only be confusing but just shoved in to create another reason for Conrad to keep tripping back and fourth from the location he’s investigating back to the HQ and museum he’s so proud of. It makes no sense that you can only take six notes with you at a time. On top of this, the tutorial does not explain this system well enough to press the importance of making sure you’re bringing different notes with you each trip to spawn in the needed Pickups to complete the investigation. Please, just let us explore.
Each location will feature more than one ghost and there’re usually different types of ghost too, which means different techniques need to be used to capture evidence of them and eventually release them. This is why uncovering the archival information is important. Not only will you need to collect enough evidence to determine what type of paranormal beings you’re dealing with, but you’ll need to know enough about it to identify the relic it’s possessing and also complete the ritual to vanquish it from the property.
My problem with Conrad Stevenson’s Paranormal P.I. starts with the tutorial. All of this information is fed to you at once through the form of endless Wikipedia pages before you’ve even made it to the location. It’s a lot of information to take in at once and you can only look over it again by travelling back to Conrad’s office to access his PC. It would have been so much better for a tutorial to be presented at the first location, walking you through the evidence collection process and then the exorcism to release the spirit from the property. Otherwise this is just too much information to take in at once and a lot of it is vital for progressing and opening up more locations to explore. Most of this information is also not something that you would pick up naturally by exploring the level yourself. The details on Pickups, how important note taking is for progress and also how to exorcise the ghost are all things that I learnt by reading back on the tutorials after hours of aimlessly wandering around, wondering what I’m supposed to do next.
As mentioned above, Conrad Stevenson’s Paranormal P.I. perfectly captures the feeling of being a real paranormal investigator. And by that, I mean barely anything happens most of the time. You can spend twenty minutes at a location and not see any activity at all. To top this off, on the chance that you do see paranormal activity, you have to either be lucky enough to already have the correct equipment in your hand to record the evidence, or be quick enough to switch to it and activate it before the event ends. If you miss this opportunity then you can’t record the evidence. A lot of the time, you’ll see some creepy stuff but it’s purely by chance that you’re able to record it for your investigation.
This isn’t supported by the fact that the controls are very awkwardly placed, with no option to remap them, and a lot of actions don’t work half the time. I noticed that the interact button could be finicky, especially with interacting with objects or trying to host an EVP session as a lot of the time this button won’t activate at all for some reason. When taking EMF and temperature readings, Conrad will need to spend some time investigating the readings to ensure they’re paranormal. This takes around ten seconds, but because what you’re reading is constantly moving or phasing in and out, you’ll find the cold spot or EMF spike disappearing before you have a chance to record it which is very irritating.
Part of the challenge of investigating paranormal activity is managing your equipment’s charge. Passing through apparitions can cause your battery to deplete quickly whereas being attacked by the paranormal entities will completely drain your equipped item of charge entirely. That being said, this isn’t so much of a burden considering the van has an unlimited supply of batteries, meaning you just have to quickly nip outside to get some more. So, I’m failing to understand why this mechanic exists in the first place.
Similarily, Conrad Stevenson’s Paranormal P.I. also features inventory management for some reason. Conrad has a tool belt which can only hold five items at a time. So, if you have located the paranormal entity’s relic and need to pick this up, or equip the materials needed to conduct a ritual to release the spirit, you’ll need to swap out some of your valuable equipment – preventing you from continuing to collect evidence and XP.
On top of this, there is a cap on how much XP you can earn in each trip, so you have to keep leaving and coming back again to build up more to unlock new locations. In fact Conrad Stevenson’s Paranormal P.I.’s insistence on consistently travelling back and fourth from the investigation location to his office grew irritating very quickly. Not only do you need to do this in order to earn more XP, but you also need to go back and pick up new notes to focus on in order to progress the investigation and to also access the tutorial if there’s something you’ve forgotten. All of this could easily be done from the van in my opinion.
Visually, Conrad Stevenson’s Paranormal P.I. looks fine and there’s variation in the ghosts’ appearances too, so they all look unique. This brings them further to life (or death…) when combined with their individual stories that you can uncover during your investigation. I did have some qualms with the location layouts as a lot of these houses have awkwardly placed doors which making moving around difficult unless you’re making sure to close them all once you’re done exploring that room – which seems a little unrealistic to how houses are actually designed.
Audio-wise, Conrad Stevenson’s Paranormal P.I. is definitely best played with headphones. In fact, this is probably the most essential I’ve seen headphones needed to boost the gameplay experience because some of the sound effects used for paranormal activity can be as subtle as floorboards creaking in another room, which you can also take an audio recording of for evidence. You really need to be able to pick these up for the full experience with how rare the paranormal sightings are and playing this game through speakers just won’t do this justice. I did find some faults with the audio mixing, especially with the way outdoor noises will abruptly cut off once you’re far enough away from the front door, but apart from that the sound effects are where Conrad Stevenson’s Paranormal P.I. shines.
Unfortunately this is abruptly cut short every time the titular character opens his mouth. I have a feeling that the Steam page’s description of Conrad as being an ‘overly chill paranormal investigator’ is to cover for the fact that the voice acting for this character is so dreadful it’s actually immersion-breaking. Everytime you record valid evidence Conrad will blurt out that this is useful to confirm this, just in case the UI notifying you wasn’t a big enough clue. And each time Conrad sounds like he’s completely bored with the situation. He’ll walk in on a ghost trashing the kitchen while screaming and will sound completely unbothered by this: “nice, I just took a picture of a ghost.”
Conrad Stevenson’s Paranormal P.I. perfectly captures the slow, chancy ghost hunting experience as seen on paranormal reality TV shows. If this is what you’re looking for then this will be ideal for you, albeit it’s not perfect. However, if you’re wanting a more exciting horror experience similar to Phasmaphobia or The Mortuary Assistant, then I do not recommend Conrad Stevenson’s Paranormal P.I. as I would consider this more of a simulation game.
Jess reviewed Conrad Stevenson’s Paranormal P.I. on PC with a review code.
