If Phasmophobia taught us anything, it’s that people will happily pay to be terrified by things that don’t exist, armed with nothing but a torch and some beeping equipment. UFOPHILIA, from developer k148 Game Studio and publisher JanduSoft, has looked at that formula and thought: what if, instead of ghosts, we made it aliens? Reasonable pivot. You operate out of a caravan, boot up a laptop that looks distinctly like it’s running Windows 95, and head into eerie locations to detect, identify and photograph extraterrestrials. Nobody is making you fight them. That would be too straightforward. Instead, you’re a sort of alien-snapping-squint-at-the-dark-em-up (it’ll catch on).
The tools on offer are the game’s strongest hand. EMF detectors, night vision cameras, scanners, the works. Using them in combination is where the tension lives; a spike on the EMF, a flicker in the night vision, a sound you definitely didn’t imagine, and suddenly your heart is doing something unpleasant. Getting four clear photographs of whatever is lurking about is the objective, which sounds simple until you realise you’ve no idea what type you’re dealing with, and different aliens respond to entirely different things. There are nine extraterrestrials in total, each with their own behaviour patterns, some passive and almost curious, others decidedly not. The variety is a genuine strength.
The procedurally generated missions help too, at least for a while. Seven locations keep rotating with different alien types, spawn points and environmental conditions, so you’re never entirely sure what you’re walking into. It keeps the tension honest. The problem is that with only seven locations, you’ll start recognising the wallpaper fairly quickly, and no amount of randomness fully compensates for the repetition that creeps in after a few hours.
The flow of the game also has a structural issue that consistently undermines itself. When you’re inside one of these locations, creeping through shadows and trying not to think about what’s behind you, it’s properly atmospheric. But gather any evidence and you have to traipse back out to the caravan to look it up on your laptop. Every time. It breaks the spell completely, like pausing a horror film to Google who directed it. A portable display of some kind would’ve solved this in about ten minutes. It wasn’t solved.
There are glitches too, and the learning curve has a slightly sink-or-swim quality that won’t endear it to newcomers. The solo experience also lacks the frantic energy that co-op would bring; Phasmophobia’s best moments come from shouting at your friends, and UFOPHILIA doesn’t offer that option.
There’s a decent game in here, genuinely. When it’s working, the atmosphere is unsettling in exactly the right way, and the alien variety gives you enough to learn that early sessions feel rewarding. It’s just that the cracks show too quickly and too often for it to fully deliver on its own concept.
A solid-ish foundation, badly in need of another few coats.
Reviewed on PC
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