Phantom Halls is a "procedurally-generated haunted house"

Currently in Steam Early Access, Phantom Halls is a procedurally generated game set in a haunted mansion, where players have to survive the night using whatever they can find. It's less horror focused and more of a comedy, with "frequent use of B-movie tropes and satire."

"Every character in the game has their own reasons for exploring the mansion," said developer Llexi Leon when we talked to him in an interview. "Even with our own original characters, the more of those characters you play with and unlock, you'll start to see how those characters know each other and how they're part of a larger story that unfolds." Ash from The Evil Dead is one playable character in the game, since they launched in Early Access on March 13, which happened to be the 30th anniversary of Evil Dead II.

Interestingly, despite being in a completely different genre, Llexi cites Maniac Mansion as a big inspiration. "The key art is a classic psycho haunted house mansion on a hill with an eerie blue glow and I was kind of playing tribute to the game Maniac Mansion," he continued. "There's a lot of things about it that inspired Phantom Halls. It's a completely different type of game but nonetheless, it's a game where you explore a weird, creepy mansion and there's a lot of funny and quirky characters that interact and have a lot of banter. I love the writing in that game and despite the retro graphics and all of that, for me Phantom Halls in a way evokes the mood and feeling of a game like that, with the witty writing and the fun banter and all that stuff, in that haunted house setting." Spelunky, Worms, and Resident Evil are also cited as huge inspirations.

Players who purchase Phantom Halls in Early Access will receive Ash and all of his quests as a way of saying thanks for supporting the game early, but after the game is released fully, the Evil Dead content will cost extra. Don't expect the final version anytime soon either, with Leon setting Halloween 2018 as the goal for leaving Early Access, but a rushed game is rarely good, so let's hope the wait is worth it. Do you like to see characters from other franchises in games?