Phasmophobia: the August 25 update adds Restricted versions of Prison, Brownstone and Point Hope — what really changes

Kinetic Games had listed a "second quality-of-life update" on its 2026 roadmap without ever giving it a date. Now it's official: the studio published a preview of this update on August 11, announced on all platforms for August 25, 2026. The exact time has not yet been communicated.

On paper, "quality-of-life" sounds like a routine patch. In reality, this update touches on three things that ghost hunters have long been asking for: the size of the large maps, the readability of evidence, and the state of the game in VR.

Three maps get a Restricted version

This is the main announcement. Sunny Meadows already had its reduced version; Prison, Brownstone High School, and Point Hope will get theirs. The idea is the same: keep locations that players enjoy, but without forcing them to explore the entire surface area.

The details are more nuanced than a simple resizing, and are worth knowing before the 25th:

• Point Hope Restricted will be classified as a small map. The accessible area will extend up to the dining room.
• Prison and Brownstone High School will each have several variants, classified as small and medium respectively, and randomly selected when the contract loads.
• Brownstone High School alone will have four map variants after the update. Kinetic stands by the choice: on a map of this size, variety keeps things uncertain at the start.
• Outside each Restricted version, a piece of scenery will indicate which variant you've landed on. Get into the habit of checking before you go in: that's what tells you where the playable area ends.

One thing to keep in mind for regulars of Challenge mode: currently, a challenge targeting Sunny Meadows doesn't count as completed on Sunny Meadows (Restricted), and vice versa. Kinetic hasn't announced anything suggesting this rule will change, so from August 25 onward, you'll need to check exactly which version a weekly task requires before starting a contract on Prison or Brownstone.

Journal and evidence: duplicates finally visible without opening the notebook

Since the Chronicle update, the unique/duplicate system has forced players to go back to the journal to find out whether a captured piece of media actually counts. That's over. Visual indicators directly on the equipment will now flag a duplicate:

• Level 1 camera: a yellow LED lights up.
• Level 2 and 3 cameras, and video cameras of all levels: the text appears as a dimmed overlay instead of the usual solid white.
• Level 1 sound recorder: the brightness of the volume indicators dims.
• Level 2 and 3 sound recorders: the sound waves appear dimmed.

In practical terms, this changes how you make the most of a contract: no more need to interrupt a hunt to check whether the photo you just took is actually worth anything. It's also a time-saver on large maps, where the back-and-forth to the journal comes at a real cost.

Two other additions to the journal are worth noting. First, it will be possible to see the evidence and entity type selected by other hunters. No more verbal check-ins before heading back out from the truck — and no more, crucially, failed identifications because a teammate had ticked something else. Second, the Keys section disappears in favor of a "Found Items" section, which will list keys, the bone, and seasonal event collectibles in the order they were picked up.

One last detail, discreet but useful: a gender symbol (♀/♂) will appear next to the entity's name. Kinetic explains that this is aimed primarily at non-English-speaking players, for whom certain entity names don't make the gender obvious. They stand to benefit the most from it.

VR gets rebuilt from scratch

This is the heaviest piece of work in the update: the VR character rig is being completely replaced, across all platforms. Kinetic announces three effects: more responsive movements that are better aligned with the player's own, increased accuracy of the model regarding arm length, and a noticeably improved visual rendering of the character as seen by other players.

This last point also affects players on screen: playing with a friend in VR shouldn't give that floppy puppet impression anymore. Several issues regularly reported by VR players are also being fixed; the details will be published in the full patch notes on release day.

Two gameplay changes not to miss

The first concerns custom difficulty: it will be possible to choose the entity type in the ghost settings when setting up a game. For training purposes, this is a considerable tool. If you can never tell apart two entities with similar evidence, you'll now be able to force one and work on its behavior instead of waiting for it to come up at random. Be careful, though: custom difficulty remains subject to its own multipliers, and a contract configured to be easy pays out accordingly.

The second is more drastic. The character's appearance upon death changes: the body will have greyer skin and clouded eyes, including for other players who will see you this way for as long as you're dead. More importantly, a player's voice chat is cut the instant they die — precisely at the moment the neck breaks in the death animation.

This last change will alter the habits of many groups. Right now, a dead player often has a split second to shout out useful information. On August 25, that window disappears: the information will need to be shared before the hunt, not during. Teams that rely on their dead players to map out the entity have two weeks to change their approach.

What this says about what's coming next

This update fits into a roadmap already published by Kinetic: Unity 6 and a new lighting system are expected in October 2026, the player character overhaul in November, and version 1.0 — accompanied by a new map and the Nintendo Switch 2 release — has been pushed back to 2027.

In other words, summer 2026 is devoted to quality-of-life improvements rather than content. For a game whose sprawling maps have long discouraged short sessions, the arrival of three new Restricted versions is arguably the most significant addition of the year.