Just a small note, Phasmophobia also uses absence of action, but not nearly to the degree of In Silence. Talking while a ghost is hunting will let the ghost know where you are

Just the horror of hearing your friend whisper “hey i found something come here” and turning the corner to see them laying dead on the ground with a massive monster turning to you and playing the same “hey i found something come here” and sprinting at you

surprised you didnt mention that when a hunt/significant event is ongoing in phasmophobia, the radios are useless. not only because talking leads the ghost to you but because when the button is held down all thats sent to other players is static.

they can still talk to you over the radio if they are in a safe position, but in your final moments you can only shout information, as using the radio would just be stagic, and hope they can hear it through walls if you know you are about to die.

Another thing that makes Proxy voice so terrifying, even in single player horror games, is that in normal horror games, you can scream in terror with no consequence. The monster cannot hear you. With Proxy chat on, even in a single player horror game, the monster can hear you, and you have to force yourself to stay quiet when you might otherwise scream. Every sound you make makes you paranoid that the monster just heard you and will be able to find you

When someone has a soundboard in phas its just horrendously more scary to hear a vine boom from upstairs

Edit: Thats alotta likes holy fauci, gracias

That voice clip idea was insidious. I love it. Before the game starts each player could pre-record themselves saying specific messages, and then only be able to use those to communicate in game, obviously seriously limiting the effectiveness of the voice chat, but by allowing the monster to fully use all of the players recorded clips, they become indistinguishable from the player they took over

Lethal company now is an S tier application of the sound design

Phasmophobia with VR, being able to move things around in real-time while a ghost, gives a lot more capability to communicate to teammates

I absolutely love Scruffy’s “Hello!” at the beginning. It’s just so friendly! And, as always, fantastic vid!

4:53 i like how his glasses went from [ ] to { } when he became a ghost lol

Lethal Company out here taking the cake with proximity voice chat

I'm always delighted to see Scruffy's avatar on-screen, it's so lovely to see it interact with whatever world to better showcase what he's talking about.

I think a really nice medium between these two games is Forewarn, its essentially a phasmophobia clone but with mummies instead of ghosts. If a player gets killed by a trap, mummy, or spirit while searching a tomb, they have the choice of spectating or becoming a mummy to hunt the surviving players! The fun thing about coming back as a mummy is that the in-game mic will pitch shift your voice to make you seem more menacing. I’ve seen a couple streamers get jumpscared by their fallen teammates while playing, its a fun way to still implement proximity chat while not taking the player out of the experience!

5:33 he looks so happy

The VC in Phasmophobia honestly adds a lot of fear, I can't tell you how many times I've seen someone get trapped in a room or in the building as they're leaving and it turns into them frantically screaming through the walls, sometimes it can end up comical, but even more it can end up super scary. There's this particular group that played it not that long ago where they were leaving and one of the members got stuck in the house, screaming their head off as another frantically tried to shout instructions on where to hide through the wall, but as they ran from the ghost, it got fainter, and fainter... Until, outside, the screaming stopped. And when they went back inside, they found them dead at the bottom of the stairs, and it was terrifying.

Omg I love how you process the sound at  3:57 so much. Having the scary strings swell up but then distorting it so it sounds like it has a low-bitrate/compressed sounds so cool and creative, as if the player character got reduced to ghostly remains of themselves.

Great video as always <3

7:35 OK but imagine you guys are all making a plan or something and then the monster sneaks up on your ass and joins in on the conversation basically right next to you all and no one realizes until he’s basically in the room with you guys, shit would go from 0-1000 in the matter of a fucking instant and it would be scary and hilarious as fuck

that voice clip idea is something another asymmetric coop survival horror (SCP Secret Laboratory) is going to implement soon as part of the voice mimicking doggy SCP's rework. people can opt out, but if they opt in, the SCP gets the last few seconds of the victims proximity chat to use as an ability, able to throw it out as a lure, or to scare players away from a certain route or room, in order to ambush the humans better. Cool concept.

2:48 I didn't even notice the lipsync for a second that's really cool

7:20 You know, I can make a pretty good evil laughter. So... If I ever buy this game and assemble 5 more people to play it...