I'm celebrating Steam's Zombies vs Vampires Fest with a different monster: an RTS demo that's essentially reverse Ghostbusters, strategy style

The worst thing about the Ghost Keeper demo? The fact that it's a demo. I've been suffering with a bit of empty nest syndrome since completing Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and instead of using the opportunity to throw myself back into Hades 2 while I wait for my next hyperfixation, I got myself super into a game that doesn't even have a release date.

But that's just it. The new Steam demo is a short and sweet taster of the creepy mayhem yet to come in Quest Craft's upcoming new game, providing just enough of an introduction to Ghost Keeper's RTS and management systems to get you hooked. It certainly worked for me, and I'll likely be replaying the demo over and over again just to see how many kooky ways I can kill off or scare off those foolish mortals.

Cunning plan

My first mission in Ghost Keeper is simple: free Phineas the Mad, a trapped poltergeist stuck in a broken elevator. This first level takes place in Phineas' mansion, though sadly, he is rather dead. That means there's plenty of humans simply walking about his former home, and it's my job as Ghost Keeper to help the phantoms regain control of their haunt.

The demo is essentially a long tutorial. I'm quickly introduced to the basics: I have two out of three ghosts currently available to summon and recall as needed, and can place them in any room in the three-storey mansion. Each ghost has its own requisite powers, and it's through harnessing each one's skillset that I'm able to manipulate the wandering mortals to do my bidding – including setting Phineas free.

Night Blade, the assassin, excels at flickering lights, stalking mortals in the shadows, and locking all doors in a room to trap his prey inside. Meanwhile, William has a bit more offense utility. He can set mortals ablaze with Wild Fire, cause household objects to malfunction, and draw unsuspecting mortals to his location using a Whisper skill.

Each of these actions costs some ghost energy, with each ghost starting with 100 energy points, and some of them increase their visibility. That makes it a bit of a give and take situation, as if a ghost's visibility meter maxes out or they use all their energy points, they are rendered unusable – or worse, vacuumed up by a member of the ghost-hunting Brotherhood. See what I mean by reverse Ghostbusters? I'll get to those guys in just a moment.

Despite how the first part of the Ghost Keeper demo is largely about freeing Phineas, the real fun begins once I do so. Now, I have access to all three spirits, and can finally amp up the hauntings! However, freeing Phineas causes enough spooky occurrences that the mortal residents of his once-glorious mansion have called upon the Brotherhood to help rid them of their paranormal predicament.

Mischief management

As mentioned earlier, the Brotherhood patrol the house as wandering spirit hunters. They are a lot harder to scare than regular mortals – their fear meter has 300 charges, whereas the household inhabitants have 120 apiece – but it can be done. I now have full rein of the house, the ghosts, and all their skills, meaning it's time to scare or slay the night away.

Scaring mortals using Night Blade's haunting skills causes their purple fear meter to fill up, shown beneath their portraits along the top right-hand corner of the screen. Fill it all the way, and the mortal runs screaming from the house to escape. Alternatively, I can chip away at their green health bars to kill them off instead – and this turns out to be my favorite way to handle things.

Call me sadistic, but there's a smug satisfaction in using a combination of ghosts to achieve creative death situations. Taking advantage of the pause button to do so, I manage to catch two of the three mortal residents in the dining room, trap them there with Night Blade, and immolate them with William.

I also throw out a few other spooky tricks and treats to increase the level of haunting (charted by the amount of green ectoplasm spattered across a given room) like making a table levitate or bursting a nearby pipe. Then, when everyone is nice and terrified (or on fire), I send Phineas in to perform an Ectoplasmic Explosion and deal some extra damage.

Sure, it's only May, but I'm glad Ghost Keeper brings Halloween early with this nifty little demo. I might have run into a couple of bugs, but if I did, I didn't notice them – except for the one time I was unable to summon Phineas, despite him having zero visibility and 87 ghost energy, forcing me to restart the whole level from scratch.

I wasn't mad about it, though. It just gave me another opportunity to think outside the pine box and come up with mischievous new ways to achieve the same goal. And if that's not the whole point of an RTS game, I don't know what is.

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