Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective[e] is a 2010 puzzle adventure video game developed and published by Capcom. The story follows Sissel, an amnesiac ghost with supernatural powers, and his journey to rediscover his identity. Players solve environmental puzzles, interact with eccentric characters, and uncover the truth of Sissel's death over the course of one night. Gameplay is split into two sections: gathering information by navigating through the city, and saving lives by traveling back in time.

Direction, writing, and game design were headed by Shu Takumi, creator of the Ace Attorney franchise. Development began after the Japanese release of Trials and Tribulations in 2004, with the goal of creating a mystery beyond what the conventions of Ace Attorney had allowed. The game was announced at TGS 2009, and released for the Nintendo DS in Japan in June 2010, and in North America, Europe, and Australia in January 2011. An iOS port released in Japan in December 2010, and internationally in February 2012. An Android port was released exclusively in Japan in November 2012.

Ghost Trick was positively received, with praise for its characters, art direction, animation, music, and story, and criticism for its puzzle design and traversal mechanics. Ghost Trick was a commercial failure in Japan, leading Capcom to cite its performance as a cause for lackluster Q1 2010 revenue. The game was nominated for several industry awards, including Game of the Year by GameSpot and Nintendo Power, and has garnered a cult following. An HD remaster released worldwide for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in June 2023, and for Android and iOS in March 2024.


Gameplay
Ghost Trick is a single-player puzzle adventure video game. Players control the character Sissel, an amnesiac ghost with supernatural powers, over the course of one night.[1] The story is divided into 18 chapters, each titled after the time of night in which they take place. At the start of the game, only the first chapter is available to play; when players complete a chapter, the next one is unlocked.[5] Gameplay is split into two sections: gathering information by navigating through the city, and saving lives by traveling back in time.[3]


Sissel manipulating a suit of armor with a ghost trick
Players can press the "Ghost" button to swap between the real world and the Ghost World—an alternate dimension in which time does not pass.[6] In the Ghost World, Sissel takes the form of a blue flame, and can travel between nearby objects. Every interactable object contains a glowing sphere of essence called a "core". Players can swipe from core to core to explore the environment.[5] In the real world, Sissel cannot move around, and relies on his ability to possess and manipulate objects: by pressing the "Trick" button, players can perform "ghost tricks", creating paths of traversal or influencing characters in the environment.[6] For example, moving a cart of doughnuts may prompt a character to chase after it, while also giving Sissel access to new areas.[7]

Possessing a telephone in use allows Sissel to trace the source of the call, add the number to his Phone Book, and travel to the location on the other end of the line.[5] Additionally, certain locations have internal telephone lines, giving players the option to explore multiple rooms within a single area.[8] As long as a functional telephone is nearby, players are free to return to any previously visited location.[5] While moving from place to place, Sissel eavesdrops on characters' conversations and comments on his surroundings.[5] As players interact with characters and discover locations, information about them is added to Sissel's record.[9]

At multiple points in the story, players will arrive at the other end of a telephone line to discover the corpse of a character.[3] By possessing the corpse, Sissel is able to communicate with the victim's spirit and travel back in time to four minutes before their death. During these "4 Minutes Before Death" segments, players are tasked with averting the victim's fate, using ghost tricks to manipulate the environment before time runs out.[10] If players fail to rescue the victim, they can rewind time and return to the beginning of the sequence. If players manage to delay the fate of the victim, a checkpoint is created in the timeline.[11] In later chapters of the game, players are able to control Missile, the ghost of a Pomeranian who befriends Sissel. 4 Minutes Before Death segments during these chapters increase in complexity, as Missile's spirit is able to reach further than Sissel's, and has the ability to swap the position of two objects that are of the same shape.[12] Successfully averting a character's fate brings them back to life in the present. Rescued victims also develop permanent cores, allowing Sissel to talk directly with any character who has previously died. Conversations in the Ghost World resemble the investigation sections of Ace Attorney, providing players with a list of topics to choose from and lines of inquiry to follow.[5]

Development

Shu Takumi at a 2011 blogger event promoting the Ghost Trick iOS release
Ghost Trick was developed over the course of six years by a team of 20, headed by Ace Attorney director Shu Takumi.[13][14] Shortly after the Game Boy Advance release of Trials and Tribulations in 2004, Takumi stepped away from Ace Attorney to create a "new type of mystery" without the restrictions of the series' conventions.[15] He drafted a rough storyline for the project—codenamed Mansion—centered around an ensemble cast of strangers.[16] His priorities were shifted back to Ace Attorney later that year, split between porting the series to the Nintendo DS (DS), writing a fifth episode for the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney DS port, and supervising development of Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. In October 2007, following the release of the Trials and Tribulations DS port in Japan, the project became Takumi's sole focus. He rewrote his original draft, dividing the story into chapters to make it easier to understand, and full-scale development began.[17]

Takumi's initial design document was written for a "different portable console" capable of 3D visuals at the suggestion of Capcom, but was adapted for 2D graphics when development shifted to the DS.[18] The game was tentatively titled Ghost Spy during pre-production,[19] and tasked players with observing the behavior of mysterious apartment tenants from the perspective of a disembodied spirit.[1] The game's Ghost mechanic was inspired by ideas Takumi could not fully explore with Ace Attorney's episodic format; namely, delving deeper into the personal lives of the game's cast. According to Takumi, forming meaningful connections with over 30 characters in a single night would prove "very hard ... [for] a character who is alive", and that the "best way is to have a ghost."[20] As development progressed, the spy narrative was scrapped in favor of an amnesiac murder victim in search of answers, placing further emphasis on communication and interaction rather than observation. The title was eventually changed to Ghost Trick as a pun on toritsuku (取り付く), meaning "to possess", and the Japanese pronunciation of the English word "trick", or torikku (トリック).[19]

Art and game design

Cabanela's walk cycle took a month to finalize, and was a favorite of the team's.[14]
Ghost Trick's unique art direction resulted from Takumi's desire to create something that "looked more like an illustration than a game."[14] The team prioritized bold colors, hard shadows, and distinct silhouettes to help character portraits and backgrounds stand out on the small screens of the DS.[21][19] Characters were also modeled in 3D to populate environments, paired with dynamic animations to evoke the drama of a stage play.[18] Exaggerated poses, deliberate choreography, and fluid motion were used to express the ch