Title: Ghost Keeper
Developer: Quest Craft
Publisher: Quest Craft, Gaming Factory
Release Date: July 16, 2026
Platform: Windows PC via Steam
Reviewed on: Windows PC via Steam
Price: $12.99 USD

Back in March, we reviewed the indie ghost management sim Ghost Keeper while it was still in Early Access. Since then–after several new additions, tweaks, and upgrades–the full game has released for players to possess. Thus, we’ll be resurrecting this spooky title to see just how it stands in its version 1.0 glory.

Ghost Keeper comes to us from fresh indie studio Quest Craft, who so far only has one other title under their belt (2025’s Pizza Slice). The game tasks players with managing a roster of fearsome specters, and using their abilities to frighten away the mortals on the map, or terrifying them to an early grave.

Maps consist of old mansions, sprawling graveyards, labyrinthine sewers, and more, providing a nice amount of variety for players to get their spook on. Mortals will meander throughout the area, interacting with objects placed about, and you must determine when it’s best to spring your fearsome traps so as to maximize frights, and minimize your chances of exposure.

The game is remarkably patterned after the 2003 cult classic Ghost Master–which also saw a remaster release earlier this year. Imitation is the greatest form of flattery however, and I say if you’re ever going to emulate a game, it’s best to pull from a well-loved yet often overlooked title from twenty years ago in hopes of polishing and modernizing it for a new audience.

The spirits at your disposal are undeniably the stars of the show, and they provide a good deal of charm to the game. For instance, Night Blade is a floating sheet wearing a top hat and wielding a bloody knife who is great at unleashing stealthy scares and painful spectral cuts; William is a dead poet that will conjure up blood to make mortals feeling utter disgust and anguish; Phineas is a mad doctor who reminds me quite a bit of Beetlejuice, and he is a master of laying traps for the living to wander into; Shadowmaw is a hellhound that can deliver equal parts terror and physical pain to all humans in his path; and the Rat King spreads pestilence that wreaks havoc on all those that draw breath.

Each ghost has 4 special abilities that they have access to during a mission, with some powers changing between levels. While many of these can be activated at any time, they provide bonuses when activated at just the right time. For example, using telekinesis to move an object just before a mortal uses it will provoke optimal terror. Likewise, causing an appliance to malfunction moments before a human turns it on will elicit a debilitating shock to the unsuspecting victim.

Most of the fun comes from ping-ponging humans from one wraith to the next, setting up a combo of increasingly horrific events that eventually results in them screaming bloody murder and heading for the door. Perhaps you start off by having a ghost whisper sinister things into a mortal’s ear, causing his hairs to stand up on end. The frightened man attempts to brush this occurrence off by walking over to his bureau, where you then cause his pen to mysteriously levitate out of its cup and land on the wooden desk with a thud. Creeped out, the man retreats into the adjacent bedroom, where another spirit causes the lights to violently shut on-and-off. His heart racing, he moves into the hallway, where a ghost makes the walls ooze with blood. Genuinely in fear for his life, the mortal rushes down the stairs and tears into the library where his best mate is reading a book. However, a phantom summons a supernatural wind that slams the doors shut and barricades them. With no where to go, all the menacing apparitions converge on the helpless duo, terrorizing them with all they have, until their blood runs cold and skin turns pale, and the two humans sprint off into the night, leaving the haunted abode behind.

Players must also be careful about how and when they use their ghostly spells, as with each sinister occurrence, spirits draw greater attention to themselves, and eventually the frightened mortals will call upon some professionals to do some, er… busting… to get rid of the ghastly nuisances. Ghost hunters provide a significant threat to the well being of your phantoms, and it can be great fun to plan out strategies to still cause mischief around them. Hunters will wander throughout the area, scanning rooms for paranormal activity. Should you have a ghost present in the vicinity, their presence meter fill up considerably, and once it’s maxed out, the hunter will suck them up with their specialized vacuum, and they’ll be removed from play. Regardless, after scanning an area, that zone will be locked down for a period of time, preventing ghosts from entering the perimeter for a short while.

While all of this sounds well and good, Ghost Keeper unfortunately is still riddled with issues that gravely disrupt the full experience, even after leaving early access.

For starters, the tutorial does a poor job of explaining exactly what to do. It dishes out the basics, but then leaves it up to you to just “get rid of the mortals.” I’m all for games letting the player experiment, as well as lessening the “hand holding” that seems pervasive in modern games, but this is an instance where much more needs to be said. It feels unfinished, or like there is a glitch preventing the rest of the tutorial from running. I attempted the tutorial several times, each time running into a brick wall and being unable to progress, before eventually brute forcing my way through on my third try. It took a substantive amount of trial and error before eventually getting things to click. I did eventually understand it, but I believe that many players will get too frustrated at trying to learn the basics, and abandon the game because of it. Simply put: the tutorial did not feel either educational or fun.

The game begins to open up much more afterwards, and I did find some enjoyment experimenting with each ghost and their abilities, but this also exposed the game’s most glaring issue: mortal AI. The intelligence of this supposed living beings is questionable at best, and I’m more apt to believe that they are already corpses animated by lesser ghouls. Humans frequently get stuck on furniture, becoming trapped in a room and unable to move. While this means that they are easy prey, and players can pile on the scares quickly without much harm, it also means that you are unable to get them to actually flee the area. This happened to me on three separate occasions (four, if you count a time when a mortal somehow freed himself after several minutes from being pinned against a wall by an elegant chasse), and the only solution was to either restart the mission, or find a way to kill them rather than just delivering a massive fright.

Mortals also seem to stick to very strict paths, and refuse to enter certain rooms without me doing something specific to draw them there. I can understand if this was true to rooms like the basement, or a utility closet, but humans completely avoiding the kitchen feels just a bit silly.

Lastly, the living doesn’t usually behave the way that you’d expect them too. For instance, if I scare one in the guest bedroom by making a chair rock back-and-forth on its own, he’ll freak out and leave, only to saunter right back in and try the chair again. Also, there is a section where you’re supposed to turn off the lights to a room, which will cause a person who notices it to go to the electrical closet to reset the fuse, but after doing this once, I could never get it to work for me again, leading them to ignore both the lights and closet altogether.

If the mortal AI was fixed and more complex, I could see Ghost Keeper being a runaway hit. I’d love to see humans have a longer memory than that of a goldfish, and continuously change their behavior based on your scare tactics. Imagine having humans cautiously creep about the map on high alert, or purposefully avoiding a room because they’ve been scared in it too much, or perhaps barricading themselves somewhere that they feel safe. This would keep the player on their toes, and frequently switching up tactics rather than reverting to the same scares repeatedly until the objectives are marked complete.

Final Score

Ultimately, Ghost Keeper as a whole is a lot like the mortal AI: it feels unfished. Even now that it’s been released from early access, the game feels like it hasn’t progressed beyond the interesting premise and well detailed environments. It looks good, but it has no substance, and very quickly it becomes rather, well, brainless. That’s one of the worst things you can say about a strategy game.

It’s also terribly short, and I had seen everything the game had to offer in about 6 hours, with no incentive to go back. Again, a more robust AI, and having more options could give you reason to return to these levels, but as it is, going back doesn’t give you anything new. You do unlock a sandbox mode after finishing the campaign, but this simply gives you a large map with access to all the previously unlocked spooks.

The developers have promised to continue adding content, providing new locations, new spirits, and new updates to the game–which sounds an awful lot like early access still to me–and so I do think the experience can be salvaged. However, as of this writing, Ghost Keeper seems still stuck in purgatory, in that space in between a concept of a game and a retail product. Even at its bargain price, I recommend letting this rest until it can properly be brought to life.