JunkTok: Paranormal Investigators Challenge releases August 31!

Hey everyone,

you probably know Paranormal Investigators from back in fall 2023. Maybe you played the first demo, or maybe you found out about the game through 50 Floors: Paranormal Investigators Prologue.

Anyway, after roughly 3 years of development, I’m finally happy to announce that the game is coming out.

If I had to answer the main questions quickly:

1. Yes, the game changed a lot, but the core gameplay and most of the old ideas are still there, just in a very different form.

2. Yes, the old team fell apart, and I’ve been developing the game alone for the past year.

3. The game went through a lot of restarts.

4. Everything that existed before is still canon, including the first demo and 50 Floors.

5. The original Paranormal Investigators took place in 2004, while JunkTok takes place in 2016, and the events of the old game directly affect the current one.

What actually happened to Paranormal Investigators?

Development really started around spring 2023.

If I’m being honest, Paranormal Investigators was originally planned as basically a Phasmophobia copy with a few extra ideas. The main focus was supposed to be perks, video recording, and filming a report.

But the longer I worked on it, the more attached I became to the project, and the more I wanted to turn it into something of its own. Yes, that completely went against the original plan.

I wanted to push it further into roguelike territory, with endless runs and enough variation that you could keep coming back instead of playing it a few times and forgetting about it.

At the same time, the project ended up in development hell.

There were originally two of us, and my relationship with the other developer was extremely toxic. I don’t want to expose all the internal drama or try to make one person look like the only one at fault, because you would still only be hearing the story from my side. But I do have to be honest and say that working together, and that relationship in general, had a huge impact on the entire development cycle.

By fall 2024 it was already obvious that things were going very badly, and eventually the original Arsonist Studio simply fell apart.

For a while I tried to recover what had already been made, but I no longer had proper access to the old code or the game itself, so at some point it became clear that starting almost from scratch was easier.

I spent most of 2024 and half of 2025 trying to somehow bring the project back to life, and I was in a pretty bad place mentally. At the same time, I developed this weird hyperfixation that I had to finish the game no matter what. Even if it failed. At that point, just finishing it mattered to me.

I’ve been developing the game alone since summer 2025.

How did Paranormal Investigators turn into JunkTok?

Around spring 2025, I made a small prototype where the entire game was shown through a vertical phone screen, with viewer comments taking up half the display.

That was when I realized I didn’t want to keep trying to restore the old Paranormal Investigators. It needed to be completely reworked. That is basically how JunkTok started to take shape.

At the same time, almost everything that existed back in 2023 still survived in some form.

The EMF reader, Geiger counter, and other items are still here. The designs and behavior of many creatures also came directly from older versions. Perks eventually turned into abilities and upgrades.

The lore stayed almost completely intact.

Smileville, Underwood, the Underworld, Richard Bates, and the events of the original Paranormal Investigators are all canon.

The original Paranormal Investigators was supposed to take place in 2004, while JunkTok takes place in 2016. So JunkTok is not a full reboot of the world. Everything that was planned for the old game and its future updates is now, in one form or another, part of the canon.

What is JunkTok now?

It’s a co-op horror game for 3 players where you play as streamers — or, more accurately, JunkTokers — taking part in a challenge run by an evil corporation.

The grand prize is €100,000.

In return, you have to collect data to train EyeAI, complete tasks from your viewers, and try to reach the #1 spot.

The game is built specifically around 3 players, not because I just wanted to go against the usual formula. Pretty much the entire game design, its mechanics, and its pacing were built around a team of three.

I didn’t want the game to turn into a slow, tedious slog where you spend 20 minutes carefully checking every corner, but I also didn’t want to make another co-op game where the horror disappears after five minutes and everyone is just messing around and laughing. Three players gave me the balance I wanted between chaos, cooperation, and tension.

At the same time, the game works very well in solo and duo.

Solo is not some stripped-down side mode. I deliberately designed the game so it works properly alone, and in some places I actually think solo works even better because everything becomes much scarier.

At launch, the game will have:

• 3 maps with randomized item placement;

• 14 unique creatures;

• 60+ upgrades;

• 5 characters with unique abilities.

Of course, those are just numbers, but if you’re interested, there you go.

Design

By this I mean everything related to visuals, animation, graphics, UI, and so on.

The main thing I wanted was to show the game through a phone screen, because the entire game is basically a livestream. In a way, you’re not just playing as the character — you’re also watching the streamer live as a viewer. Hopefully that makes sense. It turned out to be a little harder to explain than I expected.

Back during the original Paranormal Investigators, we tried making realistic characters. They didn’t exactly annoy me, but every time I looked at them they gave me this weird feeling of disgust.

So this time I decided to go fully stylized.

The main inspiration came from cartoons from the 2000s and early 2010s, especially Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, and Disney. Especially the legs. Tarantino moment :>

I also tried to achieve what I personally call the “Half-Life effect.”

What I mean is that sometimes you remember a game as looking much nicer, more detailed, and even scarier than it actually did. When there are fewer props, less visual noise, and less information on screen, your brain starts filling in the missing details on its own. I really like that effect.

And, of course, it also helps with optimization.

Why Germany?

The original Paranormal Investigators was set in America, so after the reboot I wanted to change as much as possible and moved the setting to Germany.

I’m originally from Kazakhstan, but I lived and studied in Germany, so I liked the idea of mixing all of that together inside Werblin. Berlin was, of course, the main inspiration, along with eastern German cities like Dresden, Chemnitz, and others. American skyscrapers, a German vibe, and Soviet apartment blocks in the background.

I only have warm memories of Berlin, by the way. Frankfurt am Main is awful. Never go there.

What’s next?

If the game takes off — and I really, really hope it does — I want to add pretty much everything I originally planned. Right now I have a list of around 182 things.

But I also understand that once the game is out on Steam, it isn’t 100% mine anymore. Maybe 50%. Player feedback is going to matter a lot more than my massive developer ego. Eeeeehhh.

I want to gradually give more and more of the game to the community: add proper tools, fully integrate Steam Workshop, and maybe make some of the systems open-source.

Overall, this whole experience had a huge impact on my life, and at some point it completely drained me emotionally. I guess in some way that’s still a useful experience, and something almost every developer goes through sooner or later. Even if the game ends up failing, the fact that I actually managed to bring it to release already means a lot to me.

I’ll be honest, I have a very strange relationship with Paranormal Investigators — I love it and hate it at the same time. But now it actually exists instead of being a project I spent years only talking about.

JunkTok: Paranormal Investigators Challenge releases August 31.

Thank you to everyone who still remembers the game from the first demo and 50 Floors. See you at launch.

P.S. If you have any questions, feel free to ask — I’ll answer everything I can in the comments.