Paranormal Estates: Haunted Robberies | Gameplay & Technical Case Study

The pitch

Greed is the difficulty setting.

Paranormal Estates: Haunted Robberies is a cooperative horror game about thieves, not investigators. Every stolen item raises the stakes, and the safest exit is always one valuable away from being a terrible idea.

Case the Property

Arrive at the vehicle, choose equipment, and identify a way inside.

Break In

Hack or lockpick entry points while noise and time begin working against the crew.

Steal Everything

Search rooms, manage limited inventory space, and deposit secured loot in the van.

Survive the House

Respond to escalating events, hunts, panic, and a ghost that learns where players have been.

Extract

Escape with the crew—or leave with fewer people and one extremely expensive vase.

My role

Solo developer from concept to playable MVP.

I lead the game design, C++ architecture, Blueprint integration, multiplayer systems, AI behavior, UI implementation, technical design, production planning, and day-to-day development. Marketplace and commissioned assets support production while the core gameplay architecture and systems remain custom-built.

1–6networked players

9ghost AI states

3inventory slots

1very angry house

Gameplay systems

The house reacts to what players do.

The horror is systemic: player behavior feeds pressure, pressure shapes events, and events change how the crew moves through the property.

Adaptive Director

A server-authoritative Director scores eligible players using panic, threat pressure, recent targeting, and house state. It paces scares and hunts while protecting against repetitive targeting and overlapping haunts.

Weighted target selection
Adaptive cooldowns and recovery windows
Global and victim-specific event routing

Ghost State Machine

Ghosts roam, investigate noise, chase on confirmed sight, search last-known locations, interact with doors, and return to whole-house roaming when the trail goes cold.

Panic & House Activity

Player panic drives vulnerability while House Activity preserves the consequences of theft. The crew can recover; the house does not forget.

Loot & Inventory

Items have size, weight, hidden value, world interaction, replicated pickup/drop behavior, van storage, and a final extraction reveal.

Environmental Horror

Door slams, mirror apparitions, screams, light chases, breaker failures, and house audio are routed through shared scare rules instead of isolated jump-scare scripts.

Minimal Information

Loot value and panic stay hidden during the robbery. Players read the world, their teammates, and sound—not a dashboard full of certainty.

Technical architecture

Server authority without flattening the scares.

The server decides what is true; presentation is routed only to the players who should experience it.

Player ActionsNoise • theft • panic • position

Game State & DirectorAuthoritative scoring and lifecycle

Ghost AIWorld-visible threat

Scare RoutingGlobal or target-only

Player StatePanic and eligibility

Challenge

Make fear fair in multiplayer

Some scares must be shared while others only work if the intended victim sees them.

SolutionServer-selected targets with explicit global, area, and victim-local presentation paths.

Challenge

Keep tension from becoming exhaustion

Constant hunts turn horror into a predictable hide-and-seek loop.

SolutionPressure-aware cooldowns, recovery states, recent-target penalties, and one active haunt at a time.

Challenge

Let ghosts feel intelligent

Instant omniscience is frustrating; instant amnesia is goofy.

SolutionLOS-gated pursuit, last-known-position search, noise investigation, and whole-house roaming after a failed search.

Design pillars

What Paranormal Estates: Haunted Robberies protects.

Horror before chores

Pressure comes from decisions and uncertainty, not busywork disguised as difficulty.

Greed creates stories

The funniest disasters begin when the crew agrees to take just one more item.

Readable, not predictable

Players can learn the rules without knowing exactly when the house will use them.

Co-op chaos with consequences

Teammates can save the mission, endanger everyone, or become the reason a lamp was apparently worth dying for.

Current status

Player feedback is sharper. Multiplayer is easier to control.

Version 0.3.5 completes the player-state and session-polish phase with expanded settings, panic accessibility controls, death spectating, private room codes, stronger session cleanup, and more reliable Steam/EOS multiplayer behavior. The next major focus is the item revamp and equipment architecture.

Current development

Rich Neighbourhood — v0.3.0Second contract, house framework and Steam support
Player State Polish — v0.3.5Settings, accessibility, spectating and private rooms
Item Revamp — v0.4.0Procedural loot and inventory/equipment architecture
Toward Early Access — v1.0.0Tools, objectives, ghost variety, replayability and polish

Gameplay showcase

See the robbery go wrong.

A look at Paranormal Estates: Haunted Robberies in motion: breaking into a haunted property, securing valuables, surviving supernatural pressure, and discovering why “one more item” is usually a terrible plan. Gameplay footage taken with v0.1.0.

Pre-Alpha Gameplay Work in Progress Unreal Engine 5 Gameplay footage taken with v0.1.0

Development roadmap

What we're building next.

Follow Paranormal Estates: Haunted Robberies from its first playable prototype through multiplayer, the current UI polish milestone, Villa integration, new systems and content, the tutorial conversion, visual upgrades, and the Early Access launch.

v0.3.5 Current

Player State Polish

Version 0.3.5 expands player feedback and multiplayer usability with rebuilt settings, panic accessibility controls, death spectating, public/private rooms, six-character access codes, improved session cleanup, and stronger Steam/EOS compatibility.

Rebuilt Audio, Video and Controls settings
Panic audio/visual accessibility toggles
Death spectator mode
Private rooms and six-character codes
Steam/EOS session reliability

Latest playable build

Download Paranormal Estates: Haunted Robberies

This is the newest development build available for external testing. Older grant, publisher, and archive builds remain separate.

Current Patch v0.3.5 Pre-Alpha

Available for testing

Player State & Session Polish

Version 0.3.5 overhauls settings and accessibility, adds death spectating, introduces public/private rooms with access codes, and strengthens multiplayer session behavior across Steam and Epic Online Services.

Platform Windows PC Players 1–6 Version v0.3.5 Released Sep 7, 2026 Builds Steam + EOS available

SteamAvailable

Download Steam BuildSteam networking build • Google Drive

Epic / EOSAvailable

Download EOS BuildEpic Online Services build • Google Drive

Development build.

Paranormal Estates: Haunted Robberies is still in pre-alpha. Expect incomplete presentation, balance changes, placeholder assets, networking bugs, and areas and systems that are still under active development. Feedback is very welcome; summoning contractors for the ghost is not.

Current update

Patch Notes

The current patch stays fully expanded. Previous releases are preserved underneath so playtest reports can always be tied to the build that produced them.

v0.3.5Pre-AlphaCurrent

Player State, Settings & Sessions

September 7, 2026

Version 0.3.5 is a major usability and multiplayer-quality update. It rebuilds settings, adds panic accessibility controls and death spectating, introduces private rooms with access codes, and hardens the full Steam/EOS session lifecycle.

Settings & Video

Rebuilt Settings into dedicated Audio, Video, and Controls pages.
Added Master, Music, and SFX volume controls.
Added graphics-quality, supported-resolution, window-mode, and VSync controls.
Added persistent mouse sensitivity and Apply behavior for graphics settings.
Added refreshed setting labels, selectors, checkboxes, and menu artwork.

Accessibility & Player State

Added separate panic heartbeat-audio and panic visual-effects controls.
Accessibility changes now update active panic feedback during gameplay.
Added spectator behavior after player death.
Improved HUD and input handling while spectating.

Private Rooms & Sessions

Added public and private room support to the session browser.
Added generated six-character private-room access codes and validation.
Added room privacy and host information to session rows.
Prevented active matches from appearing in searches or accepting late joins.
Improved host/client cleanup and return-to-menu behavior when the host leaves.

Lobby, Online & Stability

Improved Steam and EOS session compatibility, metadata handling, and private-session search reliability.
Fixed public rooms opening the private-code prompt and private joins creating separate sessions.
Fixed retry and incorrect-code feedback behavior.
Improved session-browser layout, Join button states, status messaging, and host badges.
Upgraded the project to Unreal Engine 5.7 and completed additional lifecycle/UI stability fixes.

Release focus: 0.3.5 makes the game easier to configure, more accessible during high-panic play, less punishing after death, and substantially more reliable when creating and joining multiplayer rooms.

Previous releases

Patch History

Click a version to expand

v0.3.0Rich NeighbourhoodAug 29, 2026

Added the Rich Neighbourhood contract, Steam WAN sessions, stronger ghost navigation, reusable House Manager tooling, replicated breakers, and a major stability pass.

Map & House Systems

Added the complete Rich Neighbourhood contract.
Added modular House Manager/editor setup tools and whole-house power control.
Improved ghost cross-floor pursuit and balcony pathfinding.

Online & Reliability

Added Steam WAN hosting, search, and joining.
Improved lobby synchronization, travel, loading, interactions, inventory, extraction, and item-drop reliability.
Added the official Paranormal Estates interface font.

v0.2.5UI & Interaction PolishAug 23, 2026

This update rebuilt the menu and lobby presentation while hardening the multiplayer flow for packaged two-player testing.

UI & Lobby

Rebuilt and polished the main menu, Host, Join, lobby, Settings, pause, Credits, and How To Play screens.
Added themed button artwork, map previews, fixed lobby rows, and improved UI scaling and navigation.
Fixed replicated map selection and ready/unready state presentation.

Multiplayer Verification

Reworked EOS hosting travel to create a valid listen server after authentication.
Verified host/join flow, map synchronization, mission travel, and player movement in packaged builds.
Added functional mouse-sensitivity controls and continued packaged-build usability polish.

v0.2.0 Improved Multiplayer + Villa WIP Aug 21, 2026

The multiplayer foundation moved toward a room-based lobby flow and began integrating the larger Modern Villa as the game's next major property.

Multiplayer

Reworked multiplayer around player-created rooms and session browsing.
Added dedicated session-row widgets with per-room Join controls.
Continued EOS WAN multiplayer support and mission-flow improvements.

Modern Villa

Added the work-in-progress Modern Villa property.
Started gameplay setup for spawning, directors, exits, and mission actors.
Added the beach-side van staging area and began defining playable boundaries.

v0.1.0 EOS WAN Multiplayer Aug 16, 2026

The first multiplayer-distributed build. This release took the completed single-player MVP and connected the mission flow to Epic Online Services for real WAN host/client testing.

Multiplayer

Implemented working EOS WAN session hosting and discovery.
Wired the main menu to multiplayer Host and Join actions.
Added the Paranormal Estates: Haunted Robberies WAN session bucket/query configuration.
Validated real host/client play across separate networks.
Improved server-authoritative movement and multiplayer mission flow.

Polish added after the MVP build

Improved menus, settings, and item interaction.
Added gameplay polish and multiplayer mission-flow fixes.
Continued loading-screen, return-to-menu, pause-menu, and usability work.

v0.0.1 Singleplayer MVP Aug 14, 2026

The original packaged Paranormal Estates: Haunted Robberies milestone: a complete start-to-finish single-player MVP used as the stable foundation for later multiplayer builds.

Complete Mission Loop

Start from the main menu, enter the property, steal valuables, and secure loot at the van.
Complete extraction requirements and receive mission results with secured money and survivor information.
Return cleanly to the main menu after mission completion.
Added van inventory presentation, item information, and extraction guidance.

Playtest Polish

Added Master, Music, and SFX volume controls.
Added pause-menu Resume, Main Menu, and Quit actions.
Added Settings, How to Play, and Credits to the main menu.
Added contextual onboarding for inventory, deposits, the main objective, medicine, and extraction blockers.
Improved haunt reset reliability, ghost spawn validation, collision boundaries, audio routing, and scare behavior.

Core Gameplay Systems

Three-slot inventory with pickup, cycling, dropping, and van deposit behavior.
Lockpicking, medicine, breaker interaction, flashlight controls, and randomized door states.
Panic, House Activity, noise, theft reactions, and adaptive Director pacing.
Ghost roaming, investigation, chasing, last-known-position searching, and haunt lifecycle behavior.

Horror Systems

Environmental events including door slams, mirror apparitions, screams, audio stings, and Light Chase.
Haunt exit-door locking and restoration.
Shared and victim-specific scare routing for multiplayer-ready presentation logic.
First-entry scare and audio tuning for less predictable playthroughs.

Credits & production note

Paranormal Estates: Haunted Robberies is independently developed by Moe Savari under Grand Mishap Studios. The current pre-alpha uses licensed marketplace assets and placeholders alongside original gameplay code and systems. Credits will be expanded as commissioned production art, animation, audio, and other final assets enter the project.

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