By Bixyl Shuftan
A year ago, the Newser reported on the Ghostbusters-themed
Ghost Hunt in the pony-themed Luna's Empire sim. A year later, the game is back. It's gotten some improvements, which make for more interesting gameplay.
As before, the game isn't just for ponies, but open for just about all avatars to play (the very large and those smaller than tinies will likely have trouble). A board in the entrance room gives some instructions on how to play.
Just outside are more instructions about how to use the HUD, and explaining one change to the game: classes of ghost hunters. You can choose to be a "Binder" whose shots slow down ghosts. You can be a Hunter, whose capture of a number of regular ghosts can bring on a boss ghost. And finally you can be a Cleaner, whose shots can clean slime off other players.
Clicking the instructions outside, you get a hud, a map, two guns (one for ponies and the other made for human and anthro avies) and an emitter.
One other change in the game this year, the ghosts can slime you. The slime bar on your HUD goes up, and your screen appears streaked with good. Besides feeling icky, this can reduce the candy you get for busting ghosts. The more you're slimed, the less candy you get. To clean off the slime, you need to either bathe in the fountain near where you get the HUD and gear, or another player on "Cleaner" mode uses his gun to zap it away. Sometimes there's always a cleaner around to help you, and other times you wait for a while and end up walking to the fountain to wash up on your own.
Most of the ghosts are regular ones, with one or two circles over their heads.
They just take several seconds to zap, weaken, and trap. Just don't be too close so they won't charge, touch, and slime you. A typical reward is ten candies.
Some of the regular ghosts do look like "Slimer" from "Ghostbusters" (hard to see in this picture).
Less common are those with three, four, or five circles over them.
These boss ghosts are tougher, and will need multiple people to take down. Fortunately, you can call for help, and others will see a red "X" on the map where you did. The result will be people closing on the boss ghost to bust it to get a share of it's greater candy prize.
About every couple hours, a much more powerful boss ghost will appear. You can't just simply zap him, but apparently one will need to take out some pillars around the pond he appears in first.
It also throws splotches of slime around, which hunters will need to zap and clean up.
Taking down this bad boy takes effort, and likely getting slimmed and cleaned up a lot. But the rewards are great. For helping out, I got 1000 pieces of candy.
What to do with all that candy? One can use it to buy prizes. The majority of them are for ponies, but not every single one.
There is a scoreboard for the top players. Some guys and girls have done a lot of 'bustin.
Going around, there's a variety of players.
There's also plenty of Halloweenish scenery (G-rated) in the sim.
Have fun ghostbusting.
Bixyl Shuftan
