Phantom Line playtest is live on Steam, with a heavily reworked foundation

The developers of Phantom Line announced a new playtest running until March 10th. This time around, the team promises a fundamentally reworked core – across several key areas, the game feels like a different title entirely.

The headline addition is Mortfield's training facility for H.U.S.K. Operators, alongside new anomalies, enemy types, and mysteries to uncover.

Players will board a nuclear icebreaker that serves as the base of operations, settle in, and get to work. For anyone who joined previous playtests, the changes are hard to miss. The team tore apart the 3Cs – Character, Camera, and Controls – and rebuilt them from scratch.

That means new animations, a fully rewritten movement and interaction system, an improved camera, advanced spatial audio, and refreshed biomes and weather. Along the way, the developers squashed a significant number of bugs, addressed pain points from the last playtest, tightened up the netcode, and optimized the open-world environment.

There's still work to be done, but according to the developers, the game is now noticeably sharper, smoother, and punchier.

Phantom Line is a 1–4 player co-op shooter set on a post-nuclear European continent. Players take on the role of operators in an elite spec-op unit working for Mortfield Industries, enrolled in a program called H.U.S.K. that allows transferring consciousness between artificial bodies known as husks.

That mechanic opens up a range of tactical options – husks can be used for scouting, distracting enemies, acting as decoys, and a variety of other strategies.

Phantom Line has no release date yet.