#7 – Ghost Trick

This Ghost is Trickin’!
Tony Hawk

By Conner Bloomer
December 1, 2023

Ghost Trick is a game where, the less you know going in, the better your experience will be.
You can play the beginning of the game for free and it’s available on all major platforms, including Consoles, PC, iOS, and Android.

So yeah… go play Ghost Trick.

The End…

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…ok, I can tell you a little more than that. Minor spoilers lie ahead.

The First 4 Minutes

Cold open to a derelict junkyard — a hitman is holding up an unknown woman at gunpoint. As the seconds flash before your eyes, you stand witness to the precipice of a grizzly crime. You want to help, you really do, but there’s only one issue… as the screen darkens, a spotlight illuminates a corpse initially obscured to the player.

You’re already dead.

There is nothing you can do to help the unknown woman as fate takes its course. The scene is illuminated by the flash of the fatal firearm, and just like that, the deed has been done. As the mysterious assailant makes his escape, he nonchalantly knocks away your corpse into the depths of the junkyard, erasing the only evidence of your existence. If only there was something you could do, but the dead don’t dwell on the past… right?
The scene goes dark, only to be illuminated once again, not by a fatal flash, but by a ray of hope.

The Tricks

As you are awoken from your brief slumber, you are greeted by the friendly presence of Ray, a spirit residing inside of a red desk lamp. He’s got quite the beaming personality, don’t you think?

As you communicate your situation to Ray, you come to learn the mechanics of the afterlife in this world. You are still very much dead, but there is still much work to be done, especially once Ray reveals that you’ve got some ghastly tricks up you’re non-corporeal sleeves.

Possess! As you enter the game environment, you may notice that certain items have small blue flames at their centers. These are the cores of objects you can move between and possess. While cores are mainly used for movement across the environment, some cores have special abilities.
Trick! When possessing certain cores, you can hit the Trick button to activate an action. Whether it be opening an umbrella, spinning a fan, or even turning a crane, these actions can have wide-spreading effects on your surroundings.
Dial Up! Need to travel a long distance? Try possessing a telephone line. Once you’ve taken the time to trace the location, you can freely travel the lines far and wide. Who knows, you might even catch some clues from conversations on the phone.
Rewind! Arguably the most important trick of them all. When coming across the core of a recently departed individual, you can look back in time to the last 4 minutes of their life. While you are in this memory, you might notice small ways that you can affect the course of events.

Game Info

Originally released on the Nintendo DS back in 2010, Ghost Trick is a puzzle-Adventure game that made liberal use of the touch controls of the DS; while this made the game very easy to port onto iOS and Android devices going forward, it made it significantly more difficult for any device without a touch screen.

Fortunately, in the summer of 2023, just a couple months ago, a Ghost Trick was revived from the depths of the DS backlog as a remake on modern platforms. The game has been faithfully remade with a brand new control scheme for standard controllers and mouse/keyboard… well, brand new if you never brushed the D-pad in the original DS release.

The development of Ghost Trick was led by Shu Takumi, famous for creating the Ace Attorney series; many similarities carry through the two games, such as a similarly eclectic cast of eccentric characters with striking character designs, including a dog named Missile in both games! Missile is the best. (Missile Guide: Left – Ghost Trick; Right – Ace Attorney)

So… once again, play Ghost Trick. You can play the first two chapters for free on all major platforms, including iOS and Android. And if you can’t play it… at least watch a playthrough online.

This is one of the best stories ever told in a video game… and that’s no trick.

*Media Bug regrets to inform you that the quote beginning this article is not from Ghost Trick; Tony Hawk does not, in fact, say “This Ghost is Trickin’!”. It is a complete fabrication. We made it up. Lies. Treachery. Goodbye.