Just under a year after its release into Steam Early Access, one of our favourite horror games of 2023 The Outlast Trials is fully releasing on PC, Xbox and PlayStation.
The game made waves last year for its disturbingly over-the-top violence, gore and unsettling themes. The developer Red Barrels surely didn’t shy away from the most controversial subject matter and scenes, making it surprising it hasn’t ended up banned or censored anywhere as of yet.
The game’s popularity followed in the footsteps of its predecessors – selling over 1.6 million copies on Steam during early access. I guess that number shouldn’t be surprising given that Outlast is one of the best-selling horror game franchises of all time, but it’s still worth a lot of praise.
The Outlast Trials: Not a Game for the Faint of Heart
The Outlast Trials is a 1-4-player horror game that is a spin-off prequel to the Outlast franchise. You play as a sleeper agent for the evil Murkoff Corporation (against your will, for the record), training to carry out heinous acts on the organization’s behalf.
Your training consists of a series of brutal “therapy” trials that will earn your character’s “freedom” into the real world. Yup, that’s a lot of quotation marks.
As a multiplayer game, it does lean into some live-service elements, such as player and room customization, light cosmetic micro-transactions, and weekly challenges – but currently these are far less egregious than almost every other live service currently on the market.
During trials, players must complete insanely diabolical objectives, such as killing and electrocuting a “snitch” or dissolving heads in acid – yes, this game is insane. There are also side-mission trials and modifiers which spice the game up, and add a load of replay value.
Each trial is graded between F and A+, and achieving that top score is extremely hard. Not only are there numerous unkillable enemies roaming throughout the levels, there are also traps littered across the map that will easily lower your score if you’re not careful. For those interested in earning that A+, read our guide on how to earn the A+ grade in The Outlast Trials.
Fortunately, the game maintains lots of the gameplay that made its predecessors so iconic. iI know that’s one of the main things that fans were worried about when the developers first announced this spin-off. The greyscale camera (and batteries) are back, as well as the lack of ability to fight back. Players can only use bricks and bottles to briefly stun the bad guys, meaning that running and hiding is your best defence.
The game also adds customizable RIGs – which provide your character with unique abilities. These include healing, stunning enemies, blinding enemies, and the x-ray RIG, which makes it easier to find consumables and key items.
Big Changes Since Early Access
For those who already played the Steam version of The Outlast Trials, there are a bunch of new updates that arrived with the 1.0 release. Here are some of the biggest changes
- New Trial: They have added the “Toy Factory” trial, which is as wild as it gets from initial impressions.
- Program Ultra: The developers also released the hardest difficulty yet, known as Program Ultra.
- Cross-play: Now that The Outlast Trials is officially out on consoles, the game thankfully features cross-play so that everyone can play with their friends, regardless of platform.
- New Amps: Amps are upgrades that directly buff your character, and can be purchased using tickets earned from completing trials. 1.0 just added 9 new amps for players to unlock. Some of the best ones are the Self-Revive, Smash (break doors or planks with one bash), and Backpack (grants the player one extra inventory slot).
- New Ending: let’s not dive into this one too much – I wouldn’t want to spoil what freedom is like.
Of course, there are also lots of tweaks to progression, balance changes – noticeably for the RIGs – and bug fixes alongside these changes. Check out the patch notes on Steam for everything new in the update.
The Future of The Outlast Trials
As with every game that leaves early access, fans are always scared that their favorite title will no longer receive regular updates. So, what does the future hold for The Outlast Trials and will the game continue to be updated? As of the time of writing, there’s limited information about the future of the game. The developers have confirmed in the 1.0 patch notes that the game will receive brand-new weekly updates and LTEs, and their launch message on Discord indicated that we’ll see news on future updates soon.
Edit: The developers Red Barrels have just released their roadmap for The Outlast Trials, featuring new trials, enemies, RIGs and more!
Final Thoughts
Now that the game has been fully released, we’re busy playing the newest trial and writing our official review. As a sneak peek of our verdict, we think that The Outlast Trials is an excellent horror game, and likely the scariest multiplayer game ever released. The game has a surprisingly high replay value and a solid progression system. And of course, the game is just absolutely unhinged, with unwarranted violence, gore and blood that truly makes you wince.