Red Barrels absolutely blew us away with their debut indie survival horror title Outlast (you can check out our review here), but according to co-founder Philippe Morin, it was a rough journey. Morin has a talk planned for the 2013 Montreal International Game Summit in which he will discuss the challenges that he faced while developing the game.
He also told Games Industry International about how things went after leaving EA. “I remember telling my wife I’ll quit my job and within three or four months we’ll know if it works out or not. And it took a year and a half.”
This was primarily due to problems securing funding – even though Outlast was shopped around to investors and big publishers, it was eventually the Canada Media Fund that would provide backing. And even that took some doing due to the lack of knowledge about the medium. Still, we’d say the efforts were well worth it.
Currently, Red Barrels is working on the Outlast: Whistleblower DLC, which will take place before the events of the main game and feature a new protagonist. Outlast is also due to release on the PS4 in 2014.