Red Barrel Games’ The Outlast Trials launches on March 5th for PC, Xbox Series X/S, PS5, Xbox One and PS4. Though it entered Steam Early Access in May 2023, it’s been in development for longer – six years, per senior game designer Phillippe Morin. After all this time, the question remains: Why didn’t the team opt to make Outlast 3?
Morin told Windows Central, “Well, we would have been able to ship out Outlast 3 much quicker than this.” In truth, the developer was “a bit fed up. So we took maybe four to five months. The guys were switching to Unreal 4, so they needed to use the new tech.
“We were brainstorming ideas, and eventually, because, with every project, we like to try and give ourselves new challenges, like trying to be more narrative with Outlast 2 than 1, this time it was multiplayer.”
The concept for The Outlast Trials started as a twist on the first Outlast. Instead of an investigative journalist attempting to learn more about the Murkoff Corporation’s terrible experiments, why not have a group of trapped reporters attempting to escape? “You have to work together to try and survive. Can we make that work? And that’s how that idea came about for multiplayer.
“If we’d have known it would have taken six years, then maybe we would have done Outlast 3 first, but then again, we’re super happy with what we have today, so I think it was worth it.”
The Outlast Trials sold over 500,000 copies in its first week of early access and garnered extensive acclaim (check out our review here). It supports up to four players as they attempt to complete different “experiments” for Murkoff and survive the villains roaming the hallways. Learn more about the latter here, though be warned of disturbing content and violence.