Revealed via a new trailer presented during the Geoff Keighley-led Gamescom 2022, Red Barrels announced that a closed beta for The Outlast Trials will be taking place from October 28 to November 1—Halloween weekend, of course—and that interested parties may sign up in the near future, though exact details seem to be pretty nebulous. A new multiplayer perspective could make The Outlast Trials stand out from its single-player predecessors, but early trailers make it tough to suss out exactly what’s going on.
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Though the snippets shown to the public thus far have been intriguing, there hasn’t been much in the way of actual gameplay, and it’s tough to imagine a multiplayer-focused horror game that completely excludes combat. Behaviour Interactive’s asymmetrical multiplayer title Dead By Daylight could have set a precedent along with Kinetic Games’ impactful indie hit Phasmophobia, but it seems the only way to figure out what’s going on for sure ahead of the game’s anticipated 2023 release is to gain access to the beta.
The Outlast Trials has certainly attained a significant amount of buzz over the past few months, but it’s far from the only horror title in the Gamescom limelight. Striking Distance Studio’s grizzly sci-fi horrorshow The Callisto Protocol helped to kick off the event with a short gameplay reveal trailer, and the long-anticipated wacky zombie-slaughter sim Dead Island 2 finally received an official reveal trailer after it was announced all the way back in 2014.
That’s not to say that Red Barrel’s most recent efforts aren’t worth paying attention to; long before Resident Evil 7 breathed new life in the genre, the original Outlast was helping to keep horror gaming alive. Easily one of the scariest psychological horror experiences of the last console generation, those who haven’t played either of the Outlast titles will absolutely want to do so before more information about The Outlast Trials is revealed in the coming months.
The Outlast Trials is in development.
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