Each time I dive back into the Murkhoff Facility, the dystopian MK-Ultra style research lab where The Outlast Trials takes place, I’m amazed at how well it all just clicks. The excellent social hub, the balance between shallow-breathed suspense and co-op silliness, the unlikely performance polish for an Early Access game—from the cutscenes, to the sound design and graphics. It’s odd to say, but to me The Outlast Trials never had a right to be this good. Yes, the Outlast games has a strong legacy of commercial success, but they were very much ‘jump-a-minute’ ghost train rides, and by the time the second one came out, I for one had already had my honeymoon with the ‘run from things in straight lines’ genre.
The Outlast Trials, however, is a systems-heavy, unpredictable gauntlet, filled with modifiers, randomisation, and of course the chaos that arises when you and three friends are getting chased around by angry naked dudes with great big dangling dongles.
And this is still the Early Access days. The game’s journey is only beginning, and despite the quality of what’s already there, developer Red Barrels knows that, unlike its relatively contained single-player past work, the community is craving more. It’s set in motion a promising service game that can’t be undone. I sat down with Red Barrels co-founder Philippe Morin and the game’s Director Alex Charbonneau to reflect on its successful launch, and try to tease out from a little something about what’s coming up.
The success of that launch really can’t be understated. “We actually reached a million units last week,” a pleased Morin tells me, though he quickly makes it clear that Red Barrels isn’t getting carried away. “We're in good shape, we just need to create a shit-ton of content and we're still in that position where we have to create a shit-ton of content.”
That milestone is a fitting reward for the amount of time they’ve worked on the game, which includes a tough stint during the pandemic). “Outlast 2 took three years, this has been double that,” Morin reveals. “There’ve been a lot of ups and downs. Obviously the pandemic had a big impact. We were hiring people we’d never meet, which was kinda weird—it’s like the name is on the payroll but there’s nobody at the desk!”
For a studio known for its polished yet largely scripted horror games, it was surprising to hear that during early playtests, Outlast Trials was criticised for actually being too systems-driven and randomised, leading to a lack of distinctiveness between each of the levels. Despite the strong visual identity of each environment—police station, fun park, orphanage—Charbonneau tells me that ”we had so many things happening that it was almost like you didn’t feel the randomness, because it all felt equal in a certain way.” In other words, the game lacked that fine-tuned linearity and pacing that made Outlast ‘Outlast.’
They tightened things up. Each environment became based around a Prime Asset—a unique and appropriately deranged villain who you get glimpses of through in-game cutscenes, before they emerge to chase you later in the level. There are two of these so far, Mother Gooseberry—a disgraced kids’ TV show host gone murderously mad—and Leland Coyle, a leather-clad ex-cop with a knack for stun-rodding his own knackers (and yours).
Following the feedback, each trial was given more of a structure, and the maps were made more modular. In-universe, each level is essentially a movie set where the pieces can be moved around and reordered, but intriguingly, this translates to Red Barrels being able to redesign the levels too. “Just like Murkhoff, we can change the layout, so we may decide one day ‘let’s move that building here,’ or ‘that’s a facade, let’s add an interior to it this time,’” Morin suggests. He goes even further, painting a picture of a scenario where the shuttle that takes you and your fellow players to each mission might crash, forcing you to find your way to safety through the tunnels. “We could explore stuff like that, and see how players react to it.”
Clearly, Red Barrels are excited that they’ve designed a game capable of accommodating so many future possibilities, and the way the game’s premise—a lab with synthetic ‘sets’ based around various themes—compliments the very process of making the game process is impressive. For now, the main variations on the core set of levels are modifiers that increase the difficulty for more skilled players. The “variators,” as they’re called, add special conditions to each level, like more barricaded doors, stronger enemies, or Prime Assets being able to one-shot you. The time-limited Project Omega event, meanwhile, enforces the ‘Stay Together’ variator, which causes you to lose health if you stray too far from your teammates.
"There’s lots of ideas on the table that are aligned with the idea that we’re brainwashing you."
But Red Barrels are listening to the community, and already brainstorming the possibilities. Something that came up several times throughout our call was that players like injecting a little bit of competition into the game, even though it’s fundamentally a co-op experience. Little things like slamming a door behind you in your partner’s face while an enemy’s in pursuit, or racing for the same hiding spot, knowing that the one who doesn’t make it is in serious trouble, are things currently in the game that give a glimpse into how an ‘everyone for themselves’ mode could look.
“Our number one priority right now is giving players more of what they love: more trials, more opportunities, more stuff to unlock, things like that,” Charbonneau begins. “But we’ve also set things up to do experimental stuff, so we’re not opposed to, one day, a program that lasts for a week where we test something as wild as a 1V1V1 mode.”
One of the most quietly impressive aspects of The Outlast Trials to me was the lobby between missions (which I’ve already talked about at length). Rather than just being a menu, it’s a physical space where you run around with other players, can check out other players’ custom-decorated cells, and challenge others to arm-wrestling matches (while a giant in-game leaderboard brings up all kinds of grisly details like ‘Who’s lost the most blood’). Given the balls-to-the-wall intensity of the trials (which have no internal save system and can take new players a good hour to complete), the lobby is a much-needed safe space, and surprisingly cosy for what’s basically a prison.
"We’re not opposed to a program where we test something as wild as a 1V1V1 mode.”
“A big takeaway we had is that people feel comfort in the Murkhoff Facility, and when the beta finished we were getting messages that people missed being there,” Charbonneau tells me, before Morin continues. “It ended up being a lot more popular than we expected, but it was always our plan to keep expanding the lobby.” Morin adds that it’s just a matter of time before more activities get added to the hub. He couldn’t reveal too much, but hinted that this may take the form of some kind of psychological testing via a ‘fun mechanic.’ “There’s lots of ideas on the table that are aligned with the idea that we’re brainwashing you, so we want to know where you’re at psychologically,” he tells me. “We are working on an additional game at the moment. It’s almost done, and we have a pretty good idea. I think people will like it.”
Clearly, the potential for building the game out is vast. Morin and Charbonneau touched on other ideas, like a “roguelike-ish” mode where you try to complete all the trials in one seamless run, and Morin even made a point of the fact that the Murkhoff facility in The Outlast Trials is located not far from the setting of Outlast 2. “I’ll leave it at that for now,” he told me, unable to contain a knowing smile.
With its myriad options for character customisation and room decoration, Red Barrels would be well within its right to monetise certain cosmetic aspects of the game. The message, however, is that that’s not the focus at least until version 1.0. “We’re still debating on our side, but we don’t want to brute-force anything on players.” Morin tells me. “Yes, we have a lot of cosmetics, yes there are server fees we need to pay, but either way we’ll go where the players want us to go. At the end of the day, the whole thing has to make sense financially, but we haven’t made a final decision yet.”
It’s amazing how the game’s premise—a shifting, adjustable laboratory where scientists are studying human test subjects reacting to extreme life-threatening scenarios—reflects the development process itself. Nobody’s getting threatened or stun-prodded by Red Barrels, of course, but you know how around the peripheries of each trial you can see boffins in lab coats viewing you through reinforced glass and taking notes? Those are basically the Philippe Morins and Alex Charbonneaus, carefully studying the thousands of players running around their rat mazes.
As we react and respond to the cavalcade of horrors thrown our way, Red Barrels will take notes and adapt our experience to keep those thrills coming. With The Outlast Trials being designed in this modular way, it seems that they’ve built a game fit for that purpose. Murkhoff would approve.