THE OUTLAST TRIALS: IS IT WORTH PLAYING?

The first time I ran The Outlast Trials with three friends, we spent about twenty minutes in a grimy warehouse trying to push a judge's severed head through a meat grinder while a woman in a nightgown screamed at us from a catwalk. My friend Dan was running interference with a stun weapon, my buddy Kate was unlocking a gate with a lockpick, and I was the idiot dragging the head across the floor because I couldn't find the stairs. We finished the trial, got back to the Sleep Room, and immediately queued another one. That was the moment I stopped being skeptical about co-op Outlast and started being actually into it.

I have reservations. I'll get to them. But three years after the 1.0 launch and a bunch of post-release content later, The Outlast Trials has settled into something real. It's not what a lot of people wanted from the next Outlast game. It is, on its own terms, the best thing Red Barrels could have made given the direction they wanted to go.

The co-op pivot nobody asked for

Let's address the elephant on the gurney. When Red Barrels announced Trials back in 2019, the horror community collectively raised an eyebrow. Outlast, as a series, built its identity on isolation. You were Miles Upshur alone in Mount Massive. You were Blake Langermann alone in the desert (well, sort of, the dynamic with Lynn complicated things). The series sold itself on vulnerability and solitude. Then the third entry turns around and says, actually, bring three friends.

A lot of horror purists hated the pitch on principle. I get it. Co-op horror is almost always less scary than solo horror because having a human voice in your ear breaks the spell. Phasmophobia works because the laughter is the point. Lethal Company works because the comedy is baked into the design. But Outlast? The whole deal with Outlast was that nobody was coming to save you.

Trials splits the difference in a way I didn't think would work. You can still play it solo. A ton of people do. The game scales enemies and certain mechanics down for single player, and going in alone absolutely preserves that "I am prey" feeling the series is known for. But when you play it as a group of four, it becomes something different. Not worse, just different. It's less about being terrified and more about the shared panic of a group of people trying to solve a horrible puzzle while someone with a chainsaw is actively hunting them.

The Cold War setting

The framing is smart. Instead of another cursed location, Trials sets you in a Cold War MKUltra parody. You're a "reagent" in Sinyala Facility, a Murkoff Corporation black site where test subjects are being broken down and remade into perfect sleeper agents. You wake up, get processed, get mind-wormed (literally, there's a scene), and then get dropped into Trial after Trial until you either complete your therapy or die screaming.

I love this setup for a few reasons. First, it gives a plausible in-universe reason for the co-op structure. You're not four random people who happened to get lost in the same asylum. You're four Murkoff test subjects being pushed through training sessions together as part of the program. The game acknowledges its own multiplayer premise instead of pretending it isn't happening. Second, the 1960s setting gives Red Barrels a fresh visual palette. Everything is grease-stained linoleum, flickering fluorescents, propaganda posters, rotary phones, and those weird 1950s medical illustrations of smiling housewives holding cleaning products. The aesthetic is distinct from the first two games and it gives the whole thing a fever-dream quality that I think works really well.

Third, the MKUltra angle lets them go completely off the rails with the scenario design. You're not stuck in one coherent location. Each Trial is a different "simulation" designed by Murkoff to traumatize you, which means the game can go from a 1950s police station to a carnival to an orphanage to a courtroom without needing to justify any of it narratively. It's all therapy. It's all brainwashing. Anything goes.

How the therapy sessions work

Each Trial is a self-contained scenario that lasts roughly thirty to sixty minutes depending on the difficulty, the map, and how badly your team is getting eaten. You get inserted into a "program" with a specific objective. Deliver a snitch to an electric chair. Bottle a bunch of babies and get them to a specific location. Blow up a heretic while religious zealots try to stop you. The objectives are grotesque in a way that feels very Red Barrels. You're always complicit in something horrible, and the game makes sure you feel it.

Each map has three or four main objectives broken into steps, plus a bunch of smaller environmental interactions (finding keys, fixing generators, escorting items). While you're doing all this, the map is populated with enemies. Some are basic prime assets (generic shambling guys with pipes). Some are named boss-tier "Ex-Pop" characters who hunt you specifically and can't be killed, only stunned or outrun. The basic enemies are there for ambience and chip damage. The Ex-Pops are the actual threat.

The loop inside a Trial is surprisingly classic survival horror. Explore, scavenge, manage consumables, avoid direct confrontation, hide in lockers or under beds when a boss is nearby, complete objectives step by step, eventually escape. You have stamina. You have a psychosis meter that fills up when you see too much horror and eventually causes hallucinations. You can carry antidotes for various status effects and throwables like glass bottles (for distraction) and bricks (for stunning enemies).

The team aspect changes the math but doesn't break it. Four people can cover more ground and complete objectives faster, sure, but the game compensates by spawning more enemies, keeping Ex-Pops active for longer, and making certain objectives genuinely require multiple people. You can't just zerg through a map with a full squad. The pressure scales.

Mother Gooseberry and friends

The Ex-Pop roster is where The Outlast Trials earns its keep. These are the recurring boss enemies who haunt the Trials regardless of the map, and Red Barrels went full mask-off with the character designs. Mother Gooseberry is the breakout star. She's a deranged 1950s children's show host wearing a goose puppet on her arm, and the puppet is somehow more terrifying than she is. She giggles. She sings nursery rhymes. She has a massive butchering cleaver. When Mother Gooseberry shows up in a Trial, the whole tone of the session changes.

There's also Leland Coyle, a sadistic ex-cop with a cattle prod who's obsessed with "justice." Franco "Il Bambino" Barbi, a mafia enforcer who looks like a deranged baby and speaks in broken Italian. Gatekeeper, a mute enforcer with a rebar club. The Pusher, a corpulent horror in a filthy hospital gown. Each one has a distinct kit (patrol behavior, signature weapon, audio cue) and each one dominates the map they appear on in a different way.

What I appreciate about these characters is that Red Barrels leaned into the cartoonish exaggeration instead of fighting it. These aren't realistic threats. They're boogeymen. They're the kinds of horrors you'd dream up if you were a government torturer trying to break someone's mind. Mother Gooseberry doesn't make sense as a real person, but she makes perfect sense as a Murkoff psychological weapon. The heightened unreality works for the setting in a way that wouldn't have worked in the original Outlast's grounded asylum horror.

They're also genuinely sticky as characters. Weeks after I stopped playing the game regularly, I'd still hear a goose honk in a different game and flinch. That's a character doing its job.

The Sleep Room and progression

Between Trials, you spend time in the Sleep Room, a big hub area where other reagents walk around, where you can upgrade your character with "Rig" abilities (stun launcher, X-Ray, healer, blinder), where you customize your cell and your outfit, and where you queue into new Trials. The Sleep Room is the live service infrastructure that a lot of old-school Outlast fans hate on principle.

I'm mixed on it. The actual hub is fine. It's atmospheric, it has NPCs with weird little interactions, and the customization options are dumb but satisfying. You can dress up like a circus clown and watch other players try not to laugh while the game tries to terrorize you. The Rig system adds genuine build variety. I played a support healer main for most of my time and the game has enough mechanical depth to support that kind of role specialization.

Where it gets iffy is the grind. Progression is slow. Unlocking new Rigs takes hours. Cosmetics are priced in a way that funnels you toward the premium currency. There's a battle pass. There are seasons. The game has been post-launch tuned in a way that makes the core loop good but pads everything around it, and after maybe 40 hours you start to feel the treadmill.

Seasons and MK Challenges

The seasonal structure is Red Barrels' attempt to keep the game alive long term, and it's been a mixed bag. Each season introduces a new theme, usually a new map or two, new Ex-Pops in some cases, a bunch of cosmetics, and limited-time "MK Challenge" variants. The MK Challenges are modifier-stacked versions of existing Trials. Double enemies. No sprinting. All Ex-Pops active simultaneously. Friendly fire enabled. Some of these are genuinely interesting design choices that create new scenarios out of familiar maps. Others feel like busywork.

The current season as of this review (Season 6, the "Psyko-Circus" one) is probably the best post-launch content drop the game has had. The new map is one of the strongest in the game and the circus aesthetic lets them go hog wild with the visual design. But I will also say the seasonal model has real costs. If you don't play during a given season, you miss the cosmetics and some of the challenge variants get rotated out. The FOMO is moderate but real.

For a horror game, this whole seasonal apparatus is a weird fit. Horror games traditionally aren't live service. You play them, you're scared, you move on. Outlast Trials is trying to be a horror game you keep coming back to, and the tension between that ambition and the genre's natural structure is visible in the seams.

Does co-op actually work for Outlast

Here's my honest answer. For some players, yes. For solo horror purists, no, and nothing is going to change their mind.

If what you loved about the original Outlast was feeling small and vulnerable and alone, The Outlast Trials does not replicate that feeling in a group. It can't. Four players with voice chat and stun grenades is a fundamentally different power fantasy than Miles Upshur with a dying camcorder. The game knows this. It doesn't really try to recreate solo Outlast's isolation. Instead it goes for a different kind of horror, the horror of collective helplessness, the horror of watching your friend get dragged off by Mother Gooseberry while you're trapped in a locker, the horror of realizing the objective requires you to split up and now you're alone in a maze with something breathing behind you.

That different kind of horror is legitimately good. When my group clicks and we're playing on a high difficulty and the map is pressing down on us, The Outlast Trials delivers some of the best tense cooperative moments I've had in a horror game. If you go in expecting Phasmophobia with more polish and gore, you'll be pleasantly surprised. If you go in expecting Outlast 3, you'll be disappointed.

The solo mode is also better than it has any right to be. Played alone, Trials becomes a slower, more deliberate survival horror experience with bigger maps than the main series ever had. The Ex-Pops feel enormous when you're hunting them solo. The psychosis mechanic hits harder without friends to keep you grounded. I'd actually recommend trying the game solo for the first few hours before diving into co-op. You get a better sense of what the designers built.

Is it worth playing in 2026

If you have three friends who like horror games, yes. Unambiguously yes. The Outlast Trials with a regular group is one of the most distinctive co-op experiences on the market right now. It's mechanically meatier than most horror co-op games, it has production values higher than anything in the indie scaresphere, and the Ex-Pop cast is stickier than it has any right to be.

If you're a solo player, it's a weaker recommendation but still a recommendation. The solo experience works. It's just not as good as what you'd get from a purpose-built single-player horror game from the same studio.

If you're looking for Outlast 3, this isn't it and it never was. Red Barrels has confirmed they're working on the next mainline entry separately, and that's where the "alone with a camcorder" DNA of the series will live going forward. Trials is its own thing.

The Outlast Trials on Xbox runs well, cross-plays with Steam and PlayStation, and has all the seasonal content available on console without the kind of platform restrictions that plague some live service games. If Xbox is your platform, you're not getting a stripped-down version. You're getting the real thing.

I keep coming back to it. That's the test, in the end. A game that I keep queueing into with friends six months after my initial burn-through is a game that earned something. The Outlast Trials earned it, even if the route it took to get there made a lot of old fans nervous.