Outlast Trials' Brutal 6-Year Dev Had Bad Playtests and One Tester Who Fled in Tears

Red Barrels co-founder and director Philippe Morin has opened up about the long, turbulent road to shipping The Outlast Trials, revealing that the co-op horror game took six years, "a f**king long time," and "a s**t-ton of prototypes" to get right. Early playtests were reportedly rough, with initial sessions failing to land the experience the team was aiming for, forcing the studio to repeatedly rethink its approach before finding a formula that worked.

The development war stories don't stop at design headaches, either. Morin also shared a memorable, if uncomfortable, playtesting anecdote: one tester was so disturbed by the game's content that they ran out of the studio to cry outside and never came back. Despite the extreme reaction, Morin noted that Red Barrels takes care to inform participants upfront about the nature of its content, saying, "We always make sure that people are fully aware of the kind of content we create." It's a vivid reminder of just how intense the Outlast brand of horror can be, and how seriously the studio takes pushing that boundary.

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