The Outlast Trials Season 4, Project Diarchy, is now available, ushering in 2 new MK-Challenges, a reworked Rebirth system, new cosmetics, and an all-new Shopping Mall map in which new prime assets Otto and Arora Kress will terrorise you. Lovely.
Conjoined at birth, the Kress Twins “have a set of eyes both fore and aft”. Able to spot a victim from any angle, you’ll either have to stop them with a thrown vile of noxious poison, or “split them in two with their buzzsaw”. Double lovely.
You can also expect a new trial – Kill the Politician – and the complementary MK Challenge, which sees you guarding them “door to door”. There’s also Sentence The Prosecuted in which you’ll have to decipher the charges, pin them to the defendant, and “make sure that it sticks”. Which probably means exactly what it says on the tin.
As for the Rebirth rework?
“After careful consideration, Easterman is reopening the Rebirth to all reagents who deserve it,” Red Barrels writes. “Rebirth now offers two options: The original Rebirth for solo players. The new Rebirth, called Communal Rebirth, which is designed for teams.”
Communal Rebirth drops the players in a random Trial with 3 unique variators – Mirror, Rebirth, and Classified. Rebirth now requires each member of a group to have 100 Rebirth Tokens. It is now possible to stack up to 1000 Rebirth Tokens, which is just as well, because Rebirth Token rewards for completing Trials have also been revisited, and you’ll now get 5 Rebirth Tokens per Trial, and 3 Rebirth Tokens per MK-Challenge.
The original Outlast launched back in 2013, casting players as journalist Miles Upshur as he investigated the notorious Mount Massive Asylum. Its terrifying (and often quite grim) blend of first-person night-vision exploration and frantic chase thrills quickly attracted fans, leading to a story expansion the following year and a full-blown sequel in 2017.
This second outing – which saw players investigating a murder in the Arizona desert – ramped up the violence and strenuous pursuit sequences to a slightly less positive reception, but it still did well enough that Red Barrels was able to launch a third game, co-operative multplayer survival horror The Outlast Trials, into early access in 2023.
“The Outlast Trials is excessive and frantically enjoyable – but can occasionally tip over into frustration more than fear,” I wrote when I reviewed The Outlast Trials back when it was released in early access, awarding it three out of five stars.
Lionsgate recently announced it’s working on a film version of developer Red Barrels’ survival horror series, Outlast.