Out of all of the indie games at PAX East this year, Outlast, an indie horror game developed by Red Barrels, was among the most popular. Miles Upshur, the character you play as, is a reporter who travels to the abandoned Mount Massive Asylum to work on a story. He’s heard tips that a company called the Murkoff Corporation has re-opened the facility, but their work there is unclear.
Once you make your way inside, dead bodies can be seen laying slumped in chairs; a bloody corpse leans against a bathroom wall, underneath a shattered mirror; and bugs crawl all over the soiled floor. Outlast‘s creepy atmosphere gives you a feeling of dread, as should any horror game. You have a phone with you which helps you see in the dark, but will eventually run out of battery life.
When you progress a little further, you come upon a barely-alive man, impaled on a giant spike. Behind him are roughly a dozen severed heads sitting on shelves. The man mumbles, saying he was not able to stop “them.”
Like many other horror games, Outlast may rely heavily on jump scares. But as long as they’re timed well, that’s perfectly okay. Its atmosphere and scripted scares should provide quite the horror experience. Red Barrels is looking forward to a summer release this year for Outlast.
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