Red Barrels has announced Season 7 of The Outlast Trials. Project Boneyard launches on July 14, free for current owners on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation, and brings a new Trial area, two new MK Challenges and a returning antagonist. It also introduces what is the most intractable new enemy the game has introduced to date. We’ll get to that in a moment.
Sergeant Leland Coyle is back. The returning antagonist takes on a prominent new role in the season’s main Trial, Locksock the Warden, set inside the Prison Farm – a new facility built on the logic of Murkoff’s factory, where “authority is money, punishment is policy, and freedom is an unspoken promise that keeps prisoners in limbo.” Red Barrels writes the story of this game with a kind of institutional fear that never lets you relax, and the setting of Prison Farm lives up to that.
The Enemy Who Was Disarmed For Everyone’s Safety
Its arms are removed to avoid self-injury. Machined reinforced jaws. Tied around the neck for safety. The extended legs give it unexpected speed.
That’s The Biter, Project Boneyard’s new Ex-Pop, and it’s one of the most disturbing enemy concepts the game has produced. The unique horror of a creature being disarmed and restrained mainly because the rest was somehow evil – and still dangerous enough to warrant all that – is the kind of physical horror that Outlast Trials does well. Augmented legs are the kickers, because of course a neck-bound and armless enemy can also be faster than you’d expect. That’s how this game works.
It also introduces what is the most intractable new enemy the game has introduced to date.
Biter explores the Prison Farm, and how chained enemies actually work in the Trial area is something we’ll find out for sure on July 14. Given the game’s track record with enemy designs, any notion that chaining makes them less threatening is silly.
New Trials and Challenges for MK
‘Locksock the Warden’ is the main trial of the season, framed in accordance with Murkoff’s usual “kill this person, and we’ll set you free.” Two new MK challenges are brought along with it. ‘Bribing the Judges’ sends you to collect bribes and pay off judges – the flavor script around “bullying violence” is the kind of thing that would read as heavy handed in another game and somehow feels right here. ‘Cancel the Broadcast’ is another challenge, which involves destroying the broadcast and staining the “faithful with blood,” which is Red Barrels’ nice way of describing what is likely to be a mission with enemies everywhere.
New Features to Note
Project Boneyard also introduces a reasonable number of new features. Rig Customization and Knife Customization expand the way players can customize their loadouts. Loadout Presets allow you to save settings before loading Trials, a real quality-of-life addition for anyone who has been fiddling with performance between runs. Mastery Tasks add a new layer of progression goals for players looking for something that will work beyond the main Trial content.
Escalation and Invasion are both getting major overhauls, though full details of those changes are being held until closer to launch. Both modes have been a part of the game since previous seasons, and significant structural changes to either of them will be very important to how many people play. Red Barrels said that the overhaul is aimed at improving the flow and overall player experience, which is the right way to go without being specific.
Twitch Drops are active from July 14 to August 11 for anyone who wants to win prizes without going directly into chaos. Outlast Trials has been building its seasonal content slowly since its launch, and Project Boneyard looks to be one of the few that has dropped over time. The Prison Farm area opens up new design territory, the return of Sergeant Coyle gives the season a proper antagonist with established weight, and The Biter is the kind of additional enemy that will appear in horror game discussions for a while when people actually experience it.
July 14. Free update. Bring a friend.
- Released
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May 18, 2023
- The ESRB
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M For Adults 17+ due to extreme violence, blood and gore, sexual themes, nudity, drug reference, strong language
- Engine
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Unusual Engine 4
- Cross-Platform Play
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PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series
