Horror games based on popular movie franchises have become a special niche in the video game industry—especially those that try to replicate Dead By Daylight's formula and success, to middling results.
In Dead By Daylight, human players attempt to escape a torture arena where a killer player hunts down the survivors like cat and mouse. Humans have scarce tools at their disposal, whilst the killer has nigh-infinite potential to make the survivors' lives miserable. Games that have tried to capture this lightning in a bottle include Friday the 13th, Evil Dead: The Game, Resident Evil: Resistance, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and probably more we've never heard of. Game publishers have become obsessed with trying to conjure a money-printing machine.
New story-driven Hellraiser video game announced
It's a wonderful surprise nowadays that any promising single-player experience is announced—a respectable, memorable one at that. So it's incredibly exciting to be getting a story-driven Hellraiser game that looks faithful to the taboo themes of the original movies. And the best part? Clive Barker himself was involved. Okay, another best part, Doug Bradley is returning as Pinhead!
For those new to the Hellraiser cinematic franchise, it's based on Clive Barker's novella of the same name, featuring eldritch and Lovecraftian entities who worship pleasure and pain. The series explores themes of psychosexual, body, and existential horror, all wrapped in writhing flesh, chains, and leather.
Developed by Saber Interactive, Hellraiser: Revival is a single-player, story-driven, survival horror game. The player steps into the shoes of Aidan, who must harness the power of the Genesis Configuration to battle sinister spawn and help his girlfriend, Sunny, escape from the Labyrinth.
Barker has had a powerful influence on the game itself. Which looks to be the case, as the trailer emitted the classic atmosphere felt from the first two movies, Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser 2. Which makes sense considering how much imagery we get of the Labyrinth and the "audience with God" diamond structure.

"Clive Barker has been deeply involved with the game from the very beginning. His guidance and intimate understanding of the Hellraiser universe have been instrumental in shaping every aspect of the experience," said Nenad Tomic, Executive Producer at Saber Interactive, per Xbox Wire. The game also fits snugly in Hellraiser lore, though at no particular point in time, it's a story within the universe, nonetheless.
We don't know a lot about Hellraiser: Revival's gameplay yet. However, from the short glimpse in the trailer, we can probably guess there'll be running away from cenobites, exploring the Labyrinth, and of course, some puzzles via the box (Genesis Configuration).
Hellraiser lends itself really well to a survival horror adaptation, and as a huge fan of the classic movies, I'm incredibly excited to see what sights Sable Interactive has to show me. It's already reassuring that we're getting the intimate experience from a first-person, single-player perspective, not watered down in an arena-arcade gameplay format. No offense to Dead By Daylight, as the game has featured Pinhead as one of its killers, but Hellraiser deserves more than online co-op.
Hellraiser: Revival is "closer than you think," says Nenad, and more details will be unveiled later this year.
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