Outlast takes away the gun. Its hero, the investigative journalist Miles Upshur, carries a camcorder, and in most of the building he has come to investigate, its night-vision mode is the only way to see. Night vision drains the batteries quickly. When they run out, the camera keeps only “some weak functionality”, and the player is left to make what Edge called “a panicked, wall-hugging search for more batteries”. Edge found those moments “so nerve-shreddingly enjoyable” that it wished batteries were scarcer.
The game was the first from Red Barrels, a small Montreal studio, and came out for Windows on 4 September 2013. Edge said plainly that it “owes much to Amnesia: The Dark Descent”.
Mount Massive
The game begins at night, as Upshur drives up to Mount Massive, a remote Colorado asylum “shut down in 1971 amid scandal and secrecy”. It reopened in 2009 under the Murkoff corporation, outwardly as a charity, and a source on the inside has told Upshur that Murkoff’s intentions “may not be entirely honourable”. The front door is locked. He climbs scaffolding to an open first-floor window, which Edge thought was “more reminiscent of Mirror’s Edge’s Faith than, say, Gordon Freeman”, and finds the inmates loose.
Upshur cannot defend himself. He can hide in lockers and under beds or keep to the shadows. At a doorframe or corner he can lean out to look; while running, he can look back over his shoulder. Doors can be flung open or eased open with the mouse for a peek, a trick Edge noted had been “lifted” from Amnesia. Not every inmate wants to kill him. Many, Edge wrote, are as frightened as he is, and some are aggressive but harmless, and “in most cases there’s no explicit visual cue”, so the player is never quite sure. Edge praised the sound too: Upshur’s breathing quickens when he sees an enemy or enters a dark room, and the rustle of his clothes and the creak of the floorboards “sound perilously loud”. A playthrough lasts four to five hours.
Why a camcorder
Philippe Morin, one of Red Barrels’ founders, explained the design in 2015. The team wanted a hero who needed to see in the dark, and a reporter fitted: “camcorders also have night vision, so it fit nicely.” They “decided to go with no combat because it would allow us to build a more focused experience.” Filming certain events adds a note to Upshur’s notebook, but Morin said the studio left it to the player to decide how much to investigate, “without any game mechanics to re-enforce it”.
A game for watching
Outlast arrived just as people were starting to watch other people play games online. “Back then, it was really the beginning of the streamers, the wave of streamers, and YouTubers,” Morin said in 2026. “We had a game that was almost perfect for them, not necessarily by design.” When Red Barrels released its first trailer, he recalled, commenters kept saying they could not wait for PewDiePie to play it. A video of IGN staff playing the demo drew attention, PewDiePie then asked to play the demo too, and Morin estimated that his video reached “20 million views or something like that”.
The game also reached many players without being bought. A PlayStation 4 version followed early in 2014, given free to PlayStation Plus subscribers. By January 2015, Morin wrote, “about 3 million units of Outlast and Whistleblower have been downloaded on all platforms”. In 2018 he told GamesIndustry.biz that the series had sold 15 million units.
The series
An add-on, Outlast: Whistleblower, followed in May 2014. Outlast 2 (2017) moved to a hidden town in the Arizona desert and the followers of a man called Sullivan Knoth. The Outlast Trials (2024), played alone or in a team of up to four, is set during the Cold War, when Murkoff tests “advanced methods of brainwashing and mind control” on “human guinea pigs” it has “involuntarily recruited”. The Red Barrels entry tells the studio’s story in more detail.
Sources
- Edge issue 256, August 2013, p. 43: Outlast preview (the camera’s batteries as “the game’s most vital resource”; the debt to Amnesia).
- Edge issue 259, November 2013, pp. 96–97: Outlast review (PC, PS4 due in 2014; Mount Massive, Murkoff, Miles Upshur and the inside source; the scaffolding and Mirror’s Edge; hiding, leaning and looking back; the door trick; inmates who are not hostile; the sound; the batteries; four to five hours).
- Philippe Morin, “Horror in the Making: How Red Barrels Outlasted Outlast”, Game Developer, 29 January 2015 (web, secondary): the camcorder and night vision; no combat; recording left to the player; the PlayStation Plus deal; Whistleblower on 6 May 2014; “about 3 million units”. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/design/horror-in-the-making-how-red-barrels-outlasted-i-outlast-i-
- Andrej Barovic, interview with Philippe Morin, Destructoid, 11 May 2026 (web, secondary): streamers and YouTubers; PewDiePie; the IGN video. https://www.destructoid.com/red-barrels-co-founder-talks-the-future-of-horror-15-years-of-outlast-and-whats-next-for-the-franchise/
- “Outlast devs plan ‘a departure’ for next entry as the series sells 15 million units”, PCGamesN, May 2018 (web, secondary): Morin’s figure, given to GamesIndustry.biz. https://www.pcgamesn.com/outlast-new-game
- Steam store page for Outlast (web): release on 4 September 2013; Windows, macOS and Linux. https://store.steampowered.com/app/238320/Outlast/
- Steam store pages for Outlast 2 (release on 25 April 2017; Temple Gate and Sullivan Knoth in the Arizona desert) and The Outlast Trials (release on 5 March 2024; the Cold War setting, Murkoff and its “human guinea pigs”; teams of up to four) (web). https://store.steampowered.com/app/414700/Outlast_2/ and https://store.steampowered.com/app/1304930/The_Outlast_Trials/
- Wikipedia, “Outlast” (web, secondary): the notes written when Upshur records certain events; later platforms. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlast