My summer has been a bit miserable so far. Work is good (up to a point). Relationships are going well. But everything else either sucks or feels exhausting. In this case, you’d think I’d be checking out something calming like Stardew Valley outside of work (yeah, I haven’t gotten into that yet). On second thought: I started playing Outlast Trials.
I can’t talk about its early access period, nor the transition to 1.0 earlier this year, because I just got into it for the first time this week. Part of me is curious about this game and its seasonal model, but one of the funny things about my brain is that traditionally, the more stressed I am in real life, the more stressed out I am in stressful games Thrive. Which is why I now find myself searching for keys among rotting corpses and hiding in closets from severely deformed monsters.
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This may require a little more background knowledge without going into great detail (as this is not a blog post): it’s hard to juggle sometimes many things Suddenly, you’re likely to break down or become miserable. But you can also keep trudging along and wait out the storm. As mentioned before, mine Life is wonderful now, but I have a fatal weakness, which is worrying too much about the people around me. And, experience has taught me that bad things tend to go together. So, yeah, you can guess how that’s been going lately. The direct result is that I bear too much weight on my figurative shoulders while trudging forward.
When it’s often 40°C outside (yes, southern Spain), it’s impossible to walk all the way every day, and entertainment like movies or TV may no longer be your best option. correct That thing when your mind just keeps spinning. Napping isn’t the answer to all problems, either. So I turned to video games because they are a more complex activity. I’ve been hard at work on Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, which is great, but running into some frustrating walls lately isn’t the greatest feeling. I needed to release some stress by playing something simple but crazy and new. Enter “Escape Trial”.
“This is going to suck,” I thought to myself earlier this week, when I was doing my first online trial with a group of strangers. After all, playing as a survivor in Deadline by Daylight is a pretty crappy experience if you don’t have a solid group of friends. To my surprise, however, we were able to communicate well thanks to a reliable ping system and a UI that felt clean and informative. Since Outlast Trials seems to be built more as a true cooperative experience rather than a competitive sprint through levels, it seems like the community is much friendlier and more helpful. Despite my rookie mistakes, I didn’t get kicked out of the lobby, and escaping killers and falling into traps felt more fun than Landos did.
It’s no surprise that I can transfer all my stress into games: when I’m stressed, I tend to be more aware of my surroundings, and this is reflected in video games as well. My best Quake games have all occurred under the influence of too much caffeine. This is similar. While I made a lot of rookie mistakes, I actually reacted pretty quickly to random events and complications, otherwise I would have been under the nearest table for at least a few seconds (this is my take on sharing a single player game of this type) method) DNA). But not anymore. There were no jump scares that bothered me, and I’d rather do another round than quit and decompress after two attempts that went wrong.
As for the game itself, I found a lot to like about it, as it blends handcrafted scenarios filled with grotesque elements and disturbing implications with a more traditional cooperative horror experience. it’s just Feel It’s nice and responsive, plus the “live service” element seems well-tuned and organic rather than overbearing, which is more than I’d say of most of its competitors. I’m not a huge fan of Outlast, but Red Barrels sure know how to make a polished and tight game.
The point of this article is that you should play Saw -style horror games when you’re feeling down? God no. Different things fix different people. In fact, I don’t even know how I ended up choosing The Outlast Trials to “relax” over more logical options, or with all these mixed feelings and conflicting thoughts in my head, but I guess that’s what electronics are The beauty of games is that they have an artistic intention behind them, even if it’s a fucking intention.
