The Outlast Trials leans into Cold War horror

The Outlast Trials is a co-op horror game set inside the Murkoff Corporation in the late 1950s. Players go through mental conditioning tests, solve puzzles, avoid detection, and sometimes have to commit violent acts to survive.

The story places the game in a Cold War setting filled with paranoia, secret programs, and mind control. Murkoff is shown as a company pushing extreme experiments on drugs and behavior, aiming to create sleeper agents and dangerous human weapons.

The game’s enemies include failed test subjects and special killers called “prime assets,” who are treated like standout results of the program. The writing connects the game to bigger political and historical fears, including government-backed violence and the idea that these experiments eventually spill back into ordinary life.

The piece also suggests the game may be drawing from older horror fiction and real-world conspiracy history, while building on the darker story world of the Outlast series.