Hellraiser: Revival devs found "what really resonated with us" by studying the source material and blinkering out "other influences"
Hellraiser and Hellraiser only!
Hellraiser: Revival narrative director Anthony de Fault has stopped by the Future Games Show Summer Showcase to offer a look at the upcoming horror game and offer an insight into how they approached it.
As part of a feature at the showcase, de Fault offers a quick overview of what's to come. You play as Aiden, a character who "has his entire life been consumed with yearning."
De Fault says, "from an early age, he's sought out crime, drugs, sex, danger in order to feel more, to experience more."
- Wishlist Hellraiser: Revival on Steam now
By the time we meet him, though, he's met a "kindred spirit" who is key to the narrative of the game – his girlfriend Sunny, with whom he has entered into an "infernal spiral into depravity."
So it goes, things are taken a touch too far to the point we find ourselves with a small box called The Configuration, which allows us to wield the powers of hell, solve puzzles, and "ultimately save yourself and your girlfriend from the powers of hell."
If you want to get Sunny's soul back, you'll need to complete your bargain. Sadly, there are two factions standing in your way. One is a cult seeking your newly found power to further their goals, while the other has used constructs themselves and seeks you out for salvation after it all went rather poorly.
To piece together the game, de Fault says they went to great lengths to study the original source material but ensure nothing else crept in.
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"It was incredibly dear to us to stay true to the Hellraiser franchise when doing this work," he says. "So went back to the first and second movie, and the novella that he [Clive Barker] initially wrote that it was based on – The Hellbound Heart. [We] tried to blinker other influences out and we just studied those until we found what really resonated with us."
Hellraiser: Revival comes out this year.
If you're looking for more excellent games from today's Future Games Show, have a look at our official Steam page.

I joined GamesRadar+ in May 2022 following stints at PCGamesN and PocketGamer.Biz, with some freelance for Kotaku UK, RockPaperShotgun, and VG24/7 thrown in for good measure. When I'm not running the news team on the games side, you'll find me putting News Editor duties to one side to play the hottest JRPG of 20 years ago or pillaging the depths of Final Fantasy 14 for a swanky new cloak – the more colourful, the better.
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