If you’re a fan of horror games, you’ve probably seen targeted ads for Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival since its official announcement in July 2025. The first video game adapting the Hellraiser horror movie series, not counting the franchise’s guest appearance in Dead by Daylight, Revival has kept its cards close to the chest since the project was publicly confirmed. Fortunately, we are happy to confirm that not only does the game exist but that we got to play an early build of it for ourselves at Summer Game Fest 2026.
This nightmarish vision of Clive Barker’s visceral horror story is brought to life by Saber Interactive, with the game’s protagonist, Aidan Lynch, trying to find his girlfriend after she’s taken by the extra-dimensional Cenobites, including their garish figurehead Pinhead. This quest unfolds from a first-person perspective as Aidan tries to find a way to follow the Cenobites into their hellish realm. The build of the game that we experienced unfolds in three distinctly different environments, each with their own aesthetics, tone, and gameplay mechanics while distinctly taking place within the familiar confines of a Hellraiser story.
The opening sequence within the SGF build for Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival takes place in what appears to be a penthouse apartment run by a sado-masochist cult, which is right on-brand for Hellraiser. This segment was the weakest of the demo, not because of the gameplay or presentation, which were both fine, but because it played out like any number of horror-themed first-person shooters as we killed cultists while looking for a way to progress. The big innovation here was that we had something referred to as the Genesis Configuration in our possession, letting us telekinetically control blades and fire to dispatch enemies in addition to our conventional weapons.
Where the early build really took off was in its second segment, as Aidan enters the hellish dimension where the Cenobites hail from. Using the Genesis Configuration, we altered the layout of this world, rotating walls and playing with the physics of this otherworldly realm like a sinister version of Portal. The Hellraiser aesthetics were in full swing here, providing an unsettling environment that really made all this puzzle-solving and light platforming stand out for fans of the franchise.
This all led to the most horrific sequence in the entire demo, which saw Aidan venture into a facsimile of his home with his missing girlfriend Sunny. As we looped through this domestic setting, we not only witnessed increasingly disturbing visions and messages but learned more about the unhappy dynamic between the game’s core couple. There’s no way that this sequence was at least partially influenced by Hideo Kojima’s ill-fated horror game P.T. and its similar nightmarishly repeating corridor but Hellraiser: Revival makes the experience its twisted own with a hell of a punchline.
And that’s the big thing that I appreciated about Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival, that throughout the diversity in gameplay and presentation it stays visibly and tonally true to Barker’s scary story. We didn’t get to have an extended meeting with Pinhead or other Cenobites like the Chatterer, and we can’t wait to see how they figure into the game itself, but they would definitely fit within the aesthetics of Hellraiser: Revival. No matter how action-driven or surreal the game gets, this is Hellraiser through and through, leaning into the gory violence and sado-masochistic erotica that the franchise is known for.
As for the gameplay, it handles well, even in the first-person combat sequences that started off this demo. Mechanically within its combat, the game feels closer to something like Half-Life or Deus Ex without coming off as dated as those early PC first-person shooters. The puzzle-solving and psychological sequences retain those broader gameplay sensibilities but within a much different tone and type of intensity that informs the experience; the urgency is there but not from readily facing a tangible enemy so much as an existential one.
Taking less than an hour to complete this demo, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival not only felt like a worthy video game adaptation of its fan-favorite property but a breath of fresh air for modern movie tie-in horror games. It feels like so many movie-inspired horror titles are overly derivative of Dead by Daylight, with games like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and Evil Dead: The Game leaning into asymmetrical multiplayer experiences. By contrast, Hellraiser: Revival is a single-player experience that blends action and horror while taking full advantage of its source material visually and narratively.
For anyone who’s had Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival preordered for months, we’re happy to confirm that the game is very much real and on track for its October release date, just in time for Halloween. And for any fan who’s worried that the game will be an echo of any number of asymmetrical horror games, we’re even happier to report that it’s very much its own franchise-appropriate experience. Doing its source material proud, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival is shaping up to become one of the standout horror games of the year.
Developed and published by Saber Interactive, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival will be released October 8, 2026 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.
