Inside the brutal puzzles of Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival

In the demonstration, players see Aidan trying to escape The Chatterer, whose chattering teeth sound like they come from everywhere. The space presses on the player: walls are grey and spiky, and exits are blocked by electrical discharges. However, there is a way out: one must understand the logic of the environment.

Assistant Game Director Vid Rajin explained that the game does not aim to simply give weapons. The main task is to test the player’s nerves through reality-warping environments and secrets hidden within them.

— We use the Genesis Configuration – a puzzle box – at the centre of things, — says Vid. — Mysterious puzzle boxes are literally key to everything in Clive Barker’s universe, so it writes itself in terms of helping to craft puzzles and how to manipulate the world. We have a background in adventure games and hidden object puzzle titles, so we took our experience from those, but we want to make sure we have a narrative purpose for puzzles wherever we can.

The environment itself hints at solutions. For example, Aidan gets trapped in a loop of repeating rooms. To break this tormenting cycle, one must not run forward but turn back. This changes the entire setting and opens new possibilities.

— The labyrinth Aidan is trapped in is intertwined with the real world, — notes Vid. — So in the case of the looping rooms, the environment is almost trying to tell Aidan something, to get him to change his perspective, and make the player figure out another approach to what they might have been doing.

The Genesis Configuration itself is a key tool for solving many puzzles. It can not only provide offensive abilities but also change shape, acting as a key to open gates or restructure dangerous rooms with spikes into safe corridors.

Developers also included classic survival horror mechanics: lockpick mechanisms, inventory management similar to Resident Evil, and searching for crafting resources. Some puzzles have multiple solutions that players must discover themselves.

The development team – fans themselves – received help from Clive Barker himself and Doug Bradley, who reprises his role as Pinhead. This helped maintain the spirit of the original while creating new details.

The campaign will take over 12 hours to complete. Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival launches on PlayStation 5 on October 8 and is available for pre-order now. PS5 Pro owners can expect higher graphic settings and PSSR support to hone in on the horror.