Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival doesn’t hold back when bringing the iconic horror franchise into the world of video games. At Gamescom 2026, we had the opportunity to play a section from later in the game. Our time with it showed just how much Saber Interactive is embracing the disturbing imagery and psychological horror of Hellraiser.
Rather than simply adapting one of the movies, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival tells a new story within the Hellraiser canon. Players take control of Aidan Lynch, who finds himself caught between the Cenobites and the Scarlet Church while desperately trying to save his girlfriend, Sunny.
Central to his journey is the Genesis Configuration, a mysterious puzzle box that plays an important role in the story while also granting Aidan supernatural abilities.
Our Gamescom demo took place roughly 70 percent into the game, giving us a look at combat, exploration and puzzles before eventually throwing us directly into the twisted world of the Cenobites.
Fighting Our Way Towards the Labyrinth
The demo began inside a large interior area occupied by several hostile enemies. Our objective initially seemed straightforward: explore the environment, locate important objects hidden behind locked doors and eventually find a way to open the path forward.
How you deal with the enemies standing in your way is largely up to you. Hellraiser: Revival combines first-person survival horror with a noticeable amount of action. Players can approach encounters quietly and avoid unnecessary confrontations or take a considerably more direct approach. Both melee and ranged weapons are available, while the supernatural abilities of the Genesis Configuration can also be used during combat.
Even during these more action-heavy sections, the presentation remains unmistakably Hellraiser. Mutilated bodies and grotesque environmental details are everywhere, with the environments consistently reflecting the franchise’s obsession with pain and pleasure.
Visually, the game already made an excellent impression here. The environments are highly detailed and Saber Interactive certainly isn’t holding back when it comes to gore and disturbing imagery. Once we finally managed to open the large door blocking our path, however, the demo took a dramatic turn – we entered the Labyrinth.
The Cenobites’ Labyrinth
The Labyrinth is the otherworldly realm ruled by Leviathan and home to the Cenobites – and visually, it was easily the highlight of our hands-on session.
The comparatively familiar surroundings from before suddenly disappeared. Instead, we found ourselves inside an oppressive world drenched in cold blue tones, filled with narrow corridors, chains, impossible architecture and grotesque organic structures.
The contrast also highlighted one of Revival’s greatest visual strengths. Despite moving between vastly different locations, every environment feels like part of the same twisted universe. Rather than feeling like a conventional horror game with the Hellraiser name attached to it, Revival genuinely looks and feels like an interpretation of Clive Barker’s world. More importantly, the Labyrinth isn’t simply a disturbing backdrop. The environment itself becomes part of the gameplay.
One puzzle required us to manipulate the surroundings in ways that quite literally turned our perception of the world upside down. Corridors and structures stopped behaving according to conventional logic, forcing us to reconsider how we navigated the environment.
The Genesis Configuration plays an important role here as well, allowing Aidan to manipulate parts of the world and solve various puzzles throughout the Labyrinth.
The result is an interesting combination of traditional survival horror exploration and surreal environmental puzzles, with some areas featuring impossible, almost M.C. Escher-like architecture.
When Reality Starts to Break Apart
After escaping this section of the Labyrinth, the demo changed direction once again. Suddenly, we found ourselves somewhere considerably more familiar: Aidan’s home. At first, everything appeared relatively normal. But each time we moved through the house and returned to seemingly familiar rooms, subtle details began to change. Objects appeared differently, parts of the environment became distorted and new pieces of information gradually revealed more about Aidan’s story – particularly his relationship with Sunny.
Without going into spoiler territory, this was one of the most interesting sequences of our demo. What initially resembles a memory or vision is tied to the Labyrinth’s influence over reality. Familiar environments become increasingly distorted, while the player is forced to rethink how seemingly ordinary spaces are navigated.
Solving these sequences isn’t always as simple as moving forward either. Progress can require changing perspective or even doing the opposite of what the game initially seems to expect. It’s an effective way of combining psychological storytelling with puzzle design without relying entirely on cutscenes or exposition.
A Promising Descent Into Hell
Based on what we played at Gamescom, Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival could become one of the more distinctive horror games of 2026. The combination of first-person combat, survival horror, environmental puzzles and psychological storytelling worked well during our hands-on, but it was ultimately the game’s presentation that left the strongest impression.
Saber Interactive certainly isn’t holding back. Gore, mutilated bodies and disturbing imagery are present throughout, but Revival doesn’t appear to rely exclusively on shock value. Psychological horror, environmental storytelling and surreal puzzle design are equally important to its interpretation of Hellraiser.
Of course, a short section from later in the game isn’t enough to judge how well all these elements will come together across the entire campaign. But our time with the game certainly left us wanting to see more. If Saber Interactive can maintain this level of visual creativity and variety throughout the full experience, Hellraiser: Revival could turn out to be one of the year’s most distinctive horror releases.
Clive Barker’s Hellraiser: Revival launches on October 8, 2026 for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.
