Red Barrels' cooperative horror game The Outlast Trials is out now on Nintendo Switch 2. The port went live on the Nintendo eShop on October 27 for $39.99, bringing the Murkoff Corporation's Cold War experiments to Nintendo hardware for the first time, roughly three and a half years after the game first opened its doors in Early Access on PC.
What the Switch 2 version is
Red Barrels is publishing the Switch 2 version itself, and Nintendo's store listing confirms it runs in all three of the console's play modes: TV, tabletop and handheld. That last one matters more than usual for a game like this. The Outlast Trials is built around creeping through dark rooms and listening for the footsteps of whatever is hunting you, and a horror game you can play with headphones on in bed is a slightly different proposition from one tied to the living room TV.
The listing also flags two Nintendo Switch Online features: Online Play and Save Data Cloud. In practice that means the game's co-op, which is the heart of the experience, requires a Nintendo Switch Online membership, as online play does for any game on the platform. Solo play is available too, so a membership is not strictly needed to play at all, but most players will want one.
Text support is broad. Nintendo lists 13 languages, including English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Latin American Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Japanese, Korean, and both Simplified and Traditional Chinese.
What The Outlast Trials actually is
The Outlast Trials is a prequel to Outlast and Outlast 2, set during the Cold War. You play as a test subject who signed up for what looked like an ordinary research program, only to wake up inside a Murkoff facility where human beings are put through brainwashing and mind-control experiments. Each Trial is a self-contained scenario built on a twisted stage set, such as a police station, an orphanage or a toy factory, where you complete a list of grim objectives while the facility's most dangerous "Prime Assets" stalk you.
It can be played alone or in teams of two, three or four. Like the earlier Outlast games, it is a game about not fighting: hiding in lockers and under beds, breaking line of sight, and sprinting for the exit when you are spotted. The difference here is the toolkit. Between Trials you earn and upgrade gadgets and abilities, called Rigs, that let you stun, blind, heal or detect enemies, and in co-op a well-coordinated team can cover for each other in ways a lone player cannot.
Between runs you return to the Sleep Room, your personal cell inside the facility, which you can decorate. You can also customize your character's look, and the game rewards those who dig into its story by scattering documents and items across the Trials that expose what Murkoff is really doing to its "reagents".
A game that is still being updated
The Outlast Trials launched in Early Access on PC on May 18, 2023, and reached full release on March 5, 2024, on PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One and PC. Red Barrels has kept it running with seasonal updates since, and the timing of the Switch 2 launch puts it right in the middle of the game's Halloween period.
The studio's Season 7.2 update went live on October 20 on the existing platforms. It brought back the limited-time Geister event, in which a hallucination-themed program swaps in modifiers such as harvesting organ samples from fallen reagents and an increased number of imposters, along with a fresh Geister event catalog of rewards bought with event tokens. The update also added a community event called Escape the Facility, two new MK-Challenges, Compel the Children and Sanitize the Factory, reworked Escalation Therapy, and a new Favorites feature for cosmetics.
What is not confirmed yet
Nintendo's listing does not say whether the Switch 2 version shares lobbies with players on PlayStation, Xbox and PC, or whether it is fully in step with the other versions on seasonal content and events from day one. Red Barrels has not spelled out either point in the material available so far, so anyone buying specifically to play with friends on another platform should check the studio's official channels before paying.
What is confirmed is the basics: the full game is on the eShop now, at $39.99, playable docked or handheld, solo or with up to three friends online.
