The Outlast Trials is a survival horror game and the sequel to one of the most beloved series in the genre. And even if The Outlast Trials is the first game in the series to feature multiplayer as a core feature, it’s certainly not the first time the genre has been turned in this direction. Titles like Phasmophobia and Dead by Daylight made it clear years ago that co-op and horror could work together just fine.

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When talking about games like The Outlast Trials, players could refer to two things. It could mean games like the Outlast series, which includes The Outlast Trials, even if the latter is a multiplayer game. Alternatively, some players could be looking for multiplayer survival horror titles in the vein of The Outlast Trials, where players cooperate to solve puzzles and survive an avalanche of terrifying enemies.

1 Dead By Daylight

Competitive Multiplayer Survival Horror

Dead by Daylight is a popular multiplayer survival horror game, just like The Outlast Trials. The main difference is that Dead by Daylight is a competitive online survival horror, putting one player in the role of the monster, charged with hunting the four survivors until they escape or until the monster wins.

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Dead by Daylight might be a great choice for a group of players who have finished The Outlast Trials and want something competitive, or even just a replayable multiplayer horror game. Dead by Daylight has been around since 2016, and through the years, it has accrued quite a lot of unique content for new players to experience.

2 Phasmophobia

Ghost Hunting With Friends

Phasmophobia is a straightforward Early Access horror game with plenty of customizable options and up to four players co-op. Players take the role of ghost hunters and paranormal investigators, collecting evidence of supernatural activity and interacting with one of twenty types of ghosts.

Unlike many other entries in the genre, Phasmophobia isn’t quite as tacky as its premise implies. This isn’t a riff on Ghostbusters that takes itself way too seriously. It is, instead, a game about greedy paranormal investigators biting more than they can chew and dealing with the consequences, complete with ten different locations.

3 Outlive

An Indie Title Inspired By Outlast

• Platform(s): PC
• Released: 17 Oct, 2023
• Developer(s): Bossco Games
• Genre(s): Survival Horror

Outlive is a recent indie game openly inspired by the Outlast series. In fact, the title earns its place among the likes of Amnesia and Penumbra in the genre that fans affectionately call “run and hide,” where players are completely locked out of combat and have to flee from every enemy they encounter. It’s also a single-player game, making it ideal for players who enjoy playing The Outlast Trials solo.

Noticeable influences aside, Outlive is a fairly standard first-person survival horror game and hardly what fans of the genre would recommend to a newcomer. Still, those who have already gone through the genre’s staples should think about giving Outlive a chance.

4 Alien: Isolation

One Of The Best First-Person Survival Horror Games

Alien: Isolation is a survival horror game set in the world of the Alien series, though it is predominantly inspired by the original 1979 movie and less by the series’ previous video games. Much like in the Outlast franchise, players have no hope of defeating their primary enemy, the Xenomorph. They can only slow it down or avoid it altogether.

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Alien: Isolation is just as timeless on the technical side. Put simply, this does not look like a ten-year-old game. The attention to detail, from the bulky machines that litter the world to the way everything sounds, is what makes this the kind of game revisiting every now and again.

5 Outlast

The Quintessential Outlast Experience

Outlast is the original game in the series, the now-trilogy concluded by The Outlast Trials. Unlike the latest installment in the series, the first two games do not feature any multiplayer. Still, the roots of what would become The Outlast Trials are already visible in the original: first-person exploration, puzzles, and near-invincible enemies.

If anything, enemies in the original Outlast are even less vulnerable, as the protagonist can’t even use a consumable item to stun their assailant for a few seconds. If this can begin to cause frustration by the time Outlast 2 rolls around, the original game manages to use the absence of combat to its advantage.

6 SOMA

Features A Story That Outlast Fans May Enjoy

While SOMA is certainly a horror game, calling it survival horror might begin to stretch the definition of the genre. It certainly isn’t as focused on escaping from monsters as the developers’ previous title, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. The same is true when comparing the game to The Outlast Trials.

What SOMA loses in thrills and scares (and the lack of multiplayer options), it completely makes up with its story. In fact, the story is so important to SOMA’s identity that soon after its release, an alternative mode was added to the game, removing the roaming monsters and most other scares.

7 Devour

Highly Replayable Co-Op Horror Survival

Devour is a co-op survival horror game for up to four players and centers around an evil ritual gone wrong. It’s up to the players, as the only surviving members of a cult taken over by a demonic curse, to stop the ritual and free their possessed companions. Devour markets itself as a challenging game, and it’s best approached together with a team of friends.

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In Devour, the gameplay loop is fundamentally always the same: exploring the map, finding key items, avoiding monsters, and performing rituals. The game keeps things fresh by giving every item randomized locations and tracking progress across different games through a level system.

8 Demonologist

A Next-Gen Rival To Phasmophobia

• Platform(s): PC
• Released: February 6, 2023
• Developer(s): Clock Wizard Games
• Genre(s): Horror, Survival, Co-op

Demonologist is a feature-rich co-op horror game for one to four players about exorcizing randomly generated spirits from a handful of maps. The game will be familiar to those who have played other entries in the genre, but that doesn’t mean Demonologist doesn’t have some unique twists of its own.

For one, Demonologist looks great. That certainly isn’t an achievement when compared to the classic Phasmophobia, but this brand-new Unreal Engine 5 game wouldn’t look out of place in an engine show-off reel. Then there’s the fact that players actually exorcise the ghosts instead of pillaging the house and hoping to survive their supernatural attacks, making Demonologist a great choice for a unique co-op supernatural horror game.

9 Pacify

A More Lighthearted Co-Op Horror Experience

More than any other game in the already derivative genre of co-op horror survival, Pacify looks and feels like an unlicensed Ghostbusters game. From the slightly comedic tone to the “Paranormal Activity Helpers Inc.” uniforms every player will wear, Pacify makes its inspirations clear from the start.

Pacify features four unique missions that can be completed or completely ruined, each with its own haunt, which will require most groups a few hours to complete. Then there’s the competitive multiplayer mode, where each player takes the role of a company intern trying to do the most work and become a full-time ghostbuster.

10 Escape The Backrooms

Co-Op Horror Inspired By The Backrooms

Escape the Backrooms is an Early Access co-op horror game for up to four players set in that vague collection of environments that are the Backrooms. But just describing this game as a backroom game might not do it justice: Escape the Backrooms features a large and constantly growing set of original levels, multiple mysterious entities to run from, and an actual story.

Even if it can be played in co-op with up to four players, Escape the Backrooms works just as well as a single-player title, even though it’s based on exploration. As a plus, the regular version of the game comes with an experimental VR mode. Though one can certainly play the game in virtual reality, the developers are quick to point out that VR is still an experimental feature.

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