Hellraiser Revival wants you to feel "uncomfortable." After 30 minutes playing, it does all that and more

Lauren Bergin News Editor
Lauren spends most of her time dead in League of Legends, or equally as dead in Valorant. Don't ask her about Vampire: The Masquerade.
Published: September 27, 2026

I'm going to start this article with a trigger warning. This interview deals with topics that include sadomasochism, themes of abuse, substance misuse, and discussions of a sexual nature, including the likes of BDSM. If those themes aren't for you, that's totally okay, but I'd advise that you avoid this article, and perhaps Hellraiser: Revival more generally.

I'm trapped in a looping corridor. It's a liminal space; one that continues until you find the relevant puzzle pieces, but one that constantly, subtly changes. I am Aidan, a man who's desperately searching for his girlfriend, Sunny, who's been pulled into the Cenobites' Labyrinth. As I scramble through the halls of my own home, I find various notes and texts, written from Aidan's perspective, explaining in great detail what he wants to do with Sonny later that night. The texts are a little more lighthearted, using keyboard characters to draw a woman's breasts. The notes, however, are visceral - I feel myself shift slightly in my seat. I'm hardly conservative, but it's rare that I see the word 'c u next Tuesday' appear in a videogame - especially in this context.

"We're trying to make people uncomfortable," Narrative Director Antony de Fault tells me at Gamescom. "We don't compromise," Game Director Emil Esov echoes. This is Hellraiser: Revival, and it's absolutely fantastic.

Hellraiser, as an archetype, confronts the idea of sadomasochism; for the uninitiated, that's the act of deriving physical or psychological pleasure from inflicting pain upon other people. The Cenobites - dubiously malevolent, otherworldly beings - effectively trap people in their eerie realm (The Labyrinth) and inflict said violence upon them. It's the meeting point of pain and pleasure; a realm where the lines between torture and consent are blurred.

Translating that into a videogame isn't exactly easy. There's a difficult line to tread here between demonizing sexual fetishes and exploring the idea of consent. Film and television have done this before - Hellraiser being the prime example - but videogames are meant to be fun. They shy away from violence of this nature, and I can fully understand why.

I was curious, then, to learn about Boss Team Games' approach to Hellraiser. During my playthrough, I visit a BDSM dungeon-style zone, then end up in the liminal space area that I mentioned before. While the dungeon zone doesn't feel too shocking (we've seen sex work and its potential perils explored in the likes of Cyberpunk 2077), the sequence in Aidan and Sunny's house left me feeling an odd mixture of emotions, perhaps encapsulated best by an "oh my!" That's something that I've never experienced while playing a videogame, but that's what makes it so fascinating.

I ask de Fault and Esov how they went about incorporating these themes into Hellraiser: Revival's gameplay, and about the balance between horror and respect. "We deliberately wanted to push people slightly," de Fault says. "We wanted to confront people with sexuality and intimacy that would make them uncomfortable, in what we might call the 'safe space' of a videogame. It's not really happening to them and their bodies, so they can process their thoughts about it and experience it in that safe way. I think it just makes people feel better; it makes me feel better about handling those kinds of situations if I ever found myself in them in the real world."

"We did try to make people uncomfortable," Esov continues. "I think that's a good thing, because many horror games go for the 'fear' emotion, which isn't cheap, but is easy to evoke. When people are looking at and experiencing uncomfortable feelings, they go to fear as well because that prolonged discomfort makes you afraid. It's that feeling of having to look at something that's discomforting to you, but you can't look away."

"I will say that we wanted to show a spectrum as well," de Fault highlights. "Sunny and Aidan are in what I would say is an unhealthy sexual relationship. The cult are in a deeply unhealthy sexual relationship with themselves. But there are also other characters in the game who engage in safe and completely acceptable, consensual BDSM. It was really important to us that we weren't just pointing at people who like leather and whips and paddles and being like 'oh, look at you sickos!' It was important to us to show that there are healthy ways to exercise those desires, but the primary subject of the game is people who take it too far."

Esov nods. "People in the real world tend to think of BDSM stuff as deviant, but in a lot of ways, in our game, BDSM enjoyers are the most normal people actually. There's the part in the sex club where we actually see the fun of it; it can look scary at first, but it's just people enjoying themselves." It's an interesting balance to strike, and I think Boss Team does it perfectly.

What I liked about Hellraiser: Revival was that almost noxious feeling of dread; that seeping sense of unease. There's a distinct lack of jump scares, which in some ways amplifies the heaviness of the themes - nothing feels cheap or predictable. There's one in the liminal space sequence, but de Fault notes that it was added "quite late" as "just a little seasoning on top." At no point does Hellraiser feel like it's actively trying to scare me; it's just passively succeeding in doing so.

That doesn't mean there's no violence, however; this is a survival horror experience. Hellraiser's shooting feels good; it's tough as nails, and you'll find yourself scrounging around in drawers looking for shotgun shells and accidentally lifting up a dildo.

The story of Hellraiser, however, is intertwined with intense violence. Where other games throw blood and guts at you because they can, brutality has to be a central theme here - it's a Hellraiser game. As a result, it feels meaningful despite its flamboyance. It takes center stage, yet never feels forced. I ask the duo how the team managed to achieve this.

"The context is the thing that makes the difference," de Fault says. "When people get tired of violence in videogames, it tends to be because the violence is in service of nothing. It'll be glory kills for the sake of glory kills - there's not really a point to the violence other than the visceral gratuity of it that taps into a certain lizard part of the brain. That's not to denigrate highly violent games; it's a different thing. The way we approached it was to make sure it always had a purpose. Every character in this game has a specific thematic, meaningful reason to be behaving the way they're behaving.

"Having discomfort as a key emotion for us really helped us navigate and be honest about what we want to show," Esov says. "We designed the experience around that; we want to microdose it so that the player feels it." He recalls that, in the game's first act, the process of acquiring your first item "is really prolonged and grotesque where you're looking at a naked body that has been disfigured in some way. It's not just a quick pick up animation - same with the first kill, same with the first everything. That's how we do it, and I think it feels organic in the Hellraiser space."

Hellraiser: Revival was my game of Gamescom. To the skeptical, it's just another branded horror experience, but in reality it made me feel things that I've never felt, and question my own pre-established biases. I've had horror games scare me - ask my mom about the baby in Resident Evil Village. I've never had a horror game make me think, and that's what Hellraiser does.

So yes, it is uncomfortable. It's uncompromising. It's explicit. It's a lot. But it's all in service of creating a great horror experience. Hellraiser: Revival is easily one of the most fascinating games I've ever played, and I can't wait to play more.

Hellraiser: Revival launches on Thursday, October 8. You can play the demo on Steam right now.