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Subscribe from just £3 Takes you closer to the games, movies and TV you love Try a single issue or save on a subscription Issues delivered straight to your door or device From£9.99View Summer Game Fest Future Games Show Upcoming Switch 2 games Switch 2 pre-orders Recommended reading Survival Horror Games Cronos: The New Dawn co-directors talk merging abominations, Resident Evil, Dark Souls, and Netflix's Dark of all things: "We've got a deep psychological story to tell" Survival Horror Games New Cronos: The New Dawn trailer shows Bloober learned its lesson from Silent Hill 2 remake with nasty sci-fi combat that would make James Sunderland cry Action Games With "multi-map spanning secrets" and "phantasmagorical" horrors, Hell is Us wages a brutal civil war that already has me on edge Horror Games Upcoming horror games for 2025 and beyond Survival Horror Games Deep Sleep: Labyrinth of the Forsaken puts an Inception spin on PS1-era survival horror games, and I totally get why it's winning pre-launch awards Horror Games Palworld studio is releasing a psychological horror game so terrifying, even Pocketpair's own publishing manager has been "too scared to play it" Horror Games Former Witcher 3 and Dying Light devs reveal their Resident Evil homage, complete with PS1-style fixed cameras Horror Games Ill looks like a gnarly cross between Half-Life and The Thing, and its developer has just one goal: delivering "a good f**king horror game* Andrew Brown 6 June 2025 Interview | Creative director Max Verehin talks us through partnering with Mundfish and trying to make a horror game truly scary When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works. (Image credit: Team Clout) The human brain is honed on a millennia of survival instincts, which means that we can often tell from a glance if something is bad news. Snakes. Lions. Roadworks. A twisted mass of muscle and bone, splintered ribcage blooming toward the ceiling while a slack-jawed head dangles from where its hips should be. That last one is admittedly quite specific to Ill, a first-person survival horror which has spent several years cooking since its reveal in 2022. Though developer Team Clout has kept its debut body horror close to its chest, the studio has resurfaced at Summer Game Fest 2025 with a new trailer and news that it's now working with Mundfish Powerhouse – a newly-launched creative label from Atomic Heart's Mundfish – to bring Ill to life. "Before this, we had more questions than answers," Max Verehin, creative director at Team Clout, tells GamesRadar+. "With Mundfish we still have a lot of questions, but now we have people with answers." Looking grim (Image credit: Team Clout) Rotting with Robbie (Image credit: Konami) 22 years on, the designer behind Silent Hill 3's "cute but scary" Robbie the Rabbit mascot is still obsessed with the "tiny but grotesque" – and so am I There's a weightiness to everything we've seen from Ill so far. The protagonist's revolver looks powerful enough to take your arm off when it fires, while the game's monsters move with a shuddering awfulness. While Ill's research base setting and body horror leanings scream The Thing, I'm also reminded of Half-Life 2's infamous level We Don't Go To Ravenholm – which, despite being very combat-heavy, leans on its physics and environmental interactivity to create desperate reactivity. You may like Cronos: The New Dawn co-directors talk merging abominations, Resident Evil, Dark Souls, and Netflix's Dark of all things: "We've got a deep psychological story to tell" New Cronos: The New Dawn trailer shows Bloober learned its lesson from Silent Hill 2 remake with nasty sci-fi combat that would make James Sunderland cry With "multi-map spanning secrets" and "phantasmagorical" horrors, Hell is Us wages a brutal civil war that already has me on edge "We love Half-Life 2, and we love games of that era," says Verehin, when I point out the similarities. "You remember when games around Half-Life 2, they all had this Havoc engine? You shoot a bunch of barrels and they all fly by? We're trying to make that in Ill as well, because we like it. You enter a room and start fighting with the monster. The monster drops dead on the barrels, the barrels drop, and it's a mess. After the fight, the area you fought in is completely different. You feel the world is alive." Verehin admits the team is being "really careful" with balancing the randomness associated with more malleable physics. Too much is a recipe for jank and bugs – as anyone who's been killed by a wayward chair in Half-Life will attest to – but with restraint, with shelves rattling and objects falling over because something is over there, the sweet spot is found. "You feel the weight of the revolver, of the animations. It's one of the concepts that we are trying to bring from the earliest ideas of Ill toward the final product. You will feel how brutal and impactful the game [is], and we are pushing that." (Image credit: Team Clout) "You cannot make a pure horror experience when players have guns"Max Verehin, creative director of Ill Outside of Half-Life 2 – which shares Ill's "Eastern Bloc [...] Mixed with sci-fi elements" setting – Verehin's own inspiration comes from his own tastes and digging into what other people find scary. "When browsing TikTok, there's a lot of inspiration in that," he explains. "You can see fucked up stuff that gives you ideas for the monster [...] You see something that doesn't have to be scary, and you don't expect it to be scary. I'm leaning into that and trying to translate it into monster design." While many of the best horror games struggle to keep those scares when you can fight back against their baddies, Team Clout plans to lean right into it. Combat is front-and-center in Ill, although getting the pacing has still proven a "huge" challenge for the studio. Besides it being action-heavy, players will have an "arsenal" of guns to fight back with – although for the sake of fear factor, they won't be able to kill everything in sight. Sign up to the GamesRadar+ Newsletter Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more Contact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBy submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over. (Image credit: Team Clout) "We want to [include] the survival horror element, the classic PT-like horror genre where you don't have a weapon, you're just a victim," says Verehin. Certain sections of Ill will prevent players from fighting back, and even when you can go trigger-happy, Verehin circles back around to maximizing fear through sound. "Even if you have guns, [what if] there is nobody around? You can't kill them, but you can hear them. You can see fucked up stuff that you cannot kill, but it can kill you." "It's [a balancing act], but this is definitely a challenge," explains Verehin. "You cannot make a pure horror experience when players have guns." Ill doesn't fit as neatly into one box as, say, something inspired by Resident Evil's survival horror or Silent Hill's psychological tension. If anything, Verehin suggests it's an "action horror" more in line with "'90s horror movies" than anything else. But ultimately, Verehin believes horror players know what they like – however their tastes are categorized. "People are really eager to have another good fucking horror game," he suggests. "We are trying to deliver that." Ill is planned to launch on PC, Xbox Series X|S, and PS5 at an unspecified time. Meanwhile, our new games 2025 list has everything you need to plan out your year See more Xbox Series X Features Summer Game Fest Xbox Series X PlayStation Andrew Brown Social Links Navigation Features Editor Andy Brown is the Features Editor of Gamesradar+, and joined the site in June 2024. Before arriving here, Andy earned a degree in Journalism and wrote about games and music at NME, all while trying (and failing) to hide a crippling obsession with strategy games. When he’s not bossing soldiers around in Total War, Andy can usually be found cleaning up after his chaotic husky Teemo, lost in a massive RPG, or diving into the latest soulslike – and writing about it for your amusement. You must confirm your public display name before commenting Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name. Cronos: The New Dawn co-directors talk merging abominations, Resident Evil, Dark Souls, and Netflix's Dark of all things: "We've got a deep psychological story to tell" New Cronos: The New Dawn trailer shows Bloober learned its lesson from Silent Hill 2 remake with nasty sci-fi combat that would make James Sunderland cry With "multi-map spanning secrets" and "phantasmagorical" horrors, Hell is Us wages a brutal civil war that already has me on edge Upcoming horror games for 2025 and beyond Deep Sleep: Labyrinth of the Forsaken puts an Inception spin on PS1-era survival horror games, and I totally get why it's winning pre-launch awards Palworld studio is releasing a psychological horror game so terrifying, even Pocketpair's own publishing manager has been "too scared to play it" Latest in Horror Games Capcom finally reveals first trailer for Resident Evil 9 at Summer Game Fest a year after its announcement Palworld studio is releasing a psychological horror game so terrifying, even Pocketpair's own publishing manager has been "too scared to play it" "Long time no see": Lethal Company update V70 is out now after several quiet months, adding a radar face cam and "the most powerful creature in the game" "I want him to be my dad but I also want him to go away": REPO devs are losing it a little bit, but have cool new features for Update 1 and "are very excited to see how you might break the game" "One day we were crossing our fingers for rent money and the next we had millions of players": REPO devs get candid, say the game "literally made semiwork as a studio survive" and insist future updates won't take so long Lethal Company creator is about to unleash "maybe the most powerful creature in the game" with the co-op horror hit's first update in months Latest in Features Fresh from unveiling Atomic Heart 2 and wild spin-off The Cube, Mundfish's CEO has his sights set on making a game as impactful as Crysis: "This is art!" 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