Ill
2027·CLOUT Games
About this game
If you love Outlast, you understand the particular flavour of terror that comes from being completely powerless in a hostile environment - no weapons, no plan, just pure survival instinct and the very strong desire to be somewhere else. ILL isn't quite that extreme; it gives you firearms and the ability to fight back. But the atmosphere, the first-person perspective, the claustrophobic corridors of a facility where something has gone catastrophically wrong - there's an energy to this game that immediately reminded me of exactly why I love this genre. I've been watching ILL's development for a while now, and after the June 2026 State of Play trailer, I'm more excited about it than ever. Developed by Team Clout and published by Mundfish Powerhouse - the studio behind Atomic Heart - ILL is a first-person action survival horror game targeting a 2027 release on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC via Steam. The game has actually been known about for a while, quietly building Steam wishlists that have surpassed a million, but the State of Play appearance was the most substantial look yet at what Team Clout has been building - introducing new story characters, several new creature types, and a much closer look at the combat systems. The setting is a massive research fort, now completely overrun by an outbreak of creatures called Aberrations. These aren't your typical video game monsters - they're described as fused human-like horrors that move and react in disturbingly human ways, responding to environmental changes and player actions with reflexes that the team has deliberately designed to feel wrong rather than predictable. You're not supposed to know what they're going to do. That unpredictability is the entire point. What sets ILL apart most visibly from other survival horror games is its commitment to physicality. The dismemberment system is genuinely unlike anything I've seen in trailers for other games right now - bones, exposed organs, shredded flesh - all rendered in real time with damage that actually affects how enemies move and behave during encounters. PC Gamer described the State of Play trailer as "one of the goriest videogame trailers I've ever seen," which is saying something. The physics extend well beyond combat too. Environments are reactive - shoot something and the world responds, crates tumble, debris shifts, and the chaos becomes part of how you survive rather than just backdrop to it. The binaural audio system is also being treated as a core gameplay mechanic, not just atmospheric dressing - the team has stated it's designed so you can hear exactly where threats are relative to you at all times, which in a dark corridor with something moving behind you is going to be absolutely devastating. The pedigree behind Team Clout is part of what makes this so genuinely promising. These aren't game developers who decided to make a horror movie - they're horror film and television professionals who decided to make a game. The team has credits on Longlegs, Until Dawn, V/H/S/Beyond, It: Welcome to Derry, and Azrael. They understand how a monster needs to move to trigger a specific reaction. They know how shadows fall. They've spent years studying what makes something genuinely disturbing at a technical and psychological level, and now they're applying all of that to an interactive medium where the player can't look away and can't skip the scene. The resource management - scarce ammo, moments where you can't fight back and must hide or run - sits the game comfortably alongside the Outlast tradition rather than the more combat-heavy end of survival horror. Not everything can be killed. Not every encounter is winnable through force. Sometimes you're just outmatched, and the right answer is to not be there anymore. 2027 is still a ways away, and Team Clout has confirmed development is still ongoing. But the trajectory of what they've shown - the ambition of the systems, the visual craft, the team's genuine background in professional horror production - makes ILL one of the most compelling upcoming horror games I've seen in years. The wishlist is already in.
