Hands-on: Hellraiser: Revival blends fast combat and puzzles

Saber Interactive presented Hellraiser: Revival at Summer Game Fest in a timed hands-on demo. The build on show plays from the first-person perspective and combines combat with environmental puzzles.

The demo opened with compact, semi-open hub areas containing locked doors, keys, puzzle boxes and central lobbies. Players cleared rooms using firearms and melee weapons, then searched cupboards and lockers for keys to progress through the hub.

Combat during the session emphasized speed and aggression over stealth, allowing players to fight through encounters rather than avoid them. Several weapons were available in the demo and encounters required moving between rooms to advance.

Tim Willits, Saber Interactive’s chief creative officer, told reporters the game ‘isn’t open world’ but added that later chapters open into larger areas with substantial puzzles. He described the project as ‘different than your classic survival horror.’

One demo sequence used a looping corridor inside a house. Players had to interact with specific items or solve environmental tasks in a set order; when the loop restarted the space altered if actions were correct and remained unchanged if not. Each repeat introduced new visual changes, including hanging chains, increased blood and doors that creaked open.

The Lament Configuration puzzle cube functions beyond a key item. In one section the cube rotated parts of the environment to form a bridge across a gap, showing puzzle mechanics that can reshape level geometry rather than only unlocking single objects.

The demo concluded with a graphic scene. Saber staff described maintaining the franchise’s mix of violence and sexual content as a development priority. Todd Hollenshead, head of publishing at Saber, stated the team ‘didn’t want to shy away from what we thought was the core of the franchise’ and referenced Clive Barker’s phrase ‘more violence, more sex, more sex, and violence’ when discussing tone.

Saber representatives noted balancing tone and content influenced the design and development timeline. The demo combined combat, key searches, looping sequences and world-altering puzzles across multiple level types.