The Outlast Trials: Season 7 Is Sending You to Prison

2 weeks ago 9

Published Jul 9, 2026, 10:00 AM EDT

Linda Güster is a Contributor at DualShockers and a German, UK-based gaming journalist specializing in video games, esports, industry analysis, features, lists, reviews, interviews, and news. She has been writing professionally since 2020 and began covering video games and esports in 2025, turning a lifelong passion into her professional focus.

Before joining DualShockers, Linda worked as content lead for Esports Insider DACH and The Escapist Magazine Germany. She previously worked in software engineering and digital media, giving her a strong technical background and the ability to explain complex systems clearly. Across her career, she has written thousands of news pieces and covered gaming culture, esports, technology, and broader industry developments.

Red Barrels has announced Season 7 for The Outlast Trials. Project Boneyard launches July 14th, free for current owners on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation, and it is bringing a new Trial environment, two new MK-Challenges and a returning antagonist. It also brings what is easily the most unsettling new enemy the game has introduced to date. We'll get to that in just a moment.

Sergeant Leland Coyle is back. The returning antagonist takes a prominent new role in the season's main Trial, Locksock the Warden, set inside the Prison Farm – a new environment built around Murkoff's prison-industrial logic, where "authority is currency, punishment is policy, and freedom is the indefinable promise that keeps prisoners at the grindstone." Red Barrels writes this game's lore with a specific kind of institutional dread that never quite lets you get comfortable, and the Prison Farm setting leans directly into that.

The Enemy That Had Its Arms Removed for Everyone's Safety

Its arms removed to prevent further self-harm. Mechanically enforced jaws. Chained by the neck for safety. Augmented legs that give it unexpected velocity.

That is The Biter, Project Boneyard's new Ex-Pop, and it is genuinely one of the more disturbing enemy concepts the game has produced. The specific horror of a creature that has been disarmed and restrained specifically because the alternative was somehow worse – and is still dangerous enough to warrant all of that – is exactly the kind of body horror The Outlast Trials does well. The augmented legs are the kicker, because of course an enemy that's chained at the neck and has no arms would also be faster than you expect. That's just how this game works.

It also brings what is easily the most unsettling new enemy the game has introduced to date.

The Biter stalks the Prison Farm, and how exactly chained enemies operate within the Trial space is something we'll find out properly on July 14th. Given the game's track record with enemy design, any assumption that the chain makes them less threatening is probably naive.

The New Trials and MK-Challenges

'Locksock the Warden' is the main Trial for the season, framed around the usual Murkoff logic of "kill this person, and we'll let you out." Two new MK-Challenges are brought in alongside it. 'Bribe the Judges' sends you to collect bribes and pay off judges – the flavour text around the "monopoly of violence existing for the monopoly of capital" is the kind of thing that would read as heavy-handed in another game and somehow feels right here. 'Cancel the Broadcast' is the other challenge, involving sabotaging a broadcast and defiling "the faithful with blood," which is Red Barrels' elegant way of describing what is probably an objective with enemies everywhere.

New Features Worth Paying Attention To

Project Boneyard also introduces a meaningful batch of new features. Rig Customization and Knife Customization expand how players can personalize their loadout. Loadout Presets let you save configurations ahead of entering Trials, which is a genuine quality-of-life addition for anyone who has been manually swapping builds between runs. Mastery Tasks add a new layer of progression goals for players who want something to work toward beyond the main Trial content.

Escalation and Invasion are both getting major reworks, though the full details of those changes are being held back until closer to launch. Both modes have been part of the game's core since earlier seasons, and significant structural changes to either one will matter a lot for how the endgame population plays it. Red Barrels has said the reworks are aimed at improving flow and overall player experience, which is the right direction of travel regardless of the specifics.

Twitch Drops are running from July 14th through to August 11th for anyone wanting to earn rewards without going directly into the chaos themselves. The Outlast Trials has been building its seasonal content steadily since launch, and Project Boneyard looks like one of the more substantial drops in a while. The Prison Farm environment opens up new design space, Sergeant Coyle returning gives the season a proper antagonist with established weight, and The Biter is the kind of enemy addition that will be showing up in horror gaming discussions for a while once people actually encounter it.

July 14. Free update. Bring a friend.