The Blackout Club awakens suddenly into Early Access

The Blackout Club, a cooperative horror game about a group of teens trying to save their hometown from a mysterious force lurking beneath it, has launched into Early Access.

The surprise announcement was made yesterday via Twitter, with the Blackout Club’s official Twitter account writing “The Blackout Club is 4 player co-op Horror, available now for Early Access on Steam.” It was accompanied by a new Early Access trailer which you can view above. It shows plenty of footage of the game in action, while also providing a stronger framing of the game's narrative element.

Developed by Question—a team headed by former BioShock veterans Jordan Thomas and Steven Alexander—the Blackout club sees you grouping together with your friends to investigate a mysterious force that has enveloped your suburban hometown, making all the teenagers randomly black out and turning the adult populace into sleepwalking puppets. 

In each semi-procedural mission, you explore the town using your smartphones to document evidence of the entity’s presence. Meanwhile, you have to evade the grasp of the Sleepwalkers, and watch out for the arrival of the Shape, a fearsome adversary who you can only detect by closing your in-game eyes. 

You can find out more about the game via a beta gameplay video here, and in Sam Roberts' interview with Jordan Thomas here.

In short, it’s a little bit Left4Dead, a little bit Thief, a little bit Bioshock, and all very exciting. You can currently pick up the Blackout Club on Steam at a launch discount of 10% off its usual $18/£15.49 price. 

Contributor

Rick has been fascinated by PC gaming since he was seven years old, when he used to sneak into his dad's home office for covert sessions of Doom. He grew up on a diet of similarly unsuitable games, with favourites including Quake, Thief, Half-Life and Deus Ex. Between 2013 and 2022, Rick was games editor of Custom PC magazine and associated website bit-tech.net. But he's always kept one foot in freelance games journalism, writing for publications like Edge, Eurogamer, the Guardian and, naturally, PC Gamer. While he'll play anything that can be controlled with a keyboard and mouse, he has a particular passion for first-person shooters and immersive sims.