Joe Fender, one of the creators of DEVOUR, has opened the first public playtest for LIVING HELL on Steam. It's a cooperative (co-op) survival horror game for one to four players, published by Future Friends Games and due out on Steam in 2027.
According to a release, the playtest went live as a surprise, making the game playable by the public for the first time. A new trailer came out alongside it. Future Friends Games (the publisher behind CloverPit, Queen's Domain and The Cabin Factory) also confirmed the 2027 window.
Escaping Pelican City
LIVING HELL is set in Pelican City. The ozone layer has collapsed; solar radiation now batters the city, triggering what the release calls ‘terrifying mutations’. Players capture mutated specimens, then turn them into biofuel for their train. That train is the last way to reach one of the remaining rockets and leave Earth.
The heat is a threat of its own. Players have to manage their Thermal Load and find ways to stay cool, or they risk mutating and turning on their own teammates. Each trip follows a different subway route to the launch site, with more than a dozen mutated creatures along the way, each with its own behaviour.
There's more under the hood. The game supports full offline single-player, with six playable characters who each have a unique passive ability. Proximity voice chat (with lip-sync) sits alongside handheld radios. Its crafting and inventory systems take inspiration from classic survival horror, according to the release, while Mario Sello Nuñez wrote the original score.
LIVING HELL is made by UK developer Joe Fender, who co-created DEVOUR; the release says that game has sold more than 7m copies. For his new project, Fender has put together a crew of collaborators for what the release calls ‘the biggest and most ambitious horror game of his career’.
The following was sent as a press release to Inven Global.
