Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival arrives on October 8, and its free demo is already winning people over. For Barker himself, the creator of Hellraiser, it is the first game in 19 years. Before it came two forgotten Nightbreed tie-ins from 1990, the cult classic Undying that nobody bought, the uneven Jericho, and a pile of projects that never shipped. At FramesGames we went through the whole list: what each game was, what it is remembered for, and what became of it. At the end there is a table and a short guide to what you can still play today.
- Three kinds of Barker games
- 1990: two Nightbreed games from Ocean
- 2001: Undying, Barker's best game that nobody bought
- 2007: Jericho, a squad against the Firstborn
- The games that never were
- 2021 to 2025: Pinhead in Dead by Daylight
- 2026: Hellraiser: Revival, a return after 19 years
- Every game in one table
- What you can play today
- The short version
Three kinds of Barker games
Barker's name on a box can mean very different things, and that is worth knowing before we start. There are games where he wrote the story himself: Undying, Jericho and the new Revival. There are licensed games that only use his world and characters: the two Nightbreed games and Pinhead in Dead by Daylight. And there is a third, longer group: games that were announced and never finished. Between the released games he worked on there were gaps of 11, 6 and 19 years, as the chart above shows.
1990: two Nightbreed games from Ocean
Nightbreed: The Action Game, 1990. Nightbreed, the film based on Barker's novella Cabal, opened in February 1990, and British publisher Ocean Software put out two games for home computers right away. The first was a three-level action game: Aaron Boone makes his way down into the underground city of Midian, fights the Sons of the Free and rescues Lori. The One magazine gave it 80%, in a review by Gary Whitta, who went on to co-write the story for Rogue One. Player reviews most often complain about the difficulty.
Nightbreed: The Interactive Movie, 1990. The second game, for Amiga, Atari ST and DOS, mixed adventure with mini-games and spliced in footage from the film, with David Cronenberg as the killer Decker on the box. The scores were a little lower: 74% from Amiga Action, 78% from Amiga Joker and 75% from The One. Ocean planned a trilogy with a role-playing game as the third part. The film flopped at the box office and the third game was cancelled. Neither released game ever made it to Steam or GOG.
2001: Undying, Barker's best game that nobody bought
Clive Barker's Undying, February 2001. DreamWorks Interactive, which had become EA Los Angeles by the time it shipped, started the game without Barker: an unfinished project with a different hero and not enough story. Barker rewrote almost all of it. Count Magnus Wolfram became Patrick Galloway, an Irish veteran summoned by an old friend to the family estate on the Irish coast, where the dead brothers and sisters of the Covenant family are coming back. Barker also took a role, voicing Ambrose, the black sheep of the family.
The core idea was two hands: a weapon in one, a spell in the other. The best known spell, Scrye, reveals what the naked eye cannot, from writing on the walls to ghosts in an empty room. Critics loved it: 85 on Metacritic from 29 reviews, 9.1 from GameSpot and 9 from IGN. Barker said he wanted to give the game "the texture of a novel".
Then comes the sad part. Undying sold so poorly that EA dropped the promised multiplayer, the console versions and the sequel. Its reputation kept it alive: a Mac version followed in 2002, and today the game is sold on GOG, which makes it the easiest Barker game to play.
2007: Jericho, a squad against the Firstborn
Clive Barker's Jericho, October 2007. Barker's second story-driven game came out through Codemasters and was made by Spain's MercurySteam together with Alchemic Productions. Enric Alvarez directed, while Barker wrote the story and was credited as a producer. This time you are not alone in a mansion but in charge of a seven-person squad called Jericho, and you can swap between them on the fly. Each has their own powers, from a sniper who steers bullets with her mind to fire. The goal is to stop the Firstborn, God's first creation, locked away in a dimension called the Box.
For 2007 it looked great, and almost everyone said so. The scores were middling, though: 63 on PC and Xbox 360, 60 on PS3. Critics disliked the dim squad AI and the corridor levels, which kept the squad idea from delivering what it promised. Barker announced a sequel that same year, but it never appeared, and on April 3, 2014 the game was pulled from Steam. It has not been sold digitally since. MercurySteam did better: the studio went on to make Castlevania: Lords of Shadow and Metroid Dread.
The games that never were
Barker has more cancelled games than released ones. These are the main ones with solid documentation.
- Hellraiser for the NES, 1990. Color Dreams, which made unlicensed NES games, bought the film rights and designed a "Super Cartridge" with its own Z80 processor and extra memory. The cartridge was too expensive, and shops were wary of stocking unlicensed games. The project was quietly shelved, and only its title screen survives.
- Hell On-Line, 2000. In November 2000 a company called Threshold bought the rights to a Hellraiser online game and promised a puzzle box game billed as "the most terrifying game you will ever play". What appeared instead was a trivia quiz and a memory game. Asked about his involvement, Barker said: "None. I haven't even seen the game."
- Demonik, 2005. The biggest loss. Majesco announced it on May 19, 2005 for Xbox 360, Terminal Reality of BloodRayne fame was developing it, and Barker was writing and directing, alongside a planned film. You would have played Volwrath, a demon summoned by humans seeking revenge. It was shown at E3 2005, trailer above, but Majesco ran into financial trouble and the game was cancelled. Footage from it ended up in the 2006 comedy Grandma's Boy.
- Sequels. The Undying sequel was dropped over sales, the third Nightbreed game over the film's failure, and the Jericho sequel announced in 2007 never appeared.
2021 to 2025: Pinhead in Dead by Daylight
The biggest appearance of Barker's world in games was a licensed one. On September 7, 2021 Behaviour Interactive added a Hellraiser chapter to Dead by Daylight, and with it a killer called the Cenobite, better known as Pinhead, with his chains and puzzle box. For almost four years he was one of the game's most recognisable killers, and he is covered in our guide to every killer.
Then the licence ran out. On April 4, 2025 the chapter left the store. Anyone who bought it before then still plays him, while his perks moved into the general pool under new names for everyone else.
2026: Hellraiser: Revival, a return after 19 years
Revival is being made by Saber Interactive and Boss Team Games, Barker is back on the story, and Doug Bradley voices Pinhead for the first time since 2005. It is first-person horror: Aidan tries to save his girlfriend from the Labyrinth, and his main weapon is the puzzle box, here called the Genesis Configuration. The Steam demo has 94% positive reviews, and the game is so graphic that Indonesia has banned it. We covered the demo and the PC specs separately.
Every game in one table
| Year | Game | Platforms | Barker's role | What happened |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | Nightbreed: The Action Game | Amiga, Atari ST, C64, ZX Spectrum | film licence | not on Steam or GOG |
| 1990 | Nightbreed: The Interactive Movie | Amiga, Atari ST, DOS | film licence | third game cancelled |
| 1990 | Hellraiser | NES | film licence | cancelled |
| 2000 | Hell On-Line | browser | none | never released |
| 2001 | Clive Barker's Undying | PC, Mac | story, voice of Ambrose | sold on GOG |
| 2005 | Clive Barker's Demonik | Xbox 360 | writer, director | cancelled |
| 2007 | Clive Barker's Jericho | PC, PS3, Xbox 360 | story, producer | pulled from Steam in 2014 |
| 2021 | Dead by Daylight: Hellraiser | PC, consoles | licence | removed from sale in 2025 |
| 2026 | Clive Barker's Hellraiser: Revival | PC, PS5, Xbox Series X|S | story | out October 8 |
What you can play today
- You want the best of the past. Undying on GOG. The graphics are from 2001, but critics rated its atmosphere above any other Barker game, as the chart shows.
- You want the new one now. The Revival demo on Steam is free and covers the prologue. The full game is out October 8.
- You want Jericho. Only on PS3 or Xbox 360 discs or an old PC box: it has not been sold digitally since 2014.
- You want Pinhead in Dead by Daylight. He can no longer be bought. Only players who got the chapter before April 4, 2025 have him.
The short version
- Barker wrote the story for only three games: Undying, Jericho and Revival, which is out October 8.
- The best reviewed is still Undying at 85, and it was also the one that flopped.
- There are more cancelled projects than released ones, and Demonik hurts the most.
- Revival is Barker's first game in 19 years, and on the evidence of the demo it keeps his style uncensored.
Sources
The history of each game, Barker's comments on Hell On-Line and Undying, Nightbreed details: Revelations, the official Clive Barker website, games section. Dates, developers and the fate of Undying and Jericho: the Wikipedia articles on each game, checked against store pages. Scores: Metacritic for Undying and for Jericho as of September 21, 2026. Nightbreed scores: The One, Amiga Action and Amiga Joker, 1990, via Amiga Magazine Rack. Jericho's Steam removal: PCGamingWiki. Demonik: Wikipedia's list of Barker's unrealised projects and Unseen64. Hellraiser for the NES: Bloody Disgusting. Pinhead leaving Dead by Daylight: Shacknews. Revival: the Steam page and Saber Interactive's announcement.
Images: Undying, the GOG store page; Jericho, the official Clive Barker website; Nightbreed: The Interactive Movie, Lemon Amiga; Nightbreed on ZX Spectrum, Spectrum Computing; Hellraiser: Revival, Saber Interactive. Videos: official GOG and Dead by Daylight channels, and the Demonik E3 2005 trailer on IGN's channel.
