ILL is real, and it might be the most brutal horror FPS since the original FEAR

It's the very first concept trailer for ILL that really sticks in the mind. All of 60 seconds long – and, as it happens, set in an entirely different location to the actual, real game – it nevertheless encompasses the vision of developer Team Clout. Combat is slow and weighty. The enemies are strange, frightening, and governed by a complex physics system. There's a lot of gore. In the four years since ILL first emerged, we've seen dozens of short concept videos and hints of gameplay, but for the most part, the hybrid horror FPS has been an enigma. There's a Steam page and a few social channels, but we don't really know what it's about, how it works, who's making it, and how it's meant to play. Now, finally, alongside a reveal at SGF, ILL's director speaks to PCGamesN about the game's history and inspirations. From what we've seen and heard, ILL is partly a mix of FEAR, Half-Life 2, and Soldier of Fortune – but even then, there's more than meets the eye.

So, that first trailer arrived in 2021; what's been going on with ILL since then? It started as the passion project of four core developers. Between 2021 and 2023, this initial, foundational version of Team Clout produced and released a series of concept videos – rather than actual, complete gameplay, some of the earliest trailers for ILL were representations of how Clout wanted the game to feel and look. While it was always the goal to work on ILL full time, Team Clout also needed to pay its bills, which meant taking on freelance work, often providing visual effects for horror movies. It wasn't until 2023 that production on ILL gained real momentum.

"There are four founders of Team Clout," ILL's game director and studio co-founder Max Verehin says. "We had an idea to make a brutal horror game with physics and decided to make a few videos that could represent our vision. It was a really small development to begin with. The road was bumpy. There were a lot of issues with location, team, and stuff like that.

"And then we sat and thought 'hey, we should really start developing seriously, full time.' In summer 2023 we got together with Mundfish Powerhouse, and that was the moment when actual serious production started. We built the team. We finished the playable internal demo."

You might recognize that name Mundfish – it's the studio that developed Atomic Heart. Powerhouse is a spin-off, boutique label built to find, publish, and co-create, in the studio's own words, the "next generation of standout games". With Powerhouse's backing, Team Clout has been able to grow into a studio of some 50 full-time developers and work on ILL in earnest. No longer the stuff of concept videos, everything that we've seen since 2023 has been captured in game.

"ILL is something that all four founders wanted to play in the future," Verehin continues. "We're inspired a bit by Half-Life 2, specifically the pacing, and how the story is told. It's that feeling that the whole journey is in front of you, that you start here and you need to get there. And that feeling that the world is alive. We're trying to bring a piece of that into our game. We're also pushing the physics-based elements. This could just be stuff in the levels – objects, breakable stuff. When you enter a room in ILL and there's a fight, after the fight, you'll see the room has changed because stuff isn't glued to the floor.

"We're also trying to push physics with enemies as well. I'm not saying our enemies are going to be procedural, but we are pushing the feeling. When you shoot an enemy, you feel that it's physics based, even though we're using some cheat codes and it's partly animated. You shoot an enemy, he falls, hits another enemy, and they react."

ILL is a survival horror game, in the sense that ammunition will be partially limited and you won't be able to kill everything that attacks you. It's also a shooter; rather than ghosts or demons, it's driven by oozing, grotesque, Thing-style mutants. But the game's premise and setting have changed over the last four years. The earliest version of ILL, which we saw in those first videos, was set in a small American town. Now, it takes place around an isolated fortress somewhere in the Eastern Bloc (although Verehin hints that some of those original locations may still appear in the final game).

Similarly, rather than just bloody spectacle and gore in the visual sense, Clout has been working to make ILL sickening and scary in terms of sound.

"Gore is really important," Verehin explains. "Maybe you remember Soldier of Fortune, where when you killed an enemy, you just wanted to see how the gore would work. We want players to be excited to explore this system. It's about how the enemy reacts to being hit – we want you to be able to see how the enemy's behavior changes if you shoot off their body parts. In one of the trailers, you might remember there's an enemy who loses its hand and then looks down to look at where its hand should be. This is part of our gore.

"But it's not just about the visuals. We also want you to feel the sound. If you shoot a revolver in a corridor, you'll feel like it's in a corridor. The sound of the shot itself is brutal and impactful. And our enemies are not regular zombie-like monsters. They do really sadistic stuff. This dismemberment system will change them, too. If they lose a limb, another enemy can be born from that limb."

Verehin also discusses ILL's level design, explaining that stages are divided into larger, more-open areas which then split off into tighter corridor sections. There are alternate paths and you're encouraged to look around – but it's definitely not free form. "We want to create a dreadful, isolating atmosphere for players," the director says. "Whether it's condensed, small, and dark corridors, or an open area with the sky above, we want everywhere to feel horrific."

Not long ago, you could have been forgiven for looking at the trailers for ILL and assuming it was a solid concept that never got off the ground, and wouldn't see the light of reality. But it's real, it's happening, and the actual game seems to capture all of the elements that made that first trailer so stark.