SEONGNAM, SOUTH KOREA, June 23, 2026 – Newcore Games (CEO Manjae Lee), the indie studio behind The Devil Within: SATGAT, today officially announced 7Trials, a top-down hack-and-slash action roguelite with online co-op for up to four players, inspired by Korean afterlife folklore. The announcement is accompanied by the release of an official teaser trailer and the launch of the Steam store page (https://store.steampowered.com/app/4192680/7_Trials/).
When School Becomes the Underworld
7Trials blends Korean traditional afterlife mythology with an urban-occult aesthetic, familiar, unsettling school corridors twisted into something unknown. In the world of the game, Seocheon Academy, South Korea’s most prestigious exam preparatory school, is consumed by a blinding white flash and transformed into a Fixed Realm, a place suspended between the living world and the afterlife.
Players take on the role of Yeoubi, a temporary Reaper contracted by Yeomra Solutions Inc., a corporate underworld agency. Over the course of 49 days, Yeoubi must survive seven trials, uncover the secrets buried within the academy, and release the obsessions that have trapped countless souls. The game’s visual identity, the dread of familiar spaces slowly distorting, layered over the strange beauty of Korean afterlife traditions, offers a world rarely seen in global gaming.
Beyond Simple Upgrades: Build Your Combat Style with 3 layer skill system.
7Trials is designed around fast, build-driven hack-and-slash combat. Players choose active combat skills (Spells), reshape them with modifiers (Offerings), and stack passive effects (Fate cards) that change how each run plays. The organic combination of all three layers produces thousands of possible builds, ensuring that every run delivers a completely different combat experience. When players with distinct builds join forces in co-op, synergies emerge that no solo run can replicate.
“We’re thrilled to finally share 7Trials with the world. With The Devil Within: SATGAT, we proved that Korean cultural material could resonate with a global audience. With 7Trials, we’ve gone deeper embedding Korea’s afterlife mythology into the action genre we know best. We hope the experience of forging your own combat style across 49 days of trials will feel genuinely fresh to players around the world.”
Manjae Lee, Game Director, Newcore Games
About Newcore Games
Founded in 2020 and based in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, Newcore Games is an indie game studio known for stylish, culturally distinctive action titles. Previous releases include
I Am Zombie (2020) and The Devil Within: SATGAT (2024). The studio has been recognized internationally with the Korea Game Award for Indie Game, selection in Bandai Namco’s GYAAR Studio Contest, and an Epic MegaGrant.
7Trials is Newcore Games’ third title, currently in development with support from the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) Game Production Support Program.
