A school transformed into something fundamentally alien
From a small studio in Gyeonggi-do, South Korea, a new game emerges that asks what happens when the most familiar of modern anxieties — the pressure of academic achievement — collides with ancient traditions of death and judgment. Newcore Games has announced 7Trials, a top-down action roguelite set inside a vanished exam prep school transformed into a liminal realm between the living and the dead. It is a project that treats cultural mythology not as decoration but as architecture, suggesting that the most universal stories may be the ones most deeply rooted in a particular place.
- A prestigious Korean exam school vanishes into a supernatural void, and players must survive seven trials as a temporary Reaper over 49 days — the stakes are both cosmic and intimately human.
- The game's three-layer skill system — Spells, Offerings, and Fate cards — generates thousands of distinct combat builds, refusing to let any two runs feel like the same journey.
- Online co-op for up to four players introduces emergent synergies that solo play cannot produce, turning each session into a collaborative experiment rather than a fixed challenge.
- Newcore Games, fresh off the global success of The Devil Within: SATGAT, is doubling down on Korean cultural specificity as its competitive edge in a crowded global market.
- With a live Steam page and teaser trailer now public, the studio is moving from announcement toward release — though no launch date has yet been set.
Newcore Games, the South Korean indie studio behind The Devil Within: SATGAT, has announced 7Trials — a top-down action roguelite rooted in Korean afterlife mythology. The announcement arrived on June 23, 2026, with a teaser trailer and an open Steam store page.
The premise is deliberately disorienting. Seocheon Academy, one of South Korea's most competitive exam prep schools, disappears in a white flash and becomes a Fixed Realm — a liminal space caught between the living world and the afterlife. Players take on the role of Yeoubi, a temporary Reaper working for Yeomra Solutions Inc., a corporate underworld agency. Over 49 days, Yeoubi must complete seven trials, uncover the academy's buried secrets, and release souls trapped by their own obsessions. The setting fuses the mundane dread of a school environment with the layered strangeness of Korean death traditions.
Mechanically, the game distinguishes itself through a three-layer skill system: active Spells, modifier Offerings, and passive Fate cards. Their interactions generate thousands of possible build combinations, ensuring each run can feel genuinely distinct. The online co-op mode, supporting up to four players, adds another dimension — the synergies between different players' builds create emergent possibilities that solo runs cannot replicate.
Founded in 2020 and based in Gyeonggi-do, Newcore has built its identity around culturally grounded action titles. Game Director Manjae Lee described 7Trials as a natural evolution — having proven that Korean cultural material can resonate globally, the studio is now embedding that mythology more ambitiously into the action genre it knows best. The project carries support from the Korea Creative Content Agency and a history of industry recognition including an Epic MegaGrant. No launch date has been announced.
Newcore Games, the South Korean indie studio that made waves with The Devil Within: SATGAT, has officially unveiled its next project: 7Trials, a top-down action roguelite that pulls its aesthetic and mythology from Korean traditions of the afterlife. The announcement came on June 23, 2026, alongside a teaser trailer and a live Steam store page, signaling the studio's readiness to push deeper into territory it has already proven resonates with players worldwide.
The game's premise is deliberately unsettling. Seocheon Academy, one of South Korea's most competitive exam preparatory schools, vanishes in a blinding white flash and becomes a Fixed Realm—a liminal space suspended between the living world and the afterlife. Players inhabit the role of Yeoubi, a temporary Reaper employed by Yeomra Solutions Inc., a corporate underworld agency that operates with the bureaucratic efficiency of a modern corporation. Over the course of 49 days, Yeoubi must navigate seven trials, unearth the academy's buried secrets, and free the souls whose obsessions have locked them in place. It's a premise that marries the mundane dread of a familiar school setting with the strange, layered beauty of Korean death mythology—a visual and thematic combination rarely seen in global gaming.
What distinguishes 7Trials mechanically is its approach to combat customization. Rather than offering a simple upgrade tree, the game employs a three-layer skill system. Players select active combat abilities called Spells, then reshape those abilities using modifiers known as Offerings, and finally layer on passive effects through Fate cards. The interaction of these three systems creates thousands of possible build combinations, meaning no two runs need feel identical. When players join forces in the game's online co-op mode, which supports up to four people, the synergies between their distinct builds can produce emergent gameplay that solo runs cannot replicate. It's a design philosophy that treats roguelite progression not as a linear climb but as a space for experimentation and discovery.
Newcore Games, founded in 2020 and based in Gyeonggi-do, has built a track record of stylish, culturally rooted action titles. Before 7Trials, the studio released I Am Zombie in 2020 and The Devil Within: SATGAT in 2024. The latter proved that Korean cultural material could find an audience beyond its home market—a lesson the studio is now applying more ambitiously. Game Director Manjae Lee framed 7Trials as a natural evolution: having demonstrated that Korean cultural themes could resonate globally, the studio has now embedded Korean afterlife mythology directly into the action genre it knows best. The game is currently in development with support from the Korea Creative Content Agency's Game Production Support Program, and Newcore has previously earned recognition including a Korea Game Award for Indie Game, selection in Bandai Namco's GYAAR Studio Contest, and an Epic MegaGrant.
The studio's willingness to ground its action games in specific cultural traditions—rather than chasing generic fantasy or sci-fi aesthetics—appears to be its defining strategy. 7Trials suggests that approach is only deepening. The game transforms a space most players recognize, a school building, into something fundamentally alien through the lens of Korean death traditions. That collision between the familiar and the mythological, between the mundane and the supernatural, is where the game seems to find its identity. With the teaser trailer now live and the Steam page open for wishlists, Newcore Games is signaling that 7Trials is moving from announcement toward release, though no launch date has been specified.
Notable Quotes
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.— Manjae Lee, Game Director, Newcore Games
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does the setting matter so much here? It's a school, transformed into an underworld. Why not just build the underworld from scratch?
Because a school is already a place of pressure, hierarchy, and confinement. Everyone knows that feeling. When you twist it into something supernatural, you're not creating dread from nothing—you're taking something real and making it uncanny. That's more unsettling than pure fantasy.
And the 49 days—that's a specific number. Is that from Korean tradition?
Yes. In Korean funeral rites, there's a 49-day period after death. It's the time the soul is believed to transition. Using that as the game's structure isn't just flavor—it's embedding the mythology into the actual mechanics of how you play.
The three-layer skill system sounds complex. Is that for hardcore players only?
It could be, but the design seems to be about depth without gatekeeping. You can pick a spell, add a modifier, stack a card. Simple. But the combinations multiply. A casual player gets a complete experience; someone who wants to optimize finds endless possibility.
Why does co-op matter for a roguelite?
Most roguelites are solo journeys. But when you bring four players with different builds into the same run, you're not just playing together—you're creating synergies that change how the game works. It's collaborative problem-solving, not just shared grinding.
What's the risk here for Newcore Games?
They're betting that cultural specificity sells globally. The Devil Within proved it could work once. But 7Trials is a bigger swing—deeper into Korean mythology, more ambitious mechanically. If it lands, they've found their voice. If it doesn't, the strategy gets questioned.