In his previous lives at Konami and Sony Japan Studio, game designer Keiichiro Toyama was known for his iconic horror games Silent Hill and Siren, then later PlayStation’s gravity-flipping adventure Gravity Rush.
Understanding his track record then, it’s no surprise that his next game, Slitterhead, feels uniquely spooky. Whether his small indie startup Bokeh is able to achieve its ambitions or not, it’s clear that this game will at the very least stand out in what often feels like an increasingly homogenised games market.
“With Sony, there was an increasing motive to make more highly budgeted games, and it wanted to go that way with the Japan Studio brand,” Toyama told VGC in a recent interview, reflecting on the closure of PlayStation’s historic in-house developer in April 2021 (Toyama left to form Bokeh shortly before this).
“My motive was always to create original games. I feel I can do this without a massive budget. This allows me to express myself as well. By going independent, this has allowed me to do that. From my time at Sony, I feel like I’m accomplishing what I want to do.”
Slitterhead is set in the fictional East Asian city of Kowlong, a shadowy urban labyrinth filled with neon signage and dirty alleyways. It’s not the sprawling open-world city of a triple-A production – the game plays out across multiple ‘levels’ – but Kowlong feels like a believable place, and there’s a core intrigue that compelled us to explore it.
“One decision we made early in the game was that we originally wanted an open-world setting for the game, but it wasn’t reasonable with the budget,” Toyama tells us. “That decision worked well, boxing in the missions and progressing through the storyline.”
The game casts players as the Hyoki, an entity devoid of memory and physical form, whose only motive is to destroy the monsters hiding around the city, disguised as humans, known as Slitterheads. These bug-like critters will burst from human heads, with their multiple, razor-sharp limbs, without warning. Since the city is filled with NPCs, this creates a high sense of tension when navigating the dark backstreets.
At its most basic level, Slitterhead is clearly an action game. In our first hour, we’re taught a variety of standard action game melee mechanics, like parrying and dodging, but combat isn’t the game’s most interesting feature.
Players start the demo controlling a stray dog wandering through the streets. Eventually, your progress through the back alleys will become blocked by a tall fence. However, moving the right stick to spot a human NPC on the other side reveals the ability to possess them with the press of a button, immediately flipping the player’s perspective to the new host.
Q&A: Keiichiro Toyama
What’s been the biggest surprise of going indie?
The most surprising thing was publishing. We never published a game at Sony because they have departments that do that. That was the most challenging part, building relationships with other companies and funding it.
It’s a tough time for game workers. Have you felt that?
I think balancing a unique idea with a budget was key to building this game, and that was why we were able to finish it in four years. That may be why we were able to detach ourselves from other studios shutting down.
How did you react to Tango Gameworks’ closure?
I don’t feel it’s my place to give them advice, but I think going back to what I said earlier about the balance of routine and preserving the style of your games is relevant. You look at an example like From Software, they keep making different games but certain styles and aspects of their games stay the same. That’s an obvious example of how a studio is successful. Not changing everything every time might be the key to life and surviving.
Very quickly, Bokeh starts to play with this mechanic in more interesting ways. A Slitterhead bursts from a nearby citizen and, due to being unarmed, the only way we can escape is by daisy-chaining between NPCs along the route ahead, often passing through walls or up to rooftops.
Later in the demo, the possession mechanic is used for all kinds of twisted platforming segments, with us body-hopping between highrise balconies and sacrificing NPCs for fast travel by jumping off of a building before quickly switching to another human on the street just as our previous host splatters on the pavement.
Suddenly, the fairly standard melee combat mechanics from earlier in the demo also became much more unique, with players able to take on much stronger Slitterheads by using a group of NPCs, and jumping between them to land blows on its back, as it struggles to focus on a single opponent.
Some NPCs are more equipped than others, wielding slightly stronger melee weapons, but during our demo there never felt like much need to hold on to them, as there would always be another just-as-good NPC around the corner. According to Toyama, this is a deliberate design choice to portray humans as fodder in Slitterhead’s world.
“The person in charge of the possession mechanics was originally working on another game I was working on earlier,” he explained. “For this game, we had a discussion about how to balance out what ordinary civilians could do. Originally, they were supposed to be powerful, but that proved to be not entertaining.”
What we played felt quite linear – there doesn’t appear to be much here in terms of side content or exploration – but it’s also a refreshingly tight and unbloated experience.
Slitterhead’s combination of spooky East Asian vibes, with head-twisting perspective shifting, feels like the culmination of Toyama’s previous games. However, the designer told VGC that, going forward, he wants to stick to the principles that encouraged him to establish Bokeh in the first place: creating original games that don’t require a huge budget.
“When we opened the studio, the concept was that we would make original games, and we want to continue doing that,” he said. “We’ve poured a lot of youth into the team, and they learned a lot through this process. I look forward to the younger generation making their own games on a lower budget.
“When we opened the studio, the concept was that we would make original games, and we want to continue doing that. We’ve poured a lot of youth into the team, and they learned a lot through this process.”
“Action adventure is something we wanted to pursue, and we learned a lot regarding that. We may transfer that to another game. We want to transfer the knowledge that we’ve gained, but the concept will remain as it is, to make unique games.”
Despite a small number of blockbuster live service games increasingly dominating the market, the Silent Hill designer feels there’s still room for smaller, unique games like those he built his reputation on – especially if their creators have financial responsibility.
“I understand that the trend in development is much more conservative, like with service games. I understand why companies move that way. But there’s an importance in balancing that out. There’s definitely a need or desire for darker, more unique games. There will always be people who want that. As long as you keep the balance right and don’t spend too much on a game, there will be users who want that.”
Slitterhead will release for consoles and PC on November 8.