In his previous stints at Konami and Sony Japan Studio, game designer Keiichiro Toyama was known for his iconic horror games Silent Hill and Siren, and later for the PlayStation gravity-reversing adventure Gravity Rush.
Given his track record, it’s no surprise that his next game, Slitterhead, feels uniquely creepy. Whether or not his little indie startup Bokeh lives up to his ambitions, it’s clear that this game will at least stand out in what often feels like an increasingly homogenous games market.
“At Sony, there was an increasing motivation to make more high-budget games, and it wanted to go in that direction 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 shortly beforehand to found Bokeh).
“My motive was always to make original games. I think I can do this without a huge budget. It also gives me the opportunity to express myself. Becoming independent has allowed me to do that. Since my time at Sony, I feel like I’m achieving what I want to do.”
Slitterhead is set in the fictional East Asian city of Kowlong, a dark urban labyrinth of neon signs and seedy alleyways. It’s not the sprawling open-world city of a triple-A production – the game takes place across multiple “levels” – but Kowlong feels believable, and there’s a core intrigue that compelled us to explore it.
“One decision we made early on in the game was that we originally wanted an open-world setting for the game, but that wasn’t reasonable with the budget,” Toyama tells us. “That decision worked out well, wrapping up the missions and advancing the storyline.”
The game casts players as the Hyoki, an entity with no memory or physical form, whose sole motive is to destroy the monsters hiding in the city disguised as humans, known as Slitterheads. These insect-like creatures burst out of 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. Our first hour teaches us some standard action game melee mechanics, like parrying and dodging, but combat isn’t the game’s most interesting feature.
Players start the demo by controlling a stray dog as it wanders the streets. Eventually, your progress through the alleys is blocked by a high fence. However, if you flick the right stick to spot a human NPC on the other side, you’ll be given the ability to possess them with a single button press, instantly flipping the player’s perspective to the new host.
Questions and Answers: Keiichiro Toyama
What was the biggest surprise about going indie?
The most surprising part 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 financing it.
It’s a tough time for gaming employees. Have you felt that?
I think balancing a unique idea with a budget was the key to building this game, and it’s the reason we were able to finish it in four years. It’s maybe the reason we were able to separate ourselves from other studios that were closing.
How did you react to the closing of Tango Gameworks?
I don’t think it’s my place to give them advice, but I think it’s relevant to go back to what I said earlier about the balance between routine and keeping the style of your games. Just 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 a clear example of how a studio is successful. Not changing everything every time is perhaps the key to life and survival.
Soon, Bokeh starts playing with this mechanic in more interesting ways. A Slitterhead bursts from a nearby civilian, and since we’re unarmed, the only way we can escape is by daisy-chaining between NPCs along the route ahead of us, often through walls or up onto rooftops.
Later in the demo, the possession mechanic is used for all sorts of crazy platforming sequences, where we jump from body to body between high balconies and sacrifice NPCs to fast travel by leaping off a building. Then we quickly cut to another human on the street just as our previous host disintegrates onto the sidewalk.
Suddenly, the fairly standard melee combat mechanics from earlier in the demo became a lot more unique. Players could take on much stronger Slitterheads by using a group of NPCs and jumping between them to land blows on the Slitterheads’ backs, while the Slitterheads struggled to focus on a single opponent.
Some NPCs are better equipped than others, with slightly stronger melee weapons, but during our demo it never really felt necessary to hold on to them, as there was always another equally 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 possession mechanics originally worked on another game that I worked on before,” he explained. “For this game, we had a discussion about how to balance what regular citizens could do. Originally, they were supposed to be powerful, but that turned out to be unentertaining.”
What we played felt fairly linear – there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of additional content or exploration – but it’s also a refreshingly tight and casual experience.
Slitterhead’s combination of spooky East Asian vibes, with startling perspective shifts, feels like the high point of Toyama’s previous games. However, the designer told VGC that going forward, he wants to stick to the principles that inspired him to create Bokeh in the first place: creating original games that don’t require a huge budget.
“When we opened the studio, the idea was that we would make original games, and that’s what we want to continue to do,” he said. “We’ve brought a lot of youth into the team, and they’ve learned a lot through this process. I’m looking forward to the younger generation making their own games with a lower budget.
“When we opened the studio, the idea was that we would make original games, and that’s what we want to continue to do. We’ve brought a lot of youth into the team, and they’ve learned a lot through this process.”
“Action-adventure is something we wanted to pursue, and we learned a lot about it. We can transfer that to another game. We want to transfer the knowledge we’ve learned, but the concept remains the same, to make unique games.”
While a small number of successful live-service games are increasingly dominating the market, the Silent Hill designer believes there’s still room for smaller, unique games like the ones he built his reputation on – especially if their creators take financial responsibility.
“I understand that the trend in development is much more conservative, like in service games. I understand why companies are going that way. But it’s important to balance that. There’s definitely a need or desire for darker, more unique games. There’s always going to 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 is out on November 8th for consoles and PC.