Slitterhead: How Silent Hill’s creator is constructing 2024’s craziest horror sport

In his earlier lives at Konami and Sony Japan Studio, sport designer Keiichiro Toyama was identified for his iconic horror video games Silent Hill and Siren, then later PlayStation’s gravity-flipping journey Gravity Rush.

Understanding his observe document then, it’s no shock that his subsequent sport, Slitterhead, feels uniquely spooky. Whether or not his small indie startup Bokeh is ready to obtain its ambitions or not, it’s clear that this sport will on the very least stand out in what usually appears like an more and more homogenised video games market.

“With Sony, there was an growing motive to make extra extremely budgeted video games, and it wished to go that method with the Japan Studio model,” Toyama advised VGC in a latest interview, reflecting on the closure of PlayStation’s historic in-house developer in April 2021 (Toyama left to kind Bokeh shortly earlier than this).

“My motive was at all times to create unique video games. I really feel I can do that and not using a huge funds. This enables me to specific myself as nicely. By going unbiased, this has allowed me to do this. From my time at Sony, I really feel like I’m engaging in what I need to do.”

Slitterhead is about within the fictional East Asian metropolis of Kowlong, a shadowy city labyrinth crammed with neon signage and soiled alleyways. It’s not the sprawling open-world metropolis of a triple-A manufacturing – the sport performs out throughout a number of ‘ranges’ – however Kowlong appears like a plausible place, and there’s a core intrigue that compelled us to discover it.

“One resolution we made early within the sport was that we initially wished an open-world setting for the sport, however it wasn’t cheap with the funds,” Toyama tells us. “That call labored nicely, boxing within the missions and progressing via the storyline.”

The sport casts gamers because the Hyoki, an entity devoid of reminiscence and bodily kind, whose solely motive is to destroy the monsters hiding across the metropolis, disguised as people, often called Slitterheads. These bug-like critters will burst from human heads, with their a number of, razor-sharp limbs, with out warning. Because the metropolis is crammed with NPCs, this creates a excessive sense of rigidity when navigating the darkish backstreets.

At its most simple stage, Slitterhead is clearly an motion sport. In our first hour, we’re taught quite a lot of customary motion sport melee mechanics, like parrying and dodging, however fight isn’t the sport’s most fascinating function.

Gamers begin the demo controlling a stray canine wandering via the streets. Ultimately, your progress via the again alleys will grow to be blocked by a tall fence. Nonetheless, shifting the suitable stick to identify a human NPC on the opposite facet reveals the flexibility to own them with the press of a button, instantly flipping the participant’s perspective to the brand new host.

In a short time, Bokeh begins to play with this mechanic in additional fascinating methods. A Slitterhead bursts from a close-by citizen and, because of being unarmed, the one method we will escape is by daisy-chaining between NPCs alongside the route forward, usually passing via partitions or as much as rooftops.

Later within the demo, the possession mechanic is used for every kind of twisted platforming segments, with us body-hopping between highrise balconies and sacrificing NPCs for quick journey by leaping off of a constructing earlier than shortly switching to a different human on the road simply as our earlier host splatters on the pavement.

Instantly, the pretty customary melee fight mechanics from earlier within the demo additionally turned rather more distinctive, with gamers capable of tackle a lot stronger Slitterheads by utilizing a bunch of NPCs, and leaping between them to land blows on its again, because it struggles to concentrate on a single opponent.

Some NPCs are extra geared up than others, wielding barely stronger melee weapons, however throughout our demo there by no means felt like a lot want to carry on to them, as there would at all times be one other just-as-good NPC across the nook. In keeping with Toyama, this can be a deliberate design option to painting people as fodder in Slitterhead’s world.

“The individual in command of the possession mechanics was initially engaged on one other sport I used to be engaged on earlier,” he defined. “For this sport, we had a dialogue about methods to steadiness out what abnormal civilians might do. Originally, they had been presupposed to be highly effective, however that proved to be not entertaining.”

What we performed felt fairly linear – there doesn’t look like a lot right here when it comes to facet content material or exploration – however it’s additionally a refreshingly tight and unbloated expertise.

Slitterhead’s mixture of spooky East Asian vibes, with head-twisting perspective shifting, feels just like the fruits of Toyama’s earlier video games. Nonetheless, the designer advised VGC that, going ahead, he needs to stay to the ideas that inspired him to ascertain Bokeh within the first place: creating unique video games that don’t require an enormous funds.

“Once we opened the studio, the idea was that we might make unique video games, and we need to proceed doing that,” he mentioned. “We’ve poured quite a lot of youth into the staff, and so they discovered quite a bit via this course of. I look ahead to the youthful technology making their very own video games on a decrease funds.

“Once we opened the studio, the idea was that we might make unique video games, and we need to proceed doing that. We’ve poured quite a lot of youth into the staff, and so they discovered quite a bit via this course of.”

“Motion journey is one thing we wished to pursue, and we discovered quite a bit relating to that. We could switch that to a different sport. We need to switch the data that we’ve gained, however the idea will stay as it’s, to make distinctive video games.”

Regardless of a small variety of blockbuster reside service video games more and more dominating the market, the Silent Hill designer feels there’s nonetheless room for smaller, distinctive video games like these he constructed his repute on – particularly if their creators have monetary accountability.

“I perceive that the development in improvement is rather more conservative, like with service video games. I perceive why corporations transfer that method. However there’s an significance in balancing that out. There’s undoubtedly a necessity or need for darker, extra distinctive video games. There’ll at all times be individuals who need that. So long as you retain the steadiness proper and don’t spend an excessive amount of on a sport, there shall be customers who need that.”

Slitterhead will launch for consoles and PC on November 8.