Developer Bokeh
Publisher TBA
Format PC, Consoles TBA
Origin Japan
Release 2023
Bokeh founder Keiichiro Toyama promised a theme of “everyday life being shaken” for the studio’s debut, and his team certainly achieved that with its reveal trailer. Amid the splashy gore and horrifying multi-limbed monsters – all bone, sinew and grasping, mantis-like forelegs – it’s the closing moments that arguably prove most disturbing. A long shot of a figure on a balcony garden in a rundown apartment block shows a figure in what appears to be an unusual hat. We zoom in closer and its face resembles an exotic flower; closer still and no, it’s actually a giant maw with large teeth and two writhing tongues flicking outward. Those fleshy ‘petals’ then slowly retract to form the smiling face of an ordinary middle-aged woman.
That chilling contrast between the mundane and the otherworldly is the kind of imagery with which Toyama, writer-director of the original Silent Hill and the Siren games, has long been associated. So what would he say is the secret to scaring people? “I think that death can be described as something that one would seem to feel far away from in everyday life, though it is inescapable,” he begins. “Oneself and the ultimate extraordinary ‘death’ being continuous stimulates imagination – this is a theme I consider importantly when creating a horror work.”
There’s certainly some connective tissue between Slitterhead and Toyama’s previous work: the idea of monsters that can disguise themselves as human is similar to the concept of Siren’s shibito, which retain their human intelligence and personality. “Monsters which do not simply pose physical threat, but also something deep as darkness behind its existence, even sadness… I enjoy works that portray these kind of things, which I would naturally lean towards,” he says. “Also for gameplay, I think that depicting monsters who have their own motives and conflicts would add depth to the world they belong to.”
Even so, despite a title you can imagine adorning the cover of a VHS-era video nasty, Slitterhead doesn’t quite belong to the genre in which Toyama made his name. Rather, this is a horror-inflected third-person action-adventure. Toyama says that stems partly from a desire to do something different when other creators have effectively taken up his mantle. “When I created Silent Hill, a large part of the motivation was to create something that had never been seen, or rather felt much before then,” he says. “Today, I can see many high-quality games that are categorised as ‘psychological horror’, so I don’t feel the need for myself to create something similar. I also strongly desired to make something unseen in other titles when working on Siren.”
Yet it’s also a choice rooted in practicality, Toyama says. Suggesting that the wider perception of the horror genre is that it belongs to “a limited tier of enthusiasts”, he’s clearly hoping to reach a broader audience by “combining that with more universal values”, though he admits it’s going to take care to achieve the right balance. “I believe that is the challenge and essence of this project. I would particularly like younger, new generations who don’t know our past works to play this game.”
As such, it’s no surprise Bokeh leapt at the chance to show off the game during Geoff Keighley’s Game Awards event in December. The two parties, Toyama explains, had been talking for a while, having been introduced not long after the formation of the studio. “We had been originally working on a concept movie for internal purposes, and it was possible to rearrange that into a shorter teaser trailer,” Toyama says. “About six months ago, we discussed our ideas with Mr Keighley, and thankfully it came to be real.”
It’s worth noting, then, that the game is still in the early stages of development, though the story outline (see ‘The power of the dog’) has been firmly in place for a while. Indeed, Toyama says “new ideas had [already] begun to form into shape” as the studio was founded, while he was also “conscious of the more symbolic genre that was the entrance to game development for me”. It’s been through a productive prototyping stage, he tells us – this has helped validate the potential of an original concept, about which he’s reluctant to give too much away. “Furthermore, for the cityscape in the background, we were able to achieve higher quality than we had expected, so I believe this will be a large asset for us.”
So why reveal it to the public now? “We had been looking for an opportunity to measure the potential of our studio and project, and as a premise we believed it was important to indicate our presence and direction among the industry,” Toyama says. “We saw this as an opportunity to find potential partners and more talent.”
There’s plenty of that already on board, of course, including Kazunobu Sato and Junya Okura, who co-founded Bokeh with Toyama after the closure of Sony’s Japan Studio. The three have plenty of history: producer Sato was a character designer on the two PS2 Siren games (as well as lead on the underrated Puppeteer), while Okura was lead game designer on both Gravity Rush games. Toyama says their working relationship hasn’t necessarily changed a great deal – “there are no confusions or stress levels that differ from the time we were running a team at Sony Interactive Entertainment” – noting that while the pressures of operating an independent studio are different, “I feel that we are able to work faster and more efficiently now that we are able to make every decision by ourselves.”
With a little prompting, Toyama reveals “just a little prologue-like snippet” about Slitterhead’s story. “It is the end of the ’80s,” he says. “In a corner of an Asian city, a series of bizarre murders [occur] in which brainless corpses were found one after another. As a result of a secret investigation, it was found that these incidents were not the work of a human being, but by the hand of an unknown monster” – the memorably grotesque Yakushi we see in the trailer. Toyama says the process of creating a truly frightening videogame monster involves building “something natural and intentionally transcendental” that’s designed to make players feel awe, and that creatures that can mimic humans are a particularly strong starting point for this.
Well, it worked for Siren. And while Toyama isn’t hopeful of that particular series ever returning (“obviously for commercial reasons it would be difficult to create a new entry”), he says he’s grateful for that “stronghold of fans who still show their passion for the series, so if there is an opportunity to create some kind of content, I would be glad to.” In the meantime, he and the rest of the team at Bokeh are focused on finding new ways to surprise players. On this evidence, we certainly wouldn’t bet against Slitterhead hiding more fascinating, terrifying secrets beneath the surface.
The power of the dog
In a recent interview, Toyama expressed his admiration for Red Candle Games’ Devotion and Kojima Productions’ PT, though he admits he doesn’t really play games for study or research purposes, preferring “relaxing works such as puzzles or [racing games] without any story.” That changes as a game goes into development, he says: “I feel there are genuine ideas to take in the essence from different things and connecting them to new imaginations.” The idea for Slitterhead’s central monster, he says, came from outside games. It stems from influential 18th-century fantasy anthology Strange Tales From A Chinese Studio – more specifically a story called Wild Dog, in which decapitated corpses suddenly rise up to prevent the titular canine from eating their brains.
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