Slitterhead Q&A part 2 talks about Silent Hill’s UFO ending and creature design inspirations

Bokeh Game Studio has released part 2 of a Q&A session about their upcoming title Slitterhead where they answer fan questions.

Bokeh Game Studio is a Japanese game development studio that was founded in 2020. The studio includes creators like Keiichiro Toyama who is known for their work on Silent Hill and Siren, Siren lead character designer and The Last Guardian producer Kazunobu Sato, and Junya Okura who worked as a game designer on the Siren series and Gravity Rush.

Slitterhead was announced in 2021 and will be the first title from Bokeh Game Studio. The action-adventure game is set in Asia and depicts a desperate struggle between humans that wield mysterious powers and grotesque monsters in its dark horror-like world.

The game’s creative director Keiichiro Toyama, producer Kazunobu Sato, and game director Junya Okura appear in the Q&A video.

They were first asked about how the game differs from Toyama’s previous titles like Silent Hill. Toyama replied by saying that it doesn’t differ that much in terms of thought process. To elaborate, he explained that what he tried to do with Silent Hill was to “make something that had never been made before,” and Toyama found that in the modern horror genre. He’s now in the process of making something new again. Something that’s never been done before, just like when he was working on Silent Hill.

Toyama wants the game to be accessible and open to more players, not limiting the targeted audience to fans of the horror genre. In his words, “It’s a weird game but it’s easy to get into,” and “It’s scary but you want to know what’s next.” While the game can be difficult at times, “we’re confident that the players will be able to have fun while taking on these challenges,” added Okura. And it’ll definitely not be as difficult as Siren, where some players had a hard time finishing the game, Sato explained.

The next question was, “Will the players be able to fight back, or is the gameplay going to encourage us to escape from confrontation,” to which Okura answered, “we want to include both approaches. We’re thinking of allowing the players to initiate the attacks as well.”

When asked about inspirations for creature design, Toyama talked about how he doesn’t want to make enemies who are there just for the sake of being enemies. He aims to make creatures with their own values, culture, and intellect. With that in mind, he found inspiration in creatures that are close to us but that we’re not able to understand, like insects or aquatic creatures. “They have this strong collective aspect that I’m interested in.”

Toyama briefly touched upon Silent Hill’sUFO ending when asked about whether the new game would include something similar, as in joke endings and easter eggs. “We would have some staff with time on their hands, to whom we’d ask to make these if they were free.” He continued by saying, “for Siren and beyond, we didn’t intend to make jokes from the beginning. It’s instead the fact that we were very serious in what we made that ended up creating funny moments.” Toyama intends to incorporate similar aspects into Slitterhead as well.

It’s not an open world game, but players won’t be following a linear path either. “We want to add a complex approach to discover the story under multiple angles,” said Toyama. In terms of world-building, he aims to recreate the atmosphere of 1990’s Hong Kong, although it’ll be a fictional setting that doesn’t include names of real-world locations.

The game is being made in Unreal Engine, and in terms of language support, they’re currently making the game with English and Japanese in mind. Support for other languages has yet to be determined. The Q&A video also talks about Akira Yamaoka’s music used in the teaser trailer, the possibility of in-game collectibles, the future of the video game industry, and more.

To learn more about Slitterhead’s concept, check out part 1 of the Q&A session here.

written by. Ryuki Ishii