After leaving Sony and founding Bokeh Game Studio, Keiichiro Toyama is ready to immerse his fans an𝕴d newcomers into the studio’s debut, the horror action-adventure game . He’s happy with how the project is turning out, but he also shares some doubts about how it’s going to be received. “A lot of people are confused about the game at this point,” he tells me at Gamescom. They don’t really know what it’s about. [Some players say] ‘we don’t get it’.”
Slitterhead is the type of game that we don’t see a lot in the triple-A landscape, but that just means it’s offering a fresh experi🍰ence. It feels new, weird, a bit clunky even, but also full of personality and willi🐭ng to take risks with its ideas. It’s also a testament to Toyama’s constant search for new ways to surprise players since his early days working on the first Silent Hill, and later, Siren and Gravity Rush.
“I wanted to get back 𓃲to my roots of creating horror and h⭕aving horror themes in the game. I don’t want to reimagine something I have already done,” he says.
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In Slitterhead, you control a spirit that has lost its memories and wants them back. You recover them piece by piece by interacting with fragments. To do this, you need to possess the bodies of dozens of human NPCs in a fictional city. Each level has exploration and battles, and you’ll have to fight strange and increasingly strong creatures to progress. Slitterhead’s combat appears to be the core of the whole experience, and Toyam𝕴a seems satisfied with what the team has achieved.
“One of the main motives for the g𓄧ame is Japanese manga, more specifically Seinen [a type of manga aimed at adults],” he explains. “They have horror themes and tough topics, but the characters in these works tend to have dif✨ferent abilities and skills, and unnatural powers that they can use.”
He goes on to explain how you will meet different characters with unique powers and how this will keep the experience fresh, but he also takes a moment to reflect on how important it is to create a bꦑackground for the main protagonist, the anonymous spirit. “If you want to have the players relate to the story, you need them to relate to the cha🥀racters in the story. In Silent Hill, the father’s daughter is missing and he goes looking for her. No one can not relate to that.”
Toyama feels like this is basic game design, and a principle he meticulously applies to all his creations. He tries to fin⛎d &ldqܫuo;a gimmick where [the player] feel relatable and can portray themselves onto the characters”. In Slitterhead, he believes that creating an amnesic spirit is “the ultimate example” of this because it can let you discover more about the protagonist and the world around them at the same time as the protagonist.
As I asked him about the themes he explores with his games, like how religion can be distorted in the shape of cults in Silent Hill, or how Siren’s portrayal of class struggles says something about the inequalities of different soci🃏eties, it’s clear that Toyama also applies his approach to the characters and worlds he creates. He doesn’t want to say much about the themes of Slitterhead, saying he wants the players to find out on their own, but when you think about the main mechanic of controlling hundreds of human bodies as disposable resources, sacrificing them without a second thought just to reach the next objective, it’s clear that Toyama is onto something deeper.
Speaking of this universe, the design of this fictional Asian city is somethi🌊nꦡg that stood out to me while playing the demo. I loved how the architecture of the city is portrayed and the way citizens walk around the streets, barely interacting with each other, as well as the number of signs and store displays you can find. There’s a ✤particular vibe in the aꦬir, which feels almost like sadness, but Toyama says it’s something else.
“A lot of this [setting] is based on nostalgia and a feelꦓing of loneliness,” he explains. “I travel to a lot of cities and some parts of East Asia have changed drastically over the years. From the 90’s to the 2000’s and 2010s, the cities have become modernized, and some [of their original] aspects have disappeared. So I had a personal feeling, a longing. I missed those kinds of cities and how chaotic and busy they were.”
I want to dig deeper into this feeling of nostalgia, so I asked him about his childhood memories and what used to scare him. He takes a moment to think before giving an answer. “When you grow up… you can’t really separate reality from fantasy,” Toyama explains. “I guess the thing that I'm particularly afraid of is that I'm still not familiar with the difference between the real world and fiction.
“When I was growing up in the 70’s in Japan, there was a lot of folklore through television. And you know, basically they're bullsh*t. But there was a trend with these shows and what they said. They told scary tales and there were a lot of ghost stories at that period. Those made me really scared and I couldn't sleep at night.”
It’s interesting to think about this fear of ghost stories because Toyama’s works tend to go in anꦜother direction, focusing more on the insidious things and beings wandering in our streets, hiding right around the corner.
“I’m more drawn to the psychological fear of the unknown, how you're afraid of [it] and something just completely out of your imagination happens right in front of you,” he says. “I want to convey this through my games, especially in the horror genre. I guess that kind of fear is more impactful than just being afraid of being hunted or being murdered.
“I feel that the horror genre is quite different from other mediums because the aspect of fear is very particular, and [it has] the feeling that you don't want to be close to [something terrifying] or you don't want to look at it, but you end up going back and trying to have a look. That aspect has been with me since I was a child. I think it stands out for horror and compared to other genres, it moves your feelings a lot.”
But perhaps what’s more important to Toyama is to create something that lasts forever. “I have always w🎃anted to bring games that [stay] in your memory for a long time,” he says. “Hopefully that h𒐪as worked,” he laughs.
When he looks back at the Silent Hill’s days, he feels a bit embarrassed of the first game due to his inexper🍌ience and limitations. He wasn’t rea🔴lly satisfied with the final product. But he’s really happy with all the legacy created with the series and his other works, and he appreciates having had a long career making games.
When asked for a final comment, Toyama wants players to “feel ༺confident” about Slitterhead. “This is something completely different, like every game I’ve made. I want my fans to feel safe in a way, or insecure in a good way. I hope they have a good time playing it, and I’m quite comfortable with the end🤡 product.”
Silent Hill Creator Says He Wouldn't Be "Unsatisfied" If Slitterhead Is His Final Game
Here's hoping it's not.
