In December 2020, Keiichiro Toyama announced the establishment of Bokeh Game Studio, a new development company he founded together with select cohorts from his days at Sony’s now defunct Japan Studio. With Toyama’s resume including beloved titles like the original Silent Hill, Siren, and Gravity Rush, many fans had been looking forward to seeing his next creation. Now, four years later, Slitterhead is ready to release this November as Bokeh Game Studio’s debut title. I was fortunate enough to actually play the horror action adventure game, and you can read my impressions in our exclusive preview article. Following my session with the game, I interviewed Toyama as well as producer Kazunobu Sato and game director Junya Okura.
Many fans have been eagerly awaiting a new horror experience from you. After playing the demo, I thought it was rare for a game that leans so heavily on horror elements to have a melee combat system. Could you tell us the reason behind this?
Keiichiro Toyama, Founder, Bokeh Game Studio: We wanted players who enjoy modern action games to be able to enjoy Slitterhead, so we aimed for a game that is easy to familiarize yourself with if you are used to playing recent games.
Possessing and controlling multiple different characters functions as Slitterhead’s key mechanic. How did you come up with this idea?
Toyama: With Slitterhead, we wanted to reinterpret the concept we originally had for Siren. Over the years, Siren has become somewhat of a cult classic, and I’m always honored when I hear people say they want to see it get revived. In Siren, you could dive inside the brain of other characters through a feature we called sightjacking. We wanted to evolve this idea by making it possible to possess and freely move around as other characters. This became the core of Slitterhead’s game design.
It’s unique and interesting from a gameplay perspective, but when you’re continuously possessing different characters, doesn’t it become difficult for the player to know what or who they are? How did you approach this idea from a narrative standpoint?
Toyama: That’s something we’ve become quite good at through our previous games. While there are elements that confuse the player, I am confident that players will enjoy Slitterhead’s story. At first, you might not be sure of what you are, but as you advance through the game, there’s an interesting narrative and relatable characters.
While you are reinterpreting Siren’s game design in a modern way, the setting of Slitterhead is quite different from Siren’s Japanese village.
Toyama: That’s right. Slitterhead is set in a fictional Asian city during the early 1990s. Nostalgia for a world long gone is one of the main themes we had for the city. For example, many of the neon sign boards that used to be so common in Asian cities are getting removed these days. If you take a city like Hong Kong, you can see how much has changed. The first time I visited Hong Kong was in the 2000s. If I had gone earlier, I could have seen airplanes fly right above the city to reach Kai Tak Airport, which was located in the middle of the city. Drawing inspiration from places we would have liked to see or go is something we did a lot in Slitterhead.
Wasn’t it difficult to recreate sights and locations that no longer exist?
Toyama: It was definitely challenging as there wasn’t always a lot of documentation to work from. That said, our environmental artists were extremely passionate about recreating the scenes they were inspired by. Some members even applied to work with us because they wanted to design a city like this. Some of them were so devoted that they put real-world details into the game that I’m not even familiar with!
Were you also inspired by Hong Kong movies from the ’90s?
Toyama: Definitely. When I was a student, Wong Kar-wai’s movies became popular. His movies changed the way I looked at Hong Kong cinema. When I was a kid, Jackie Chan movies were the first thing you would think about. I was captivated by the modernness and beauty of Wong Kar-wai’s movies.
I was impressed by the NPCs walking the streets. They were really detailed and their fashion and hairstyles perfectly matched the city’s atmosphere. I was even more surprised to actually be able to possess and walk around as them.
Toyama: That’s great to hear. I think there are not many games that allow you to control this many characters. In the original proposal, I wrote that every person in the city should be a playable character. For game design reasons, we had to limit the amount of characters you can possess, but it’s still a lot. The motion differs depending on the character, so I hope players will enjoy feeling the difference.
It’s a nice touch that the character you are possessing at that moment also appears during cutscenes.
Toyama: Yes, we tried to do that as much as possible. There were a lot of difficulties upon doing this. For example, weird stuff would happen for characters with different heights.
I got to play the beginning of the game, which had me explore the city, and later the insides of a condominium building. Is Slitterhead an open-world game, or does it take a stage-based structure?
Toyama: It’s stage-based. Everything takes place within the city, but depending on the stage, you get to see different situations and can experience the city from different angles.
How long does the average stage take, and how long does it take to beat the entire game?
Toyama: Stages are about 30 minutes long. It should take players around 15 hours to see the credits roll. After that, you can enjoy the remaining challenges.
The stages I got to play were both during the nighttime. Are there any stages that play out during the day?
Toyama: We narrowed the situations down to nighttime. It matches the atmosphere of the city better, and if we were to change the time of the day, we would also have to change the atmosphere of characters, which would be a lot of work. Also, daytime situations are more challenging to fit in a horror game.
