Slitterhead’s gameplay has finally been revealed. One of the wildest announcements at Summer Games Fest 2024,Bokeh Game Studios’ new horror title presents players with an action-horror adventure through a city filled with mutants, monsters, and mystery.
First revealed at The Game Awards 2021 via a teaser trailer, information onSlitterheadhas been scant for the last two and a half years. Other than some promises that the game will feature nasty moral decisions, and the occasional reassuring whisper that the game is still in active development, players have heard little information about the game’s mechanics and worldbuilding until this year’s reveal at Summer Games Fest 2024.
Revealed via a gameplay trailer to be a punky, pulpy action-horror adventure,Slitterhead’s reveal featured all the parasites, mutants, and bikers using blood magic gamers were promised back in 2021. With shades of splatter films andultraviolent anime OVAs, the game managed to stand out from the event’s other announcements by simply being radically unique.
With fast-paced, visceral monster-slaughtering action reminiscent ofShift Up’s recently releasedStellar Blade,Slitterheadis a unique beast on the horror game landscape—focusing more on brutal, exciting combat than scares, while still being decidedly a horror game. Giving players a bevy of blood-magic weapons and abilities—oddly reminiscent of those wielded by Monami inVampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl—Slitterheadtasks gamers with using their body-horror violence to seek out and destroy the grotesque mutated forms of the Yegouzi-possessed citizens of Kowlong.
Taking on the role of the Hyoki—a body-hopping entity halfway between a ghost and a parasite—players are expected to possess the city’s civilians, making use of their bodies and discarding them once they’ve taken too much damage. Caught in the middle of a war between Hyoki and the evil Yegouzi, the citizens are merely a resource forSlitterhead’s two mysterious factions.
According to an interview with IGN, each person the player possesses inSlitterheadwill feel slightly different to control. Director Keiichiro Toyama states that he ‘[hopes] players will enjoy feeling the difference.’
Despite beingSilent Hilldirector Keiichiro Toyama’s first horror game since 2003,Slitterheadis notSilent Hill. While a number of the originalSilent Hill’s influences are still felt inSlitterhead’s gameplay trailer—such as Robert McCammon’s body-snatchers versus body-mutators alien invasion novel,The Stinger—the game’s tone and gameplay diverge wildly fromSilent Hill’s slower and more methodical macabre.
In arecent interview with IGN, Keiichiro Toyama discussed taking influence from various manga, includingGantz,Parasyte, andTokyo Ghoul, to craft bothSlitterhead’s world and gameplay mechanics. Toyama also discussed how the body-snatching mechanic is a development on the ‘sightjacking’ mechanic first introduced in 2003’sSiren.
Bucking recent game design trends,Slitterheadis not anopen-world game. Instead, the game takes place across a series of stages, each taking around 30 minutes to complete—adding up to around 15 hours of playtime in total. Part of the reason for this level-based approach is Keiichiro Toyama’s focus on world design.
Inspired by cities that no longer exist, and filtered through a lens of neon-drenchedHong Kong cinema,Slitterhead’s perpetual nighttime, crumbling high-rise apartments, and cramped urbanism is a self-conscious throwback to the archetypal Asian metropolis of a bygone age. With each level, the player is tasked with exploring a new part of the city, and, over the course ofSlitterhead’s roughly 15 hour playtime, the game takes the player on a tour across a series of intricately designed districts and landmarks inspired by real, fictional, and imagined locations.
Players Don’t Have to Wait Long to Get Their Hands On Slitterhead
There may have been a two and a half year wait betweenSlitterhead’s announcement and its first gameplay trailer, but players won’t have to wait much longer to explore Kowlong.Slitterheadis set to release on November 8.
Slitterhead
WHERE TO PLAY
Set in the densely cluttered streets of “Kowlong,” filled with obscurity and chaos, this battle action-adventure game casts players as the “Hyoki,” an entity devoid of memory and physical form. His only motive is to eradicate the monstrous beings known as “Slitterheads” crawling around the city, disguising themselves as humans.Roaming the vibrant neon-lit cityscape, players must seek out allies among humans known as “Rarities,” infiltrate and track dangerous organizations, and engage in battles harnessing the power of blood. As the suspenseful drama unfolds, delve into the mystery behind Hyoki’s existence and the appearance of the Slitterheads.
