Slitterhead platform series#

With the likes of Tango Gameworks’ Ghostwire Tokyo and now Bokeh Game Studio’s Slitterhead, it would seem the spectrum of video game horror is in rude health and in safe hands moving forward. To this end, we recently considered the current state of horror games and what lies ahead for a genre driven by creativity and risk. Like The Exorcist, Team Silent’s Silent Hill games have lost their edge in visual terror terms, but are nevertheless intergral to where the genre stands today. Fold in the technical and aesthetic strides video games have made since Toyama’s last involvement in horror, and Slitterhead really could be something really special. Throw the possibility of unpredictable baddies into that mix, and I’m already sold. Just the thought of dawdling around the hallways of that very apartment complex, fumbling broken locks and circumventing stacked filing cabinets which inexplicably block stairways to key areas simultaneously fills me with joy and dread. Psychological horror lies at the heart of classic Silent Hill, and I love the thought of shapeshifters playing a role here in Slitterhead – whereby no one can be trusted, and anyone could be hostile. In a flash, her creature-like head – scales, tentacle tongue and all – retracts, folding neatly back into place, to reform her otherwise normal human face. Homes are tightly knitted together in the multi-story structure, and, when the camera zooms in, we’re shown a woman standing on a veranda who’s clearly been infected by the parasites we’ve seen earlier. We’re shown a wide shot of a high-rise apartment block situated within what looks like an industrial area. Perhaps the most exciting takeaway from Slitterhead’s reveal trailer, though, arrives at its very end.

From what we’ve seen so far from the latter studio’s upcoming Ghostwire Tokyo, it too is adopting a more hands-on, conflict-leaning approach in its interpretation of the scare ‘em up for the modern age.Ĭreativity and risk are driving modern horror games – but where does the genre go next?

Slitterhead platform series#

Resident Evil has pivoted towards more action-inspired first-person terror in recent years, while Tango Gameworks’ The Evil Within breached the shores of open-world horror in its second series entry of 2017. The high-octane, action-heavy style of Slitterhead of course flies in the face of classic Silent Hill’s more pensive sensibilities, but, at this stage at least, this doesn’t feel unnatural given the direction of blockbuster horror in 2021. And he came back to face a new challenge in horror.” In practice, Slitterhead looks like Silent Hill turned up to 11 – with grotesque, shapeshifting monsters aplenty the dismemberment of bewildered civilians and police officers alike and a ninja-aping, motorcycle helmet-wearing, sword-wielding chap who goes to town on the ethereal beings, who may or may not be the game’s protagonist. In 2020, he went independent and founded Bokeh Game Studio. Clearly keen to tap into this lineage, the trailer spends its opening stretch outlining Toyama’s credentials, informing us that “in 1999, Keiichiro Toyama chose horror as the genre for his first directorial work. There’s barely a minute of cinematic footage in Slitterhead’s reveal trailer, but it’s surely enough to get horror fans and, more specifically, Silent Hill fans, buzzing.