Slitterhead set tongues wagging when it was officially unveiled at the Game Awards in December 2021. As the debut project of Bokeh Game Studio, the nightmarish venture is being masterminded by Keiichiro Toyama – the creator of Silent Hill and the Siren series – and will explore themes of widespread parasitic infection, shambling brain-dead monsters, and stomach-turning violence. We weren't shown much, and we've not seen much more since, but Slitterhead upon reveal screamed pure late '90s/early 2000s survival horror.
With esteemed ex-Team Silent composer Akira Yamaoka in tow, the parallels between Toyama's most famous dimension-straddling town seemed obviously – but after seeing its latest snippet of early in-development combat footage, I reckon Slitterhead looks more like something from the world of Parasite Eve than Silent Hill. And that's no bad thing at all.
Mix and match
Silent Hill creator's new horror game Slitterhead debuts early gameplay and playable dog
Whereas Silent Hill's descent into B-movie horror is often a sanity-challenging slow burn, things appear to have fallen apart pretty quickly in Slitterhead. From the unsuspecting businessman who gets ambushed and slaughtered in an alleyway, to the scores of police officers locking down the city at gunpoint, and the blood-sword-slashing motorcyclist who literally chops an infected abomination in half, there's definitely a more intense feel to things in this world.
In the aforementioned in-progress combat footage, it appears players will assume control of said motorcyclist as they hack and slash and shoot their way through the game's multi-tendrilled baddies. With a busy HUD that delineates which weapon is drawn and which is stored, and a collection of combat icons that include a health bar, some sort of special move indicator and a magic supply, there's a distinct action-RPG feel to Slitterhead which flies in the face of Silent Hill and Forbidden Siren.
As the player is shown circling an infected enemy while using magic to regenerate health, before slashing and then blasting them at point-blank range with a firearm, I was instantly reminded of Square Enix's 1999 gem, Parasite Eve 2. Almost a quarter of a century later, few games have captured the feel of the horror-leaning action-RPG's on the fly, mix-and-match approach to combat, and so if Slitterhead does tread a similar path, I for one am suddenly way more excited than I otherwise was.
"There's a distinct action-RPG feel to Slitterhead which flies in the face of Silent Hill and Forbidden Siren".
Towards the end of the last millennium, Parasite Eve and Parasite Eve 2 were always a little more out there compared with their contemporaries too – and so the shots of a playable dog character definitely suggests Slitterhead is leaning away from survival horror norms. Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami certainly steered his last project, Ghostwire Tokyo, in a new direction, so perhaps we're seeing the birth of a new trend in this space.
With so little shown, though, it's impossible to say what Slitterhead really is at this stage. Behind the scenes dev diaries are always welcome in the march towards release from any game, but this one essentially explains the process of QA without providing much in the way of insight or intrigue. The snippets of combat that we do see are exactly that – fragments of a bigger picture that looks nowhere near complete at this stage. To this end, Slitterhead is still officially expected at some point in 2023, but if the latest footage is up to date, then I suspect we'll be lucky to see it next year, never mind at some point in the next five months.
Time will tell, but with Silent Hill, Siren, and perhaps Parasite Eve forming the wider conversation around Slitterhead, I suspect the months ahead will be exciting for action-focused survival horror fans new and old.
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