Silent Hill creator’s new game Slitterhead prioritizes action over scares

This story is part of our Summer Gaming Marathon series.

Slitterhead was the weirdest game I stumbled onto at Summer Game Fest this year. Tucked away in a small cabana at the back of the event, it was a game few people attending even seemed to know was there. I felt compelled to check it out before the event ended, as if I were possessed. I managed to get an on-the-fly appointment to see it on the last day of Summer Game Fest, eager to dissect what I saw in its action-focused gameplay trailer. That decision would bring me face-to-face with Keiichiro Toyama, who helped create iconic franchises like Silent Hill, Siren, and Gravity Rush, and has now moved on to make Slitterhead at Bokeh Game Studio.

We’re in a survival-horror renaissance now thanks to Capcom’s Resident Evil remakes and standout indies like Crow Country, but Toyama tells Digital Trends he’s now leaning into making a full-on action horror game. He believes that’s what players today prefer, and Slitterhead is a result of that. With its focus on combat, a parry deflection mechanic, and a possession system that lets players move between bodies during battle, it felt like I had stumbled upon a creepy hidden gem at Summer Game Fest.

A Siren spiritual successor

Although Toyama is best known for creating the first Silent Hill, Slitterhead has more in common with the second horror franchise he worked on: Siren. That series was a creepy survival horror game where players could “sightjack” NPCs to learn what they can see and hear. That gameplay concept, as well as the idea of telling another ensemble story with a lot of characters, is something Toyama and other returning developers from Siren want to explore more with Slitterhead.

“In Siren, there was this mechanic where you could sightjack and see from another’s perspective,” Toyama tells Digital Trends. “The [development] team carries over many of those who worked on Siren as well, so we modernized that sense of borrowing another’s vision, but this time around,