In his previous lives at Konami and Sony Japan Studio, game designer Keiichiro Toyama was known for his iconic horror games Silent Hill and Siren, then later PlayStation’s gravity-flipping adventure Gravity Rush.
Understanding his track record then, it’s no surprise that his next game, Slitterhead, feels uniquely spooky. Whether his small indie startup Bokeh is able to achieve its ambitions or not, it’s clear that this game will at the very least stand out in what often feels like an increasingly homogenised games market.
“With Sony, there was an increasing motive to make more highly budgeted games, and it wanted to go that way with the Japan Studio brand,” Toyama told VGC in a recent interview, reflecting on the closure of PlayStation’s historic in-house developer in April 2021 (Toyama left to form Bokeh shortly before this).
