Slitterhead is the debut title of Bokeh Game Studio which was founded by Ex-Sony Interactive Entertainment developer, Keiichiro Toyama. It was founded in 2020 and they announced they would return to crafting a RPG woven with horror elements. Slitterhead released on November 4th 2024 and is available on all platforms bar the Nintendo Switch.
An Interesting Gameplay Loop To Say The Least
The setting is a Neon Tokyo where there is something afoot with citizens being mangled up, full of holes and missing organs. We play as a soul who can possess a certain set of people to complete whatever objective there is for each mission.
Soon we find out there are these beings called “slitterheads” who can disguise themselves as normal people but are giant mantis-like monsters who hunt humans as food. They are responsible for all the mangled and dismembered bodies we come across.
Most of the people we can possess don’t have any differing qualities among it is mostly for traversing the vicinity to get closer to the objective. However there are a set of distinct people called “rarities” who do have special abilities. These are people who we come across that are near death and possessing them leads to them creating weapons of blood that are coming out of their wounds such as long claws, spears or swords.
The Premise Is Lacking Compared To Its Peers
The story is somewhat lacking compared to what other horror titles that are available such as Resident Evil or Silent Hill. The story starts off on the right note initially with a suspenseful introduction that portrays a town that is infested with these “Slitterheads”.
Where the suspense interest begins to fade is the moment where we realize that due to the time loop we have to redo the set of tasks that we just completed albeit slightly differently. Time loops are a new thing in story telling yet it feels as if the writers had learned about this story telling style yesterday. So little of the story progresses with each time loop yet so much of the suspense and intrigue fades that it becomes difficult to keep track of whether anything worthwhile occurred or not.
Another very baffling decision is that there is a barrier to progression added on, where you have to find a certain “rarity” to progress the story at some point which means replaying missions and trying to explore every corner finding this “rarity” only for him or her to just be mediocre.
The Combat Could’ve Been Better
While the fighting encounters are a unique twist and “Slitterhead” itself is an interesting idea, the game feels like it is trying too hard in every aspect and thus isn’t doing well in any single one. The combat, while somewhat original, becomes really repetitive and boring due to the time loop and lack of enemy variety.
The system is also at times clunky and some of the perk systems don’t work as intended. Such as an enhanced incoming attack indicator which in fact did NOT indicate incoming attacks. The attacks lack any combos since we can only get 1 button for attacking, quickly becoming a boring session of pressing the same button over and over again.
It Is Trying To Shine In Every Aspect
There are too many repeated mission structures, it’s those chasing type of missions where the person being chased is almost always a better runner than your chosen character making it all the more frustrating when we can’t really keep up.
The game introduces a lot of interesting ideas but what was desperately needed was a focus on narrative and combat instead of expansive maps for each mission and elongated mission structure. Where it missed the mark was its inability to provide a coherent and digestible story around the “Slitterhead” idea with time loops.
The game is certainly worth a try because it tried something new and interesting. No game is perfect, for all its shortcomings it’s still a worthwhile journey with some wacky moments, some mindless fun and some over the top gun combat with blood as the ammo. Hopefully Bokeh improves upon the shortcomings of this game and brings forth another title featuring “Slitterhead” which could easily rival the Silent Hill of Resident Evil franchise in gore, horror and an exciting story.
