‘Slitterhead’ Game Review: A Strong Debut for Keiichiro Toyama’s New Studio

Slitterhead intrigued me. After being announced about three years ago at The Game Awards, the prospect of a brand-new horror game helmed by Keiichiro Toyama—the acclaimed director behind the first Silent Hill game on top of Siren and Gravity Rush—was nothing short of exhilarating. If anything, Toyama is consistent; since 2003, he’s been at the creative helm of both the Siren and Gravity Rush franchises exclusively, bringing novel ideas to the horror and action genres that always feel new and interesting.

It’s no surprise, then, that the first outing from Toyama’s brand-new studio, Bokeh Game Studio, shares a similar distinction.

But for all the unique ideas and unconventional approaches that Slitterhead brings to the table, is it worth really digging into? Is it as perplexing as the Siren series? Will it fall into modest obscurity, just like the Gravity Rush games? It’s not an easy thing to answer.

Slittering Around in Slitterhead

Kowlong, Hong Kong. It’s the 1990s. The ’80s are over, and while the neon-tinged lights of the city still burn brightly, they can’t reveal the horrifying revelations that are yet to unfold. The city is bustling, with its many residents hoofing it across its seedy underbelly for whatever suits their fancy: illicit drugs, grey market goods, physical pleasures, you name it. But things aren’t as they seem. Bodies are piling up in the city’s darkest corners, sans their brains.

You play as Hyoki, a disembodied spirit who drifts along Kowlong’s streets. Unaware of what’s truly going on in the shadows, Hyoki quickly discovers an innate ability central to Slitterhead‘s gameplay: possession. After assuming control of roaming dogs and pedestrians alike, a horrifying vision plagues Hyoki’s senses. A young woman is under attack in a nearby alley. Only, instead of hearing her screams or the scuffle of feet, Hyoki is able to see the world through the attacker’s eyes.

A brief chase leads Hyoki into possessing the woman named Julee before a startling transformation takes place. Now adorned with bright-red eyes and bloody claws projected from her fingertips, Julee and Hyoki battle an eponymous Slitterhead monster before things quickly go south. The city is ablaze, the screams of the dying fill the air, and the now-possessed Julee is plucked from the ground by three alien entities.

Then Julee wakes up, realizing it was all just a dream. Or was it?

With memories of her battle with the Slitterhead still fresh in her mind and her newfound link with Hyoki, the two realize that they’re now able to go back in time. To unveil the mystery of what’s going on, save lives wherever they can, and hopefully put a stop to the Slitterhead threat, they’ll have to use their wits and supernatural powers to manipulate the timeline into a more positive outcome. Unless their meddling makes things worse.

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Per Toyama’s own admission, Slitterhead is heavily inspired by numerous things within and outside games. Specifically, Toyama cited directors like Wong Kar-wai as a profound influence in a 2024 interview with IGN, along with his broader interest in Hong Kong cinema. Visually, you can see this inspiration shine throughout. With the perpetual nighttime setting, the ability to interact with your playable characters in conversational scenarios, and the practical explosions of color found throughout, Slitterhead veers away from being an outright horror game into one that carries horror elements in tandem with its aesthetic choices. It’s an action game, more than anything else.

You can even find elements from Toyama’s previous games here. The mission-based structure, the revisiting of previous areas to alter your path forward, and even the ability to view the world through your enemy’s eyes can all be found in ample amounts throughout the Siren series. Likewise, the kind of free-flowing movement you’ll find in Slitterhead, especially in the numerous chases you’ll go on, at least vaguely resembles the movement system found in the Gravity Rush games.

Of course, we have to take a moment to gush about the music, too. Akira Yamaoka is back to flex his creative chops once again, bringing with him a set of tracks that leans in just about every direction you can imagine: dark synths, lightning-fast guitars, cold ambiance, it all forms a dynamic backdrop for Slitterhead‘s unconventional gameplay to play out on. I’d even go so far as to say that it’s one of his best outings in recent years.

Actually Playing Slitterhead

How does Slitterhead play, then? It’s certainly a far cry from the typical kind of action-oriented fare you’ll find surrounding it. You know, for better and for worse.

Slitterhead is mission-based, taking place over the course of three days as you investigate potential leads, eliminate Slitterheads, and gather skill points. The latter is what you’ll need to upgrade the abilities of your “rarities”—the game’s playable characters that, when possessed, gain extraordinary powers and unique weapons. You’ll find a handful of rarities by just straightforwardly playing the game, but others require a bit of intuition to discover. You’ll have to go out of your way to find them in an optional area or bring a special rarity into a mission to unlock an inaccessible door, for instance.

But rarities aren’t the only means of doing battle.

Possession is more than just a story element: it’s the name of the game. It’s utilized as a means to traverse the environment, it’s a way to slip by enemies unannounced, it’s a way to get ahead of a foe that’s running away. Better yet, it’s the one thing you’ll be doing all the time during battle.

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The best way to describe combat in Slitterhead would be two words: tactical action. “Tactical” in the sense that you won’t just be playing as a rarity the whole time. You’re directly rewarded for switching between your rarity and nearby civilians with a temporary damage boost and buff to your health. Civilians also have the unique ability to taunt enemies, meaning you can effectively play a violent version of keep away while slicing up your foes. It incentivizes you to look around your surroundings and keep the entire area in mind as you battle your foes. It’s also the only way to effectively avoid a game over.

Should you lose all your health while possessing someone, be it a rarity or a civilian, you’ll lose a life. Lose three lives, and you’re booted back to the last checkpoint. To add to that, the only consistent way to regenerate your health is by absorbing puddles of blood on the floor, either spilled by you or your enemies.

You can bring up to two rarities into a mission, barring any extenuating circumstances. Some are required for certain missions due to their ties to that specific mission, whereas others may not be available on certain days due to the events surrounding them. You’re more than free to upgrade each rarity and their respective skills with your accrued skill points, which you can find via secret hunting or by just completing missions. Most skills can be upgraded to a max of three levels, whereas others are strictly one-and-done.

Avoiding these skill upgrades is strongly discouraged. Not only are some of the passive abilities you acquire vitally important—including avoiding friendly fire and passively regenerating health—but your damage output will be fairly pitiful against some of the game’s tougher enemies otherwise.

As a plus, each of the rarities you acquire all plays dramatically differently, carrying with them a unique weapon and three unique skills. These skills are split into two categories: one that directly draws from your health pool for their use and another that relies on a separate spirit resource.

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Julee, for instance, starts out with a set of fast claw weapons and several key abilities:

• A massive uppercut attack that deals tremendous damage, which can also be charged for additional damage.
• A healing ability that not only regenerates her own health but those within a limited radius around her.
• A throwing disc attack that not only deals minor damage from a distance but also slows enemies down.

Compare that to Alex, whose abilities are much more combat-oriented in comparison:

• A blood shotgun that’s fairly self-explanatory, which can also be charged up for more damage at the cost of more health used.
• A gravity well attack that draws enemies towards a fixed point, which pairs amazingly well with your shotgun.
• The ability to set off a time bomb within whoever Hyoki is possessing, sacrificing them for a quick and sudden burst of damage.

While you’ll find a few to really settle down with, the rarities here are diverse enough for each one to fit a specific playstyle.

It’s such a weird mishmash of ideas, but it works well. Instead of managing a single character, you’re blocking and utilizing directional parrying, keeping tabs on the health of just about everyone in the area, bouncing back and forth between everyone, utilizing your skills, all in a bizarre dance that’s legitimately fresh and interesting. I had a blast, at least, when it kept throwing new things my way.

Slitterhead‘s Hit (Or Miss) Ideas

The entire time I’ve been playing Slitterhead, I couldn’t help but feel a recurring thought enter my mind: “This feels like a PlayStation 2 game.” In a good way, mind you. It felt like that because Slitterhead evoked a unique, unconventional experience that I would’ve felt from that generation of consoles, compared to what you might typically find from a bigger budget release nowadays.

Again, for better and for worse.

Slitterhead‘s story is certainly ambitious, and the level of intrigue it develops is more than palpable, but the actual execution and delivery of its plot beats feel a bit underwhelming. Every new mission that’s completed requires you to catch up with several rarities that you’ve unlocked so far, as speaking to them is the only way to unlock new missions. With only two or three, it’s not something that you’ll necessarily draw attention to. With double that amount of rarities? It becomes a bit overbearing. Even then, successfully completing all the dialogue sections for one rarity may unlock a brand-new series of them in another rarity. This isn’t just an isolated incident, either.

Repetitiveness does become an issue here as well. There’s a steady trickle of interesting enemies to face, ranging from Slitterhead variants to gun-toting humans, that endures for quite a while—unless you’re trying to grab all the game’s collectibles. Yes, being mission-based, you’re free to revisit certain levels to collect additional skill points, costumes, and even new variants. With how big some of these missions are and how you’ll occasionally have to repeat them to find the right combination of variants in order to proceed, it can be a hassle to repeat some of the slower portions of each mission multiple times over. What’s most interesting, however, is how Slitterhead seemingly flips an issue that was especially prominent in Toyama’s Siren series.

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Slitterhead, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, doesn’t think very highly of you. Progression in every mission is railroaded to the nth degree. Need to find a way to get to another building? Don’t worry; the camera will pan away towards someone you can possess, without fail, every single time you get to this point. Want to explore an area, but you haven’t reached the arbitrary progression triggers yet? No need to fear, it’ll just teleport you back to where you need to go. Even something as simple as slightly deviating from the intended path to avoid military patrols is treated as if you’re treading on broken glass with bare feet.

It’s especially egregious when you can visibly see collectibles off the beaten path, but you’re effectively blocked from grabbing them until the game allows you to do so. Compare this to the Siren games, whose difficulty was somewhat tied to how strange and unconventional their methods of progression were. Unless you know what to do and when to do it in a single pass, you’re effectively stonewalled.

Presentation-wise, you can also find a few subjective faults here. For a game that’s as dialogue-heavy and narrative-driven as it is, there’s a bizarre disconnect here where some cutscenes are fully voiced, whereas others rely on the game’s text-driven presentation. It’s a weird disconnect to see the game jump between the two as infrequently as it does. Minimal population density, reused assets, and other signs of a lower budget do pop up every now and then as well, though they’re nothing too obnoxious.

Should You Buy Slitterhead?

Slitterhead is easily one of the most interesting releases of the year. Not necessarily one of the “best” or “worst,” but it’s a game I felt most compelled to revisit. Whenever I wasn’t playing it, I had this scratching feeling in the back of my head to turn it back on. More than anything else, I had this urge to see just what exactly Slitterhead would throw at me next. Bizarre cults? Warring groups of Slitterheads? Hyoki’s origins? Whatever came next, I was more than eager to see it.

It’s what makes a blanket recommendation of Slitterhead a risky proposition. In the same way Toyama’s Siren appeals to a select group of horror fans, Slitterhead will most assuredly resonate with a select few at the expense of alienating others. You may find that the game’s expansive mechanics lack some meaningful exploration or that the game’s repetitiveness—especially when it comes to acquiring the true ending—gets to be a little much after so long.

But underneath that, I found a game you legitimately won’t find elsewhere. In Toyama’s own words, per an interview with Game Developer:

“While I do strongly hope that many people can have a chance to play Slitterhead, I hope that people familiar with my work will be able to resonate with that same, distinctive atmosphere we try to convey.”

Enough works in Slitterhead to more than make up for the small issues I’ve had with it. It’s an incredibly strong debut for Bokeh Game Studio, and hopefully, its numerous quirks will translate into future success elsewhere. Having played several of Toyama’s previous games, as well as several other horror games that were released this year, I’d say this is up there as one of the most fascinating of the bunch.

Slitterhead is currently available on Steam, the Epic Games Store,  PlayStation, and Xbox.

Rating: 4.5/5 Stars

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