Bokeh Game Studios founder Keiichiro Toyama isn’t slowing down. The Silent Hill creator founded the new studio in 2020 after Japan Studio’s imminent disbandment, and Bokeh announced their first title, Slitterhead, at The Game Awards 2021. In a new Q&A session, Toyama, game director and CTO Junya Okura, and producer and COO Kazunobu Sato sat down to talk about the future of the company, their inspirations, and what fans can expect going forward.
Discussing what sort of games he wants to make post-Slitterhead, Toyama had plenty to say. “I want someday to do something with some classic psychological horror themes like I did with Silent Hill,” he said. “However, I’d rather do that when working with really limited resources, such as budget or having to focus on one individual. Right now, we have staff with the ability to work on action. I want to leverage their skills to go in another direction. Still, I also want to make something more personal someday.”
Toyama did stress that while Slitterhead has quite a few action elements, psychological horror definitely plays a part. “I wanted a game that could be enjoyed for its action, yet whose concept doesn’t solely revolve around killing enemies. It conflicts with the mind, making the players reluctant to enter certain fights. I want to achieve both action and drama with this game.”
Balancing horror and action seemed to be the most difficult part of Slitterhead‘s creation progress, though Toyama seems to believe that the devs have succeeded towards that end.
“My first thought would be that the game doesn’t fully enter the horror genre. It spans over multiple genres where horror is expressed. From there, I wanted to widen the player base who could access the game, including players who don’t usually play horror games.
Slitterhead does not yet have a release date, but Toyama has gone on the record saying that the studio’s first game would drop in 2023 for PC. Bokeh is also interested in porting the game to as many console platforms as possible, so a PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S port seems likely.
