Games

Slitterhead Dev Explains Creation of Kowlong

Published

3 weeks ago

October 31, 2024

slitterhead game rant advance dev explains creation of kowlong feature

Horror is only as good as its setting, something that Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama is certainly familiar with. The titular New England town is easily one of the best settings in horror games to date, but for his latest venture, Toyama’s eyes were cast elsewhere. Toyama founded Bokeh Game Studio in 2020, and four years later, its debut title Slitterhead is about to hit the horror game market. Silent Hill fans should mark November 8 on their calendar, and be ready to do battle against the titular Slitterheads in the fictional city of Kowlong.

Obvious by the portmanteau in the name, Kowlong is a mixture of Hong Kong and the Walled City of Kowloon. While it is a fictional setting, it is heavily inspired by the two real-world locations, as well as the works of Wong Kar-wai (Chungking Express, Days of Being Wild, Happy Together). We spoke with Toyama, among others, for Slitterhead‘s Game Rant Advance about the creation of Kowlong. Its origins are pretty simple: Toyama wanted to make a game set in an Asian city. From there, it was about how Toyama could pull together unique, coexisting, and opposing imagery to create the atmosphere of Slitterhead.

Slitterhead Hands-On Preview: Body Swapping Hack and Slash

Slitterhead is the first game from Bokeh Game Studio, and Game Rant played it at PAX West 2024.

Toyama sees Kowloon and Hong Kong, alongside other cities, as settings that are “a pioneer in the imagery of cyberpunk, which I have always admired through all kinds of works.” The glitz and glam of cyberpunk, as many know, is often a cover for seedy underpinnings. This is something that Cyberpunk 2077 nails in Night City, and the type of contrast that’s evident throughout Slitterhead as well. How that plays out exactly remains to be seen, but the relationship between protagonist Hyoki and the monstrous Slitterheads is similar. There is glam in the depiction of the Hyoki as a bodiless creature devoid of memory, while there is grit in the Slitterheads which steal bodies and consume memories.

In a similar vein, Toyama explained that Kowlong takes the “vivid color sense, the noisy textures, and the coexistence of tradition and modernity” from Hong Kong and the works of Wong Kar-wai, which is equally interesting. Vivid color lends itself to the action elements of Slitterhead, but the absence thereof could be scarier too. Silence, for example, is never more frightening than when it is the absence of typically existent noise. And all of this is dressed in a city focused on both tradition and modernity, down to its time period as well.

Slitterhead takes place in the ’90s, and when asked why not something older or more modern, Toyama explained,

“As Asian cities undergo significant transformations, I was drawn to the sense of era that emerges when the old and the new blend together.”

How this era and how this setting plays into the thrills, scares, and story of Slitterhead remains to be seen, but knowing how much focus on contrast and coexistence has been placed into just the setting, fans should be in for a real treat come November 8.