Silent Hill and Siren creator Keiichi Toyama has confirmed he and his team at Bokeh Game Studios is working it’s next project, and it won’t be a sequel to horror oddity Slitterhead.
Toyama shared the news in an interview with Famitsu (thanks Automaton). “I can’t reveal the exact details,” he explained, “but we have started working on our next title… Once again, we have to pour in all our efforts as a studio and prove that we are up to the task… However, we’re still in the beginning phase, so I believe we’ll be able to reveal more details [about the new project] somewhere in the future.”
One thing the new game won’t be, however, is a sequel to last year’s Slitterhead. The idiosyncratic, horror-tinged action-adventure launched to a mixed critical reception, and Toyama admitted to Famitsu the team had been aiming for a lot more sales than it eventually received. And, while he acknowledged its “cult favourite” status, he also speculated its reception might ultimately have been down to confusion over whether it was supposed to be a horror or action game.
Commercial success isn’t the team’s only goal, Toyama stressed, and it remains determined to take on new challenges. That’s despite personal concerns around his advancing age. “As for how long we’ll be able to continue,” he explained, “it becomes a difficult topic especially if we take my age into consideration. However, I believe that moving forward, I also have to pass the baton to the next generation. As a studio, we’re still midway to reaching our goal.”
Toyama isn’t the only renowned developer to publicly ponder their age in recent years, of course. In January, Hideo Kojima wrote he “[couldn’t] help but think about how much longer I’ll be able to stay ‘creative'”, adding: “Every day feels like I’m racing against the clock.” And speaking to The Guardian in 2023, Shigeru Miyamoto joked: “More so than retiring, I’m thinking about the day I fall over… In this day and age you have to think about things in a five-year timespan, so I do think about who I can pass things on to, in case something does happen.”
Back to Toyama, Eurogamer contributor Vikki Blake was won over by the “singular and unapologetically strange” Slitterhead in her four star review last year, so it’ll certainly be interesting to see what Bokeh does next.