I barely know what's going on in Slitterhead, the next game from Silent Hill's creator, but I love its rates of body horror and random passerby possession per minute

Slitterhead gameplay reveal showing grungy Tokyo streets, people with red eyes, and strange monsters bursting out of people — (Image credit: Bokeh Game Studio)

At this year's Summer Game Fest, we finally got a look at gameplay from Slitterhead, the first game from Silent Hill creator Keiichiro Toyama's studio, Bokeh Games—unless you count the trailer having leaked a few hours ago as our first look, that is. I don't know what I expected otherwise, but it looks sick and nasty as all hell, seemingly takes a page from beloved 7/10 superhero game Prototype, and is coming out this November.

The first big surprise of the trailer comes when, instead of the handsome detective guy who looks like a protagonist, we see the player controlling a random middle aged man who jumps off a roof, with the player then leaving his body in spirit ectoplasm form, the camera zooming into first person as they peruse a crowd of people for a new host.

Slitterhead Official Gameplay Trailer | Summer Game Fest 2024 - YouTube

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It's giving Prototype by way of Ghostwire: Tokyo, basically. Prototype, while not a great game, had a fantastic core idea: you're a nasty freaky symbiote from an experiment gone wrong, and can possess anyone in its open world. Ghostwire Tokyo, meanwhile, had a stunning, surreal vision of that metropolis that still sticks with me despite its other failings.

It looks like things aren't all apocalyptic all the time in Slitterhead: There are plenty of thoughts of calm, relatively normal city scenes where social stealth gameplay using the possession system might be the move. Once things get loud though, boy is it nasty.

You're not the only freaky possession force around these parts, and you seem to be doing battle with parasite bug men taking over the citizenry—I'm picturing a The Hidden sort of deal where good parasite bug men are duking it out with evil ones over the fate of humanity. The chitinous, tentacled designs were enough to freak out some of our more queasy editors, but I was making the Sickos: Yes face the whole time.

A bunch of people seem to go Super Saiyan toward the end of the trailer, including a classically cool dude in a biker outfit with a blood sword and Mad Max shotgun—there's a bit where his hand gets sliced off and he reconnects it with a little tentacle of gore that was just delightful too. I can't even pretend to understand what's going on here, but the sheer rate of disgusting body horror and anime bullshit put a big smile on my face.

And Slitterhead is coming out way sooner than I anticipated, with its November 8 release date practically right around the corner, though it's not yet clear on which PC storefronts.

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Ted has been thinking about PC games and bothering anyone who would listen with his thoughts on them ever since he booted up his sister's copy of Neverwinter Nights on the family computer. He is obsessed with all things CRPG and CRPG-adjacent, but has also covered esports, modding, and rare game collecting. When he's not playing or writing about games, you can find Ted lifting weights on his back porch. You can follow Ted on Bluesky.