You Probably Missed the Most Outlandish Horror Game of 2024
Don’t get queasy.
There are times when a video game is so good you can’t possibly imagine how it could be any better. Seminal titles like Breath of the Wild and Baldur’s Gate 3 can be some of the best experiences you’ll ever have, but sometimes the more interesting games are the ones that arrive rough around the edges, but so wildly ambitious and fascinating that you can’t help but be glued to the screen. Slitterhead is one of those games, a bizarre body-horror fever dream from the creator of Silent Hill, sprouting a few warts and plenty of jank. But it’s one of those titles where the flaws practically make the game better. Slitterhead is one of the most fascinating experiences I’ve had with a video game in years — and you likely missed its under-the-radar release in 2024.
Slitterhead is the first game from Bokeh Game Studio, which was founded in 2020 by Keiichiro Toyama — who’s largely known as the creator of Silent Hill, Siren, and Gravity Rush. Toyama is undoubtedly one of the masters of horror in video games, so it should come as little surprise that Slitterhead is deliciously horrifying. The entire game has a grungy tone that’s permeated with downright shocking body horror — creatures that twist and crack out of human bodies, turning into a grotesque menagerie of body parts. There’s a lot to love if you’re a horror fan simply from a visual and storytelling standpoint, but the game’s inventive take on combat is equally attractive.
If you don’t like body horror, Slitterhead might not be the game for you.
Slitterhead takes place in 1990s Kowloon, a large urban area of Hong Kong. It does feature the city at large, but heavily takes place in Kowloon Walled City — a densely packed and extremely populated section of the city that literally has a wall around it, and for a period of time functioned as an essentially lawless enclave. At the beginning of the game, you wake up as an ethereal spirit simply known as Hyoki, with no memory of who or even what you are. All you know is your purpose is to annihilate Slitterheads, ravenous creatures that prey on people and disguise themselves among the populace as regular humans.
What’s most fascinating about Slitterhead is how it thematically represents its setting through both storytelling and gameplay. Despite its entirely urban setting, Kowloon is a surprisingly gorgeous location filled with detail. It’s grungy and dark but the city thrums with activity — markets and stalls on every corner, busy “escort” houses, and people moving every which way.
But what’s brilliant is how that hive of activity directly affects gameplay. Playing as the spirit you can forcibly possess anyone and everyone. The entire game is a mix of action RPG and a puzzle box, where you have to jump between possessing people to complete missions and objectives. Need to get through a gate? Possess someone on the other side and be on your way. Need to get down to the city from a rooftop? Possess someone and send them plummeting to their doom, then jump out and possess someone else right before they hit the ground. Combat also becomes a game of jumping between humans to try and get the advantage over monsters, as humans get a short boost of power when you possess them.
Kowloon is a fascinating setting, visually attractive and thematically fitting for Slitterhead’s themes.
Yes, Slitterhead is a game where you’re rampantly causing destruction and ending lives — but that’s part of the experience. The game clearly wants you to buy into this kind of cold and calculating strategy, where humans aren’t living beings but resources you use in your pursuit of destroying monsters. It’s a fascinating design choice that turns the player into a cold and calculating machine, which is then juxtaposed against the direction the story itself takes.
As you progress through the story and various missions that take place around Kowloon, you’ll discover people known as “Rarities.” These are humans that have a particularly potent resonance with your soul, and possessing them unlocks wild new powers and abilities. For example, the first rarity you meet, Julee, grows claws made of blood and gets tremendous speed and power.
These Rarity characters retain their sense of will, and the story and world get fleshed out by talking to them at their various places of living. Through these little conversations, you get to see their view on the world, the problems within Kowloon, and how they’re surviving. You can then take Rarities on missions with you, letting you use their powers.
Slitterhead is filled with delightfully inventive ideas, like letting you absorb blood splatter on the environment to restore health.
It’s fascinating to see these two disparate approaches juxtaposed against each other — building relationships with rarities as you mercilessly use dozens of other humans like fodder. It’s a game that looks at both the horrific cruelty and unending hope of humanity. That’s really the crux of what makes Slitterhead so compelling, and that idea is only bolstered by interesting combat, a fantastically designed world, and an incredible score by legendary Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka.
Of course, I mentioned earlier that Slitterhead is rough around the edges, and that’s a caveat you need to keep in mind. Its art style works wonders, but it’s clearly not the most visually impressive game. Combat has great ideas but can often feel unwieldy and imprecise. The story goes to some wildly surprising places, but the actual mission design can start to feel a bit rote and same-y after a while.
These are all things that can clearly affect your experience, but if you can look past them and really buy into what the game is doing, it’s truly something special. Slitterhead is horrifying, remarkable, and surprising in all the best ways. It’s a game of extremes, and that’s what makes it so special.
