Slitterhead Has Its Jank, But Also Promise and Heart | Push Square

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Enough time has passed that a reverence for the jankier, AA games of the PS3 generation is now starting to appear, and for the horror genre at least, Slitterhead is about to be its poster child. Gamescom provided us with the chance to check out 45 minutes of the debut title from Bokeh Game Studio, playing the full introduction and a short section later on. Our main takeaway is that while the game is clearly being made on a smaller budget than what Keiichiro Toyama has had to work with in the past, there's a distinct direction and main mechanic here, which it leans into wholeheartedly.

In Slitterhead, you're not necessarily playing as a human being; you're instead playing as a kind of entity with the ability to possess them. You jump from person to person, briefly taking control of them before jumping onto the next, either to access the next part of the level or to avoid death. There certainly seem to be a few main characters that prove more powerful when you take over their body, but generally, you're bouncing around anatomies to survive.

Low on health and lacking combat prowess, these humans are considered expendable. A section of the demo sees you throwing yourself off the top of a building just so you can possess someone else on ground level, condemning that past body to its demise. You'll have to set aside any care for fellow humans to make much of any progress in Slitterhead.

Alongside combat, which we'll touch on shortly, this body-swapping mechanic was the main focus of the Gamescom play session. It's how you navigate the linear world, entertaining one set of weak limbs for a short while until you find someone better — or with a bit more health during battle. It's… interesting. Whether the feature can remain engaging across an entire game is another story, but for now, Slitterhead at least sets itself apart with such a unique approach to traversal. You'll use it to cross through blocked paths and gates, reach higher points in the city, and generally just get