Horror game Slitterhead is The Thing vs The Thing and I really hope it’s also a sandbox stealth game

I’ve been fumbling for a grasp on Bokeh’s skull-splitting horror game Slitterhead since I first heard the words “brought to you by Keiichiro Toyama, former designer of Silent Hill, Siren and Gravity Rush”. Thanks to a new interview, I now have a proper description of the relationship between protagonist and antagonist. Friends, Romans and countrymen: this is a game about a war between two sets of body-stealing monsters, waged in the neon shadows of a fictional East Asian city. It all puts me strongly in mind of a certain John Carpenter movie about squelchy goings-on in Antarctica.

Never seen The Thing? A quick summary: it’s a creature feature in which a bunch of scientists near the South Pole find that their base has been invaded by an alien monster that can assume the form of whatever it eats, prompting an immediate spiral into foam latex and KY jelly-flavoured chaos. Slitterhead takes the idea, shifts it a few thousand miles north, and swaps out Kurt Russel for a bodiless force, the Hyoki, with the ability to possess human beings and enhance their skills.

You play the Hyoki, and your job is to chase down the Slitterheads – nasty insects who are also able to possess and transform human bodies, but rather more messily. In a demo attended by the active and avid folk of VGC, the player begins as a stray dog, recalling the opening scenes of The Thing, with perhaps a touch of commentary on real-life zoonotic diseases. Can you pet the dog? Possibly, but I strongly advise that you stay away from dogs in the context of anything remotely influenced by The Thing.

Each hapless host has different capabilities. Some are armed. VGC feels that Slitterhead’s combat isn’t anything to write home about, despite the ability to warp into a bystander’s head for a cheeky backstab, but there are some amusingly grisly mechanics involving traversal and exploration. For example, you can portal through a fence gap to a body on the other side, or leap your current host off a roof so that you can bounce to another in the street below. Toyama says the developers have leaned into the idea of civilians as disposable fodder. “Originally, they were supposed to be powerful, but that proved to be not entertaining,” he told the site. Please say that again, Toyama, with a drawn-out, sinister pause between “not” and “entertaining”.

My thoughts gravitate immediately and predictably to stealth gameplay. I like the idea of posing as a shopkeeper, eyeing up the clientele for wriggling temples and other symptoms of infestation. Perhaps it’ll be like Assassin’s Creed’s old PvP modes. That said, I’m not sure how amenable Slitterhead will be to such foetid, forensic sandboxing in practice. “One decision we made early in the game was that we originally wanted an open-world setting for the game, but it wasn’t reasonable with the budget,” Toyama told VGC. “That decision worked well, boxing in the missions and progressing through the storyline.”

Here’s hoping the neighbourhoods are nicely crowded, at least, because I have seen more Quit/Restart screens than you’ve had hot dinners, and as such, I’m going to burn through plenty of hosts in my time with Slitterhead, which is out on November 8th. Take a few cues from Warren Spector’s legendary single city block RPG pitch, maybe?