The original Silent Hill was brilliant in its time; unique, fleshed-out, and it scared the pants off of kids with a PS1 in 1999. It was created by Keiichiro Toyama, who wasn’t directly involved in all the Silent Hill sequels and hasn’t had a hand in horror since 2008’s Siren: Blood Curse. However, the horror legend is finally making a return with a new game, an action horror, and is giving fans a first look at the design by releasing some concept art for his monsters.
This upcoming, still nameless game is the first project being developed by Toyama’s newly founded Bokeh Game Studio. In an earlier interview, he said that the game will appeal to fans of his other work. It will be horror-oriented, but it will be taking an action-adventure approach to appeal to more mainstream gamers too. Recently, Toyama has been working on the Sony-exclusive Gravity Rush games, and while they are not his famed horror affair, the games have been received mostly positively, with his fans still loving his work.
Toyama revealed the first few images of concept art to come out of his independent studio in an interview posted on Bokeh Game Studio’s YouTube Channel. IGN gathered the images up and reported that Toyama said that he is going back to his roots in horror, which can be assumed based on the grotesque concept art. However, he also explains that “While keeping elements from horror, I want players to feel exhilarated when playing the game.”, saying that he wants to keep it entertaining. This might be the reason for the introduction of action-adventure, and one of the images shows a figure with a sword, which might be a hint at this approach. The other images are of disturbing, unnatural monsters such as an insect-like creature sprouting out of a human body, as well as Cronenberg-style creatures that seem to be inspired by scorpions and squids.
The creatures and overall energy of the new project have been influenced by death-game comics that Toyama enjoys reading. Death-game mangas have recently become more popular in western media with the release of Netflix’s Alice In Borderland, an adaption of the manga which shows characters being transported to an alternate Tokyo and must participate in dangerous games and challenges to get out. Toyama adds that these stories don’t just show scary things, but invade everyday life and that horror “should question our position and make us challenge the fact that we’re living peacefully.“
Although Toyama has been working with PlayStation titles, he hopes to see his new game launch on all platforms, starting with PC. The title is likely to launch in 2023, and looking at this concept art, it seems that it will have some memorably scary moments. Horror is more popular now than it was when the original Silent Hill came out, and in the last 20 years has grown into its own genre filled with a wide variety of tropes. Hopefully, Toyama can work his magic and create a new kind of horror game that pushes the genre up a notch.
Silent Hill is available on the PlayStation Network and Game Boy Advance.
