Slitterhead review - The most interesting game of 2024

Slitterhead's fascinating ideas are held back by '00s-era jank.

Slitterhead's environments are generally impressive. / Bokeh Game Studio

Slitterhead is a game with awkward combat, visuals that evoke a PS3 Yakuza game, and mandatory, recurring, barebones stealth sections. And yet, it’s also the most interesting game of the year. It feels like a genuine passion project from a team that has finally been given the greenlight to make something unique. There’s nothing like Slitterhead.

It’s been described as a “modern survival horror” game, but other than a few limbs popping off, I don’t see it. Against all odds, Slitterhead is a character-driven detective story that just happens to feature semi-regular body horror. You play as a parasite that can jump from person to person, and you’re quickly hunted by Slitterheads – the titular monster of the game – which (s)literally burst from the heads of normal people.

It’s an introduction that feels a bit too mysterious and directionless, but things start coming together when you meet your first Rarity, Julee. A Rarity is a person that stays conscious when the parasite – which Julee names Night Owl – takes possession of their body, and the Night Owl can unlock latent abilities from their blood.

You'll be fighting a lot of these. / Bokeh Game Studio

The game suddenly takes its shape, with the narrative being directed by the people that Night Owl encounters. Julee’s curious about the Slitterheads, and wants to remove them from the streets to protect people, which leads them to encounter Alex, a violent and vengeful doctor, and others.

The people that Night Owl possesses change it. Julee imbues Night Owl with empathy and curiosity, whereas Alex instills a violent anger. Conversations with the team influence the missions you take. An overheard rumor might point towards a new location, or you may even encounter a hidden Rarity in a level you already played, which will then offer a new direction for the story to take.

The characters’ distinct personalities that influence Night Owl and the decisions made in each mission are truly fascinating, and seeing how the different cast members interact with the twists of the story is a highlight. This is where Slitterhead absolutely shines, and does something that no other game really has. 

Alex has the riskiest playstyle. / Bokeh Game Studio

But then there’s the rest. Most of Slitterhead’s missions involve tracking one of the monsters, which isn’t particularly fun, or infiltrating a location with stealth, which isn’t particularly fun. Gameplay, in general, feels coated in a layer of late-’00s jank. Animations are a little bit off, exploration is a bit weird, stealth doesn’t function entirely as you’d expect, and so on. 

The problems persist in combat, too. A Rarity has access to a unique weapon and a stack of unique abilities. Julee has blood claws that result in fast attacks, whereas Alex can absorb blood from the ground to heal, and then spend it with blasts from his shotgun. Rapidly swapping between your main Rarity and your companion is the primary way to make fast progress in battle.

The first time I encountered a big Slitterhead battle, it felt genuinely insurmountable. That’s because the game spends a decent amount of time tutorializing a parry mechanic, and because of the low health of the average human you can possess, it feels necessary, despite being a bit awkward. In reality, parrying is optional in an optimal battle. Instead, grab attention with one human, swap to another to get in a few hits, swap to another for more aggro, swap to a Rarity for some kind of large attack — once you have the flow of battle down, it feels pretty good. Not great, but good.

You spend a surprising amount of time on rooftops. / Bokeh Game Studio

One thing that does let Slitterhead down, however, is its initial promise. The tutorial mission has an admittedly impactful moment where you leap from a building while in possession of a human, and swap to another before hitting the ground. It shows Night Owl’s initial dismissal of human life, and as the body hits the ground, people scream in shock.

If you try this later on in the game, it frankly won’t work like that. I did it again later on – assuming that was the intended way to negate fall damage – and saw that the human I had fall to their death was… fine. They just landed on the ground like a cat and stood still. Nobody reacted. Similarly, I often found myself leaving humans on the edges of tall buildings, or even stood atop street signs or dodgy scaffolding. If I ended up looping back to that location, I’d see them still there, just standing precariously, not a care in the world, like a pigeon in a city block. The humans that fill Slitterhead’s dense world should feel more reactive than this, given they’re a key hook to the experience.

This is a tough one, because for every amazing idea or heavy story beat that forces you to take pause that Slitterhead has – and it has a few – there’s some kind of frustration. A puzzle solution you can see, but can’t complete until you interact with a door. A monster chase which lasts too long. A hidden Rarity that takes too long to find. A combat section you simply didn’t want to engage in. A mission you’re forced to repeat. Slitterhead has some truly incredible ideas that feel tough to indulge in thanks to all the hurdles.

It's not as creepy as screenshots make it look. / Bokeh Game Studio

Slitterhead is quite possibly the single most interesting game of 2024, but prospective players need to be aware of the journey that’s ahead of them. If seeing some genuinely bold and indulgent game design decisions is worth fighting against a bit of jank, then this game is absolutely for you. If you want to always know where to go and what to do next, maybe not. Even then, I think you should play Slitterhead, simply because you’re unlikely to see anything like it ever again.

Score: 7/10

Platform tested: PS5