Bokeh Game Studio was founded in August by Keiichiro Toyama, Kazunobu Sato and Junya Okura. Since then, they’ve been hard at work on a new game that’s aiming for release in 2023. In an interview with IGN Japan, Toyama explained how his experience with well-known horror franchises will be coming in handy as the game is shaping up to be a horror-themed action-adventure.
Toyama previously created the Silent Hill and Gravity Rush franchises. He also worked on the Siren franchise alongside Sato and Okura at SIE Japan Studio. The horror-oriented game will appeal to fans of Toyama’s previous work as he “had a desire to continue to create titles with strong originality that we have been doing for a long time”. However, the game will be “a broader entertainment experience, rather than a hardcore horror game”, including a world view, battles and action-adventure story elements.
The title is being created by a large team of people of “mostly veterans”. Toyama is Creative Director, while Sato is Producer and Okura is Game Director. Due to the young age of the studio, the game is in the very early stages of development. Sato said: “We’re just entering prototype development, and development will probably take nearly three years”. Production is due to ramp up next year but it will be at least 2023 before the game is released.
Whatever Bokeh’s new game turns out to be, they’re developing primarily for PC first while also aiming to get the game on as many consoles as possible. After being restricted by console exclusivity at SIE Japan, the team wants to move away from this. Once the game is released, the team is already thinking of producing “something derived from [the game] in the future”. Whether that’s a sequel or some other type of media, only time will tell. At least we know that if the rumours of a new Silent Hill title are true, it won’t be coming from Toyama and his team.