Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro is a developer whose works resemble what might have happened if David Lynch was born in Japan and went into making video games instead of movies and TV shows. His titles have been divisive among gamers, but everyone can agree he’s one of the leaders of avant-garde storytelling and design in video games. Swery did us the honor of sitting down with us at PAX West 2018 at the Unties booth to talk about his upcoming games The Good Life and The Missing.
Swery is perhaps best known for the incredibly polarizing Deadly Premonition. Released in 2010, critics were profoundly divided. Personally, I think it’s an incredible game and probably can’t be friends with anyone that can’t at least appreciate it in one way or another.
Games that divide the most seem to draw the most intense followings, and Deadly Premonition has become a cult classic in the years since its release. The director’s cut, launched in 2013, fixed many of the issues that players had with the original launch, and with that added accessibility many more fell in love with the story of a Joe Everyman FBI agent caught up in a strange, surreal narrative.
Swery’s upcoming games, The Good Life and The Missing, both seem to bring the unique charm that made fans fall in love with Deadly Premonition.
Swery says The Missing draws on the darkness in himself. It has you playing an immortal (but not invulnerable) protagonist that can solve puzzles by allowing herself to be crushed, dismembered, electrocuted and more.
The Good Life, while still chock full of macabre events, is a reflection of the good in himself according to Swery. It takes place in a quaint country town, and you play as a professional photographer that has to clear a massive amount of debt before she can leave. Oh yeah, and everyone in the town turns into cats and dogs once a month.
We can’t wait to play these quirky games and check out more of that endearing weirdness that makes Swery such an intriguing and likable person.
