Sick Samurai is a pulsating Chanpurū with the pacing of a bebop set, sharpening Hotline Miami's formula with a fine katana

The first gameplay trailer delivers action sharper than the edge of a samurai sword.

To those unacquainted with Shinichirō Watanabe’s bleeding cool couple in Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo, I would encourage you at once to embark upon a pilgrimage through their fifty-two episodes and one major motion picture prior to completing this article. Once you have devoted an inordinate, yet soulful measure of your time to their exploits, I would divert your desire for kindred content to Sick Samurai: a top-down, one-hit thriller from developer Solideo. To those with nerves of steel, the game - a melee reimagining of Hotline Miami’s impossibly paced pop-’em-open sensibility - promises to codify a form of bushido unto itself: discipline through dismemberment.

The anime interstitials help to provide the game with a graphic character of its own, in the vein of Supermassive Games’ Hades.

The reveal trailer, in the lineage of its inspirators, portrays ferocious, real-time slices in concert with a hard-bop-by-way-of-hip-hop hodgepodge of a soundscape: a canny reinterpretation of Hotline Miami’s raw tides of vaporwave. Furthermore, the curious cast of characters are each provided with hard boiled, bespoke dialogue; those familiar with Cowboy Bebop’s immaculate dub will recognise the similarities in cadence. Regarding the aesthetic, Solideo have showcased painterly means of furnishing, from the elegant flora to the representation of earthly terrain and tatami. Evidently, the player will perform painting themselves, though with blood as their material.

The way of the samurai is revealed through cutting a path of your own. Aside from your katana, players can employ secondary weapons - i.e. kunai and stun bombs - along with novel interactions with objects in your environment. There is a distinct unity of place on display that gives the game a true sense of geography; each room is tailored in a particular manner to encourage excerising its emergent mechanics.

Whatever happens, happens … because of you.

The blissful minimalism of its concept is an ingenious take on a genre often characterised by its cinematic scope. Due to the versatility in its levels, players may develop their own strategies, fostering complexity on their own terms. However, the narrative framework imbues its presentation with a pulp intrigue - indeed in the tone of Watanabe’s episodic oeuvre. To those who want to keep updated with this symphonic slasher, the game is available to wishlist on Steam; it is scheduled to arrive in October of 2025.

Until then…