Death Game Hotel came out last week – a comically gory game in which players play casino-style card games around a table and raise the stakes by betting their own limbs. It’s a VR game, which is a break from the norm for White Owls, the studio run by Hidetaka “Swery” Suehiro (then again, what is their “norm”?). It’s also got a big multiplayer component, with lots of jovial bubble-popping and chicken-squeezing between the comedy blood spurts. And this taste of multiplayer mischief has Swery’s head percolating. This game won’t be his last dipped toe in the multiplayer ocean, he told us.

“In the future,” said Swery, “I would like to leverage this experience to challenge myself with something new in the online multiplayer realm (something you probably haven’t even imagined yet).”

It’s just a tease. He didn’t say much more about future plans in our chat. We do know Swery is already working with Goichi Suda (aka Suda51) on a totally different deadly guesthouse – Hotel Barcelona. But whatever multiplayer mayhem is marinating in Swery’s head, it isn’t related to that.

For now, Swery is mostly keen to get players into the lobbies of the studio’s VR gambling den, where each player has a goblet full of blood in front of them, into which they must drop their increasingly unhinged bets. He said the idea for a mortal multiplayer table game came during the Covid-19 pandemic, when workers at the studio started hanging out in VR to discuss work.

“During the ‘Stay Home’ phase, when we couldn’t leave our homes or meet friends and colleagues, we at White Owls distributed VR headsets to all employees and held game meetings in VR,” he said. “This experience led to the idea of creating a place where people could gather and connect, which heavily inspired this project.”

This’ll be Swery’s 17th published game (at least according to his wiki), not surprising for someone who’s been making video games since the 1990s, sometimes to a mixed reception. The lead developer of cult favourite Deadly Premonition and cosy village cat-person simulator The Good Life, communicated that he was satisfied with his studio’s previous works. Even if the nature of making art means there’s always something left undone.

“As a game creator, I believe all the works I’ve created are ‘eternally unfinished’ yet considered ‘as complete as they’ll ever be.'”

When I asked if he had any advice to give to younger developers, he dispensed with any flowery talk and put it to me straight: know what you’re making.

“Big companies make AAA titles by investing money,” he said. “Indies try to compete with big titles by offering something unique that can’t be experienced elsewhere. I think it’s important to look deep within and ask yourself what it is you are offering – and how – in order to avoid moving forward without a strategy.”

Swery is also a fully certified Buddhist monk who gives excellent appraisal of felines, having previously given me some good advice on my cat’s behaviour. When I told the studio head and fellow cat enjoyer I no longer lived with my precious moggy due to a breakup (sniff), he knew which tone to adopt.

“Everyone has different approaches to healing from the loss of a relationship with a beloved cat,” he said. “Getting another cat (preferably a newborn kitten), reading cat blogs daily, finding another girlfriend who has a cat, or chatting with an AI pretending to be a cat – all could be some good options.

“As for me, I would calm my mind by believing that we will meet again someday (in another dimension). For now, let’s play Death Game Hotel together and cheer up! Hang in there!”

Death Game Hotel is for sale on the Meta store if you’re Oculus’d up. The developer also points out there’s a Discord server where staff at the studio arrange to play games, sometimes involving Swery too.