Slash away with style in VR with Samurai Slaughter House

Looking for some VR violence, inspired by Tarantino, set in an artistic stylish samurai world? IndieBloom have managed to snag an interview with the latest upcoming indie videogame you should know about, Samurai Slaughter House.

Straight outta the Slaughter House

Created by Justin ‘Tab’ Rosete of Tab Games and based in the US, Samurai Slaughter House is an upcoming combat based, physics VR experience for Steam, Meta (Oculus) Quest 2 and PSVR2 devices. The games story is -

Your soul is trapped on a mythical mountain. The only way to escape is to fight your way to the top of a massive castle built in to the mountain. You will have to fight against hordes of demons and may possibly even make some new friends and allies with other warriors who are also fighting to reach the top and free their soul.

Justin has 20 years gaming experience, having started developing games at the age of 10. Samurai Slaughter House has been worked on by himself since August 2020. Along with being an accomplished videogame creator (check out his other title, Vehicular Rampage, another VR game for Quest and PCVR, inspired by the infamous videogame, Carmageddon). Justin is also a musician, the music for Samurai Slaughter House composed by himself (the jazzy, hip hop influenced by Samurai Champloo), plus finding the time being a tattoo artist.

With the distinct visuals that catch your attention, other elements that have helped to build the game are anime, manga and Tarantino films (Kill Bill of course and Grindhouse). Videogame aspects from Bushido Blade and an interesting fact being that Samurai Slaughter House’s AI is based on Halo’s faction system AI. A varied mix of media.

Renaissance Man

Justin was definitely happy to answer our questions, starting with a ‘Hello!’, read on for the rest of the IndieBloom interview 😊

We firstly wanted to ask what’s been the most favourite aspect of making Samurai Slaughter House, to which the answer was, ‘my favorite part of working on Samurai Slaughter House would probably be adding new characters and enemies, especially the art part. I just love creating characters with bold looks that really stand out.’ It definitely does stand out, with the art style being the major factor that grabbed us first.

While being multi-talented we were keen to find out what Justin prefers the most out of music producing, creating a video game, and tattooing. ‘My favorite is definitely developing video games. Making games is one of the few places where I'm able to bring almost all my talents together and focus them on one project.’ How does he find all the time to do it? ⌚🤔 Leading on from that, we wanted to find out what's been his favourite track to produce in Samurai Slaughter House.

It's hard to decide between Welcome to my Dojo and Curse of the Yokai but I think I'm going to have to go with Curse of the Yokai. It's just such a fun and high energy song. I actually produced Curse of the Yokai specifically for a trailer, which is why it is a pretty short song. I would like to go back though and make an extended version of the song as well.

Check out the soundtrack on Spotify if you haven’t already 🎧🔊

My ultimate goal with Samurai Slaughter House (SSH) is to put players in a cool world that reminds them of all their favorite anime and films and will also let them live out all their anime and martial arts themed fantasies.

Favourite kill

With lots of attention, views and an eager community, Justin explains.

The thing I rely on the community most for is feedback regarding difficulty/balance. Being very familiar with the game and all the little tricks, it's hard for me to judge personally how hard/easy it is, so getting feedback from players about what's fun, what's hard/frustrating, and what feels too easy really helps a lot. Getting feedback about what controls and systems aren't clear really helps too when it comes to making the tutorial and adding tips.

Have you played it yet? How do you find the difficulty? Any other suggestions to add?

Making a game all on your own is a challenging experience, what has Justin encountered while creating the game?

It's a toss up between the physics based combat, including the blocking/parrying, and the sword sheathing. Making a curved katana go smoothly in and out of a sheath is a lot harder than most would imagine. A lot of math involved, lol.

We’ve never thought about that 🤔

With game development the lowest points are always when things are just not working. At one point I had an issue where the game would just crash on bootup every time on the Quest 2 for no discernible reason and it didn't look like there was anyway I was going to be able to have a Quest version. I managed to work through that though and the game is looking and running wonderfully on the Quest.
Some of my favorite high points were being featured in VR Trend Magazine, being included in the E3 Upload VR Showcase, and having my own VR panel at Los Angeles Comic Con.

Very impressive indeed - Here’s to much more highs! 🍾🎊

With a nice mixture of enemies to slice and dice apart, Justin tells us his favourite enemy.

My favorite enemy currently in the game would have to be the ninjas. Their dodges and crazy spin attack move makes them a lot of fun to fight. The Oni Samurai is probably my overall favorite though. He's not complete and I've only shared screenshots and brief clips of him but he is badass. I can't wait for players to be able to face him.

A growing fanbase and lots of deserved attention have created some positive moments.

I think one of my favorite moments is when I first added jumping to the AI creatures in the game. I remember playing in a forest area of the game and there being a large amount of both human and enemy yokai spawned and they were all fighting each other all around me while I was also taking on enemies. It really gave the feeling of being in a huge dynamic chaotic battle, somewhat reminiscent of the older Halo games, and that made me really excited.

Explaining further on his thoughts and the pressure from it.

One of the most satisfying things is definitely hopping in and playing the game. Sometimes things get overwhelming and I wonder if I made the right decision leaving my job to pursue game development, but hopping in and being reminded how much fun the game is and that what I'm creating is special, really gives me a boost when I need it.

The final cut

Concluding our chat with Justin the following questions we wanted answers to involved the situation with Tab Games, his indie videogame dev -

Right now I'm in the process of working out a publisher/funding deal so that I'll be able to get a decent budget to develop the game. From there I will be able to bring on more staff with experience to really help up the quality of the game, polish out all the bugs and rough edges, and really round out the game world and maximize the content in it.

Some encouraging words of wisdom to all you indie game makers out there - ‘Just want to give a shout out to all indie developers out there grinding to make something special. Keep the dream alive. Indie games are what's keeping gaming golden!’ 🍾🎊🙌🌠

With Justin’s passion, grit, experience, determination and hard work, IndieBloom expect to see big things in the future from Samurai Slaughter House and Tab Games. Go and show your support and get the game!

You can catch the development of Samurai Slaughter House and interact with Justin through lots of social channels - Reddit, YouTube, Twitter (he’s very active on there), Facebook, Instagram and Discord. While you can look forward to more indie interests introduced by IndieBloom.