Grasshopper Reveals Lollipop Chainsaw

Yup, it’s a Suda 51 game. Grasshopper’s latest game following Shadows of the Damned involves a high school cheerleader running around campus, chainsawing zombies. Lollipop Chainsaw has already found a US and European distributor so it’s safe to say you’ll be seeing it in the Western hemisphere sometime soon.

Lollipop Chainsaw is a Xbox 360, Playstation 3 title starting a girl named Juliet Starling, who on her 18th birthday, is on her way to San Romero High School to meet up with her boyfriend. The twist? When Juliet arrives at the school, she finds that the campus infested with zombie versions of her schoolates.

Despite its nature, Lollipop Chainsaw doesn’t involve a whole lot of gore, “instead of sprays of blood, we have the zombies emitting bursts of pink light,” says Suda 51, president of Grasshopper Manufacture. “When it comes to gore, we can certainly go that way if we want, but we wanted to give the game more of a ‘pop’ feel.”

The game will also play on Juliet’s cheerleading abilities as “there’s going to be action moves that take advantage of her cheerleading skills,” stated Yoshimi Yasuda, president of Lollipop publisher Kadokawa Games. “There are other ways to attack outside of the chainsaw, too, and part of the fun is figuring out which move to use at which time.”

Silent Hill composer Akira Yamaoka joins up with the project as head of sound staff. Suda 51 noted, “Part of the reason we established Grasshopper in the first place was so we could work on every part of a game in-house, and we treat sound especially importantly in this outfit. The sound team for Lollipop is led by Yamaoka and they’re working on a whole array of pop tunes right now. Part of the gameplay might involve sound as well, although exactly how we’re still keeping a secret.”

So how far along in development is Lollipop Chainsaw? “I’d place it at around 70 percent complete. It’s really a new era for zombie games — a piece of ‘pop’ zombie entertainment.” Although a release date wasn’t specified, there is already an overseas US publisher already translating the game’s dialogue into English. Though, of course, they wouldn’t state who.

Source: 1UP