Deadly Premonition, D4 creator Swery65 is back in business with new indie studio, White Owls
Swery's back, baby.
Hidetaka "Swery65" Suehiro has come out of retirement, three months after his departure from Access Games.
The Deadly Premonition and D4 creator today announced the formation of a new Osaka-based development studio, White Owls.
On the studio's Facebook page, Suehiro said he's "developing very hard to deliver a wonderful game to you all over the world" even though White Owls is "just a newly born studio".
The studio's website lists one upcoming project, with title still to be announced. It's described as "White Owls' first original project", and says the team is "working very hard on it".
Elsewhere on the site there's a VR section, which may offer a clue. The again, there's also a page about Suehiro's upcoming book, I Am Not A Cat (presumably a riff on Natsume Sōseki's famous I Am A Cat), and in the "Others" section you'll find a mention of White Owls participating in various kinds of media projects, so there's no guarantee the VR and game segments are related at all. (There's also a shop, where you can buy undies featuring the White Owls Prince mascot, and items featuring images from Suehiro's Men of Game Development 2017 calendar shoot.)
It's not clear whether Suehiro is going it alone at the moment; the About Us section doesn't mention anybody else, bar Sharapova, Suehiro's stuffed chimp, who is listed as the PR representative.
This area is also where Suehiro promises to deliver "weird" and "unique content", which "you won't be able to find anywhere else", which is exactly what we want from him.
It's great to see Swery back in the game, especially because it suggests he left Access Games for reasons other than his health, which recently took him out of action for a full year.